It's not breakfast that brings Judi Kidd's two sons downstairs to the family table each weekday morning. When Andrew, 13, and brother John, 9, are summoned, it's to start the day's lessons.
These Fishers brothers receive one-on-one classroom instruction in a comfortable and familiar space: the Kidd family room.
"I like it because at a public school, the teacher has to focus on everybody, but at home, my mom focuses on me," Andrew said Monday, when classes resumed for the Kidds.
With thousands of Indiana students headed back to traditional public schools this month, an increasing number of Hoosier families like the Kidds are eschewing school for home lessons -- and taking greater control of their children's education.
About 20,000 children -- or 2 percent of the state's 995,525 public school students -- will be home schooled this fall, a number that's jumped dramatically and is attributed to school shootings that riveted the nation.
Concerns about school safety aren't the only reasons parents cite when deciding to teach their children at home. Some do it because they believe they can deliver lessons better than those in public schools. And home schooling is becoming more mainstream, moving beyond Christian fundamentalists who combine religion with academics.
Students aren't socially isolated, proponents say, and there are opportunities for children to participate in a wide range of extracurricular activities like sports and band through agreements with area schools.
"We have maintained our home schooling for a lot of reasons, mainly because we wanted to expose them to the world in a way we felt was appropriate," said Charlene Brown, who home schools two daughters in Indianapolis' Perry Township.
Since 1989, the number of children home schooled in Indiana has grown 1,641 percent, from 1,148 to 19,987 last school year. The biggest jump occurred between 1997 and 1998, when the numbers swelled by more than 50 percent -- from 7,251 in 1997 to 10,991 in 1998 -- in the wake of school shootings in other states.
"It used to be something very few people did. It was kind of like a niche group," said Lora Miller, a consultant who oversees home schooling for the Indiana Department of Education.
About 850,000 of the nation's 44.9 million public school children were schooled at home, according to a survey by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics in 1999, the most recent year available.
Home school proponents place the number between 1.2 million and 2 million. The disparity is because most states don't require parents who home school to report that.
Home schools are considered nonaccredited private schools in Indiana and are free of state oversight in testing, curriculum and other rules for public schools.
While state law requires that parents teach for 180 days, it doesn't specify which days or the length of the day. Some states, like Tennessee, require parents to have at minimum a high school equivalency degree to teach K-8 children and a college degree for high school students.
Indiana has no such requirements other than asking parents to keep attendance, although state officials rarely check. That laxness bothers the National School Boards Association and even some parents.
"There is no way that the state can ensure that a child is getting a quality education where home schools are not regulated," said Julie Underwood, an attorney with the Alexandria, Va.-based association.
Parents believe in accountability, too.
"Even though I love the freedom of home schooling, as a parent, I need to be accountable to somebody to prove that I've (complied)," said Judi Kidd.
Some national researchers report that home schooled children score higher than their peers on national standardized tests and assessments.
Income plays a factor. The majority of children who are home schooled live in middle class, two-parent households. And 25 percent of families who home school have at least one parent who is a licensed teacher.
Carmel resident Ginny Zeller is a former Indianapolis Public Schools teacher and has taught her children at home for 20 years.
She and her husband, H. Eric Zeller, a retired dentist, converted a garage into two classrooms with desks, chairs and chalkboards.
Book-filled shelves cover the tiny school's walls, where the three youngest of the seven Zeller children -- Michael, 15; Suzanne, 13; and Katy, 11 -- worked on math Monday.
Neighbor Holly Ross briefly interrupted the trio's lessons to share a garden find: a tiny black garter snake she was keeping in a jar.
That's one reason Suzanne likes learning at home.
Friends and neighbors drop by with things that enhance lessons. There's no pressure to complete work before the next bell sounds, and no waiting for 25 other kids to master a subject. And she likes having her mom as her teacher.
Her friends are envious of the class spontaneity she enjoys.
"They say, 'You're so lucky. I wish my mom would home school me,' " she said, but they may see it as an easy route.
"They think we don't do anything, but we do a lot."