“ability to teach” is not something you get out of a book, mmmkay? some people are better at it an others. so, no, to the extent that “the state” can hire and group together the people with the best teaching skills and factual knowledge to teach children, you’re certainly not going to do a better job teaching your kid just because you really, really **want **to. (now, whether they do, and whether this is true in all cases for all examples is not the issue here)
and no, it does not follow that the only people who select homeschooling are only and most importantly concerned with educating their child - which is the entire point of my initial response to you.
Are you saying that private school teachers are better qualified than their public school counterparts?
To say the public schools’ record of mediocre achievement results is due mainly to underqualified teachers I believe to be false.
Private and homeschool educated children are, on the whole, different in terms of their achievement orientation I think, and that is in no small part due to their parents attititudes towards the importance of education.
The “State” didn’t teach me or my child-dedicated teachers who went through years of training did. Years of training in specific subjects and years of training how to effectively teach. It takes a lot of time, effort and money to get a teaching certificate, and the training doesn’t stop once they get it, unless you’re another one of those that believe that teachers get the summer off along with their students.
I agree!
Private and home school students tend to do better because they lack the State’s undue influence. Parental involvement is a plus either way you go.
*All *children tend to do better when their parents emphasize the importance of education…public school, private, one-room schoolhouse, Swiss Family Robinson.
I’m not sure what you mean by “the States undue influence”.
my Very limited experience with home schooled kids puts most of them in this category. one parent who was a former public school teacher now a stay at home mom. the rest of the kids whos parents I had some interaction with were all in one of your categories. Religion being the biggest group.
but its not even close to indisputable, its been disputed pretty clearly right in this thread, if all your data that says these kids do better at everything under the sun comes from questionable sources its not good data.
the best sources we have a garbage, why would you stick to them? it makes no sense at all. I have a “Trainer” at my work whos job it is to teach other people how to do their job, she talks about how she “feels” that this or that is the right way to do things when she is talking about stuff that is scientifically TESTABLE.
but since shes the best source available we should just use what she teaches?
are you high?
the one thing I do know about these kids is that they have a huge gap when it comes to social skills, these kids stand out like a turd in a punch bowl in any social setting.
(note that my sample size is very very small, and there is the possibility that some home schooled kids make it by without me knowing but its very unlikely for a few reasons. I am not really commenting on how much better or worse they do in school stuff, but socially they are way behind and the parents are almost always the ones with an obvious screw loose in some way or another)
Then you fall foul of the Establishment Clause. Which would mean they are not also permitted to teach that. Similarly, I would say they are not also permitted to teach “Man evolved from apes, therefore there is no God.”
Teaching will always potentially contradict a religious truth. Unless you want to say that the government defines what religious truths deserve protection and which ones don’t which is, I am sure you would agree, problematic under the Establishment Clause, then there is no reason to prefer someone’s “gays are immoral and children should not be exposed to it” to someone elses “two plus two is five” or “pi is three.”
It’s why I don’t think there would be a constitutional problem with doing away with the ability of parents to remove kids from particular classes such as sex ed. Now it would be impossible to pass, and a PR disaster, but I would say constitutional.
I’ll say again, that I don’t believe that a parent’s right to freedom of religion, or their right to raise their children in their own religion is impacted by the children being in a classroom where opposite viewpoints are raised. Provided the parent is permitted to carry on raising the child, and time exists for non-school religious education, I feel those freedoms are protected.
What do you mean, “reject” it? If we did have statistically reliable data showing that homeschoolers in general outperform other groups of students, why would I or anybody else consider that a problem?
So why would that be a problem? Why would I object to that?
I think you’re mixing up two separate concepts here: 1) self-selection in a particular population as a contributing cause of performance differentials, and 2) self-selection in a supposedly random study sample producing sample bias.
The latter type of self-selection is problematic simply because it makes the statistical results unreliable, and therefore we can’t draw valid comparative conclusions from them.
Self-selection of the first type, on the other hand, is simply an intrinsic part of the phenomenon that the statistical research is trying to study, and there’s nothing problematic about it.
Same testing & curriculum requirements as private schools, which should involve a mandatory core curriculum. I’d like to see no mandatory testing, but if other schools have it, so should homeschools.
Starting off I’d say alot of the students left behind that weren’t supposed to get left behind are directly due to the standardized testing that the States require
As I said, parental influence is always going to be a net positive.
Actually, Itr Champion’s link appears to say this -
This criticism of the data has been made in the past.
The results of the study are as follows:
National Average Percentile Scores
Subtest Homeschool Public School
Reading 89 50
Language 84 50
Math 84 50
Science 86 50
Social Studies 84 50
Corea 88 50
Compositeb 86 50
a. Core is a combination of Reading, Language, and Math.
b. Composite is a combination of all subtests that the student took on the test.
As Critical1 noted, this position is absurd. No source is “best” if it’s statistically unreliable. Unreliable data is not better than no data.
I don’t mind at all if you personally believe as your own opinion that homeschooling is more effective than other kinds of schooling, or if you feel that homeschoolers have the right not to be regulated irrespective of their effectiveness. That’s an issue of personal opinