Home-schooling has emerged relatively recently in Amish culture as a "third way" of educating children.  Public schools - long the choice for Amish parents - have become too secular, too violent, too technological (I could go on and on) for many.  Although a fair number of Amish parents do still send their children to publics  Amish-run parochial schools (the "one room" schools) are on the other end of the spectrum.  With the exception of the tragedy at Nickel Mines, Amish schools are generally quiet, private, religious, and devoid of the technological intrusions of public schools.  However, some Amish parents believe that separating their children from the mainstream public schools creates a "forbidden fruit" that their teenagers may one day long for.  By exposing the children early on to technology and modern amenities they are, in theory, "immunized" from their temptations.  Computers, cars, ipods aren't a big deal to Amish children in public schools because they've grown up around them.  This is generally the philosophy Lovina espouses and I think her children are LESS like to leave the Amish because they've been exposed so much to the "English" world.  Her youngest children all attend public school.  That said, there are still the issues of violence, drugs, and secularism that public schools offer up, so someone like Lovina might choose to "split the difference" between the two parenting philosophy and home-school their children.  Lovina home-schools her oldest daughter, Elizabeth, simply to remove her from the "dangers" (sex, drugs, booze) that begin to emerge in middle school, sadly.

As far as curriculum, the local Amish-run bookstore offers a wide range of home-schooling packets and texts for "scholars" (the term Amish often use in place of "student").  I picked up a "how to learn German" book from the Amish store, but I'm not doing so well at learning!