I was part of a homeschooling "co-op" before, which was genuinely comparable in size to a local school's class size if not larger (albeit made up of several ages of students comingling in the same class, rather than a group of peers at exactly the same age). It was better than nothing, but... (1/?)
...the disparity between students who were involved in co-op activities most days of the week and students who showed up once was incredibly obvious. There were all sorts of reasons why parents chose homeschool over public; for some parents the goal of using the co-op was to improve educational(2/?)
versatility (have their child attend classes taught by other parents, so each parent doesn't need to simultaneously master all subjects), while others simply seemed to think that if they showed up a few times their kid would magically become ✨social✨ and not get bullied. (3/?)
"Un"schooling, where parents intentionally didn't teach their children, was pretty rare for parents who cared enough to join the co-op, but there were definitely some kids who genuinely didn't know how to learn. Those kids were usually the ones who showed up once in a blue moon. (4/5)
To our benefit, we only did have one "bully" ever, and he vanished immediately. But despite achieving parents' goals, it wasn't right for all the kids. Inconsistent scheduling and incomplete subjects lists meant it wasn't a "school", and there were kids who needed that structure to succeed. (5/5)