When Elizabeth Dean was four, her mother took her out of kindergarten to teach her at home because she could already read the children’s classic "Charlotte’s Web" while the other kids were just learning how to write the letter "C".

Elizabeth "Bitsy" Dean and her brother Teddy study in the basement of their home in Columbia, Maryland. (AFP)

That was 10 years ago and homeschooling was "still on the fringe of acceptability", Elizabeth’s mother Lisa Dean told AFP in between classes in the family home on the history of ancient Rome, the writings of Edgar Allen Poe, online geometry and English for Elizabeth, 14, and 11-year-old Teddy.

"Ten years ago, folks typically would list their reasons for homeschooling as religious reasons or wanting to fly under the government radar," Dean told AFP.

But she gave up a well-paid job as a lawyer in Washington to become a stay-at-home mum who homeschools for academic reasons and because she is a self-avowed mother hen.

"I read the same things everyone else reads about what’s happening in schools and don’t feel that kids need to experience that," she said.

Dean hailed homeschooling for allowing children to choose topics they are interested in, within a set curriculum, and to advance at their own pace.

When Elizabeth, who goes by the nickname Bitsy, begins high school next term, she will enroll in Spanish and writing courses at the local community college, while continuing her homeschooling which will include an online trigonometry course, usually followed by kids two years older than she is.

Homeschooling dates back to colonial America, but lost ground when institutionalized schooling became compulsory in the mid-1800s.

At the height of the hippy culture in the 1960s, homeschooling enjoyed a renaissance as left-wingers seeking to buck the establishment taught their children themselves.

Christian conservatives were the next to embrace homeschooling, and "by 1990, 85 to 90 percent of all homeschoolers came from the ranks of the religious right," Paul Petersen, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, wrote in Education Next, which he edits.

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