PINCH -- Sacha, Trystan and Galia Lively live in the most populated county in the state, but their school only has three students.

And it's in their kitchen.

The three girls, ages 16, 10 and 9, are part of a growing trend in West Virginia -- they are home-schoolers. That means when the academic year begins anew in the next few weeks, instead of boarding a bus and riding to the nearest elementary or high school, they will go downstairs to their family's kitchen, where their mother, Shelley, will be their teacher.

And they are not alone. During the 2004-05 academic year, more than 5,500 children in West Virginia were educated at home. And if past trends are any indication, even more students will be home-schooled in years to come.

According to statistics from the West Virginia Department of Education, 588 kids were home-schooled in 1991-92. By 1994-95, that number had climbed to 787. The number of home-schooled children climbed dramatically during the next five years, reaching 3,820 by the 1999-2000 school year.

"It seems to increase every year," said Karen Larry, executive assistant to the state superintendent. "When you add up all of the kids from each county who are home-schooled, it's a large school district."

In fact, if all of the home-schoolers were added together, the district they'd form would be bigger than 42 other county districts in the state.

Larry doesn't know the exact reasons why more families are turning to home-schooling as an educational choice for their children. One reason, she said, could be that it's more accepted as a practice. There's also more curriculum and online classes available for children.

A Decision That Made Sense

Shelley Lively said there are just as many reasons for a parent to decide to home-school as there are home-schooling parents. Some do it for religious reasons, some for political reasons. Some have children with special needs, and home-schooling provides that individual attention the children need. Some do it because they are dissatisfied with the quality of education available in public schools.

For the Livelys, the decision to home-school came down to scheduling.

Shelley's husband William works full time with the West Virginia Army National Guard. He's out of town a lot and travels quite a bit. Shelley works full-time second shift at the Post Office in Charleston. The family needs both jobs. Neither parent can give up a job or change shift.

"What I realized with that shift I'd never see my kids. And I wanted to raise my daughter. I didn't want someone else to raise her for me," she said.

William and Shelley initially decided to home-school when their biological daughter, Trystan, was little. But the decision to home-school made even more sense once William and Shelley adopted sisters Sacha and Galia from Russia in 2005.

The sisters arrived in West Virginia on Christmas Eve. They were excited about their new family and new life, but Shelley said Sacha was terrified about going to a public school.

"When I explained how long the school day was, how many students were in the classes and what the classrooms would be like, Sacha was horrified," Shelley said. "Plus she didn't speak the language."

In addition, the school Sacha attended in Russia didn't really keep transcripts, so she would have had to take many classes over again. With her being 16 and basically half way through high school, that didn't seem to make any sense to the Livelys.

"What was the point of sending her to school so she could be bored and not understand the language?" Shelley Lively asked.

So the family decided to home-school all three girls. Sacha and Galia work on their English skills, in addition to regular math, science and social studies. Trystan is learning Russian so she can communicate with her sisters in their native tongue.

"By home-schooling our three daughters, we are able to focus on what our family needs," said Shelley Lively.

A System of Support

Home-schooling may work well with a family, but does it provide the socialization children need to grow up and be able to live as adults?

The answer depends on whom one asks.

Teachers and education officials worry that while some families work hard to make sure their children get chances to socialize, other children may be too isolated.

"Most parents who home-school their children do it for the right reasons," said Judy Hale, president of the American Federation of Teachers--West Virginia. "But there are some parents who just want their older children to stay home to baby-sit the younger children."

Parents who home-school say their children get plenty of socialization through friends they meet at church, in their neighborhood and through group activities with other home-schooled children. Most home-schooling families get together several times a month for field trips, group events such as gym classes at local YMCAs or practice for a band made up of home-schooled children.

"I think they are more socialized than children in public school because they interact with children from all age groups, not just people who would be in their specific class," said Teresa Workman, president of the West Virginia Home Education Association.

Workman has 8- and 9-year-old sons, and started teaching them at her Oak Hill home five years ago. She said when she began home-schooling, she watched the other children interact at different group events. She liked what she saw.

