Having a lot of contact with homeschoolers (go figure ;) ), I have to speak up in defense of homeschool as a phenomenon, if not in defense of all its practitioners.

Those who choose the option for pedagogical reasons do a superb job, as a rule. They do their homework in all the subject areas that children need to learn, and often develop unique curricula that relate subject areas together in one big thematic web. I'm thinking of one family that did an entire year with a Native American theme. The mom was the primary educator. She was in every week planning and collecting materials to use relating subjects to her themes for her kids, aged 8 and 5 at the time. She studied up on constellation stories to relate astronomy to their lessons, and included some star-watching as part of their science. Math? Mayan culture became the platform for an intro to algebra. Music lessons centered on pentatonic scales found in Inca flute music and rhythms from North American tribal dances.

You just can't do that in a regular classroom.

Those who choose homeschool for medical reasons have a hard row to hoe. Some schools can't make the kind of accomodation needed by acutely allergic children, or children with inconclusive diagnoses for a wide variety of problems. In their cases, they usually get assistance from the school district, so their curricula are closer to what we think of as standard, but the parents still deliver most of it themselves. In their case, education also tends to be more successful at home.

Those who choose to educate at home based on religious preference have a variety of reasons, and varying rates of success.

Some are more concerned with the level of morality in the pop-culture atmosphere of public schools, or with the level of bullying present in the schools. They don't usually have the level of antipathy to scientific method that more extreme fundamentalists have displayed.

On the other hand, some institutional schools have rejected science and/or technology too. Very fundamentalist Christian schools don't teach evolution at all, except as an error-ridden backdrop for the unsubstantiated Truth. I have also encountered at least one private school that eschews all computers at all levels because they believe that children's ability to think is impaired by using them.

The big thing about science education in the homeschoolers' world is that, at the higher levels, it's impossible to do at home unless you turn the garage into a laboratory. Serious homeschool families who have excellent math and science education outcomes make one of two adjustments at these higher levels: they join groups that hire tutors and rent laboratories for classes in lab sciences, or they enroll their children in schools at the high school level specifically so they may have more advanced math and science instruction.

Those who don't want their children exposed to higher level sciences don't take that step. It's easier to maintain loyalty to dogma if one doesn't introduce doubt.