Homeschoolers Impacting Top-Ranked Basketball Teams

Homeschoolers are used to ranking well on standardized tests. This year, they’re also having a big impact on the rankings for two of the top college basketball programs in the country.

With the rankings released on January 18, 2016, the #1 team in both men’s and women’s college basketball had a homeschool graduate as a starter on their team.

In an article published by the digital media company Bleacher Report, Khadeem Lattin, a sophomore at the University of Oklahoma, credited homeschooling for giving him an individualized education that allowed him to learn at his own pace and spend extra time honing his extracurricular skills.

“It would’ve been cool for my mom to see [me walk across a stage to receive my high school diploma],” Lattin said. “She’d have been proud. Other than that, I don’t have any regrets about being homeschooled.”

On the women’s side, Moriah Jefferson is a senior leader on a University of Connecticut team seeking to win an unprecedented fourth straight national championship.

“I’m so glad I was homeschooled,” Jefferson said in a 2015 New York Times article that explored her “unconventional path” to stardom. “I loved it. It gave me a good competitive edge.”

Jefferson’s parents, who decided to homeschool their children due to concerns about their local public school, said their daughter often studied two years ahead of her grade level.

“We were approached all the time about putting Moriah in school,” said Lorenza Jefferson, “but we thought it was best that we continue doing what we were doing. I honestly think that it worked out best for her because it allowed her to do a lot of things that she would not have been able to do if she had been in school.”