how was your schooling growing up? I was homeschooled and it was great
I went to public schools.  Were you educated at home by a parent or tutor?
my Mom, she had a teaching degree but turned to a stay at home mother
That's great.  There were about 2.3 million homeschooled students in the US a couple of years ago.  
thats a staggering number when you stop and think about it
It is but what's wonderful is on average homeschoolers scored at or above the national average on standardized tests.  You are in a good group!
Not sure what i missed out on by not going public, but my mother did great
states set standards.
Prevalence.
Originally homeschooling in the United States was practiced mainly underground or in rural areas. In the 1970s, several books called attention to homeschooling, and more families began to homeschool their children. As of 2012, about 1.8 million students were homeschooled.
The United States Department of Education estimates that 1.5 million K-12 students were homeschooled in the United States in 2007 (with a confidence interval of 1.3 million to 1.7 million), constituting nearly three percent of students. This was up from 850,000
of diverse teaching philosophies and cultural and social life styles."
K–12 education Public and private schools Home schooling.
In 2014, approximately 1.5 million children were homeschooled, up 84% from 1999 when the U.S. Department of Education first started keeping statistics. This was 2.9% of all children.
As of spring 2016, there are 2.3 million homeschooled students in the United States. It is appearing that homeschooling is a continuing trend in the US with a 2 percent to 8 percent per annum over the past few years