The only reason public schools are foreced to administer these tests is because they take federal money. The acceptance of federal funds is the only way that the feds have any authority over education. If you don’t take federal funds, you don’t have to comply with the rules that are attached to those funds.
I’m ALWAYS willing to offer an opinion. 
I’m not currently a homeschooler, but I’m considering it very seriously for my daughter and I, so I’ve been researching it quite a bit. I’ve observed and aided two homeschoolers for 10 years now who do both in-home private homesechooling and some homeschool group classes. I have a pretty good sense of how things can work well, as well as a few examples of how they can work poorly. So if you want to do it, I’ll be more than happy to help out as much as I can.
Well, I think there are some issues that need to be resolved in GD before an IMHO thread becomes useful. As it stands, half of the arguments for and half of the arguments against homeschooling are born of ignorance - “schools pay 90% of their costs to non-teachers” vs. “homeschooling people can’t teach as well as a state-certified teacher”, for instance.
Does/should the government (federal or state) or the parents have ultimate authority in deciding how a child is educated? If the government is totally dysfunctional and corrupt, can/should a parent remove their child from the system against all objections? If a parent is totally dysfunctional and incompetent as a teacher, can/should the government remove the child against all objections?
Well, I was sort of thinking that the personal experiences could go into the IMHO thread instead of being sprinkled all over the philosophy thread here. I would hope to do some mythbusting and shed some light on the subject, but in a more concrete way than you’re going to get here.
shrug If there’s interest, I’ll start one tomorrow morning. If not, then I won’t.
That’s true of the NCLB tests. (And I agree with everyone’s low opinion of them.) But the California HS graduation test is a state mandate. Neither of my kids thought they were very hard, but there is all sorts of fuss every June about the kids who failed it 3 times in a row and still want to walk. I hope you agree that it is at least possible that some home schooled kids could have issues. I’d hope that they would have to take them also - though any whose parents did a good job shouldn’t have a problem.
When I was in school in NY we had to pass Regents tests in a variety of subjects to get credit, so this is nothing new.
The Homeschooling Association of California issued a joint statement today; here it is for anyone who wants to see a brief overview of the homeschooling position. I don’t know if I should post the whole thing, though since it’s being sent out as a public announcement so I should think it would be fine.
Voyager, if the graduation test is a state requirement for everyone, then we’ll take it, no problem. I haven’t yet studied the intricacies of high school homeschooling; I don’t even know if we’ll do it. I think it would be fun, but who knows what the future has in store? And by age 14 it will be time for my kids to be making a lot of their own educational decisions.
Oops, forgot.
Certainly I would agree with that. It’s entirely possible to do homeschooling badly. Homeschooling is extreme parenting! 
However, the point is that parents are usually more invested in their childrens’ success than teachers are, and they are in a position to tailor the studies individually. As a result, you get fewer total failures in homeschooling than in public schools, but they do happen. Homeschooled kids even get pregnant or do drugs–it won’t magically solve all your problems.
This can be a particular problem with high school kids who really want to drop out, but talk their parents into “homeschooling” so that they can pretend to still be in school without any actual intention of doing any learning. (We’ve always had those kids though, and there have always been independent-study high schools to deal with them–my brother was one! He hated the stupidities of school so much that he simply refused to cooperate, and then hated the even worse stupidities of the IS school more. He muddled through and did a lot of study abroad and did college just fine, but he still can’t suffer fools gladly.)
We’ve been homeschooling for five years. I’d be happy to contribute to a thread if you start one.
I was homeschooled for about a decade. My younger three siblings were all homeschooled as well(the youngest is 15 and is still at home). I’d be glad to chime in on an ‘ask the homeschooler’ thread from the student perspective.
A shame my mom isn’t a doper, she has been homeschooling for 27 years and would have a lot of insight to share.
All right, I’d like to officially request an “Ask the homeschooler/ed” thread, if I may.
Okay, okay! I’m doing it already! 