Here's an excerpt from that Time article last fall:
To be sure, many public schools — and their baleful unions and wretched bureaucrats, their rigid rules and we-know-best manner — have done a lot to hurt themselves. But as the most committed parents leave, the schools may falter more, giving the larger community yet another reason to fret over their condition. "A third of our support for schools comes from property taxes," says Ray Simon, director of the Arkansas department of education. "If a large number of a community's parents do not fully believe in the school system, it gets more difficult to pass those property taxes. And that directly impacts the schools' ability to operate." Says Kellar Noggle, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators: "We still have 440,000 kids in public schools, and some 12,000 [in home schooling] is a small number. But those 12,000 have parents and grandparents. Sure, it erodes public support."See, we homeschoolers contribute to the decline of public education.