I know homeschoolers from Howard County, Maryland who are still far exceeding the public school graduates in their achievement in higher education and careers. Thinking just about the "M" (mathematics) part of STEM, I'm pretty sure that in Maryland most of the county winners each year in the state mathematics contest for high school students, and also the MATHCOUNTS winners among middle school students, come out of an informal coaching program that is run by a homeschooling parent. Maryland devotes an exceptional amount of money (including federal money) to its public school systems, and has some great public schools by the meager standards of the United States, but even at that there are families that still find homeschooling a more challenging academic choice for their children.
Mathematics is an example of one of the fields that doesn't require significant investment to enable "hands-on" learning. Suppose your child's interest is piqued by chemistry or engineering, though. Math is certainly necessary there as well, but in order to explore concepts on more than a theoretical basis, expensive equipment is usually required. Maybe hacker spaces and similar community collectives that pool resources to obtain otherwise prohibitively expensive equipment can help fill that void.
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I know homeschoolers from Howard County, Maryland who are still far exceeding the public school graduates in their achievement in higher education and careers. Thinking just about the "M" (mathematics) part of STEM, I'm pretty sure that in Maryland most of the county winners each year in the state mathematics contest for high school students, and also the MATHCOUNTS winners among middle school students, come out of an informal coaching program that is run by a homeschooling parent. Maryland devotes an exceptional amount of money (including federal money) to its public school systems, and has some great public schools by the meager standards of the United States, but even at that there are families that still find homeschooling a more challenging academic choice for their children.
Mathematics is an example of one of the fields that doesn't require significant investment to enable "hands-on" learning. Suppose your child's interest is piqued by chemistry or engineering, though. Math is certainly necessary there as well, but in order to explore concepts on more than a theoretical basis, expensive equipment is usually required. Maybe hacker spaces and similar community collectives that pool resources to obtain otherwise prohibitively expensive equipment can help fill that void.