"I was really impressed with the older children -- especially the older boys -- with how patient and understanding they were with the younger kids," she said. "They would work with them and explain things to them, not just say, 'Leave me alone. I'm going to go hang out with other 15-year-olds.'"

That doesn't mean the system is flawless. One of the biggest problems parents encounter, Workman said, is finding the time to teach kids everything they need to know.

"That's the biggest challenge for my family," Workman said. "We have to decide of all of the things we want to study, how do we weed it down to what we need to study?"

The other big challenge, she said, relates to sports. In West Virginia, a child must be enrolled in courses at a West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission member school to be eligible to play sports for a high school, according to a West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruling last year. Home-schooled children aren't enrolled in those schools. That means they can't play high school sports.

"That's a big challenge because in West Virginia we don't have many other opportunities ... outside of the schools," Workman said.

Regulations For Home Educations

The rule relating to whether home-schooled students can play sports is just one of myriad regulations relating to children who are taught at home.

Students who are home-schooled either must take a test or present a portfolio of their work at the end of the year to be evaluated on how well they have progressed academically.

If students opt to take the test, they have to score in the 50th percentile. Those who fail to make that percentile have two years to bring up their score. If it doesn't happen, the school district can step in.

"No other state in the nation requires that," said Scott Woodruff of the Home School Legal Defense Association. "There is no logical explanation for it."

If the student and parent opt instead to submit a portfolio of the student's work, the portfolio must be submitted to a certified teacher who then must send a letter to the state saying the student met the requirements for that year.

West Virginia used to have a rule that required parents to have four more years of education than the highest grade they were teaching. So if a mother wanted to teacher her son up through the fifth grade, she would have had to have completed the ninth grade.

The rule was waived about six years ago and has never been reinstated.

Hale said the regulations make sense, especially the requirement that parents have four grades more education than the highest grade they plan to teach. She said it's the state's responsibility to protect children, make sure they get a good education and don't slip through the cracks.

"It was very troubling to me when they waived the education requirement for parents," she said. "I don't see waiving that as protecting the children"

Yet Woodruff said the move to erase that requirement was a good one.

"Only two other states had that requirement," he said. "But it doesn't make any sense to have that law. A study of 20,000 home-school kids showed that regardless of a parent's educational levels, the children who were taught at home performed better and tested better."

Hale said teachers unions would like to see other changes in the home-schooling requirements to make sure children are getting the education they need. While the state already requires end-of-year testing or portfolio evaluation, Hale said she'd like to see a little more structure to those regulations.

"Part of my problem is that, yes, children are tested but they are able to be tested by anyone who is a certified teacher," she said. "That could be an aunt or a cousin. I'd be more comfortable if one time a year the home-school children had to go to (a public school) testing center or had one of our monitors come out to them. That way at least they are taking the test in an environment that is similar to what public school students are in."

But Woodruff said more rules are not necessary. He said West Virginia already has more regulations surrounding home-schooling than many other states. And tests show students who are home-schooled perform very well. They aren't slipping through the cracks.

"Colleges covet these kids," Woodruff said. "These aren't the kids who get in trouble and disrupt everything. Home-school kids know how to study. They know how to work on their own."

And many more colleges are starting to accept home-schoolers as new students.

"You can take classes online in high school that are completely accredited, so when you graduate you have proof of what you've done," she said.

Other students who can't or don't want to take classes online can take their GED test and use that to get into college.

That's what Sacha Lively plans to do. She said she wants to become a plastic surgeon when she is older. So right now she's learning anatomy and spending a lot of time studying science. When she completes her courses, she hopes to take her GED test and eventually enroll at Marshall University.

Not a bad goal for a girl who moved to this country less than a year ago and couldn't speak the language.

"I'm not saying home-schooling is for everyone. You have to know your child. Some kids flourish in it; some kids fall flat on their faces. But for us, for our family and our daughters it just seems to work," Shelley Lively said. "We just want what's best for our kids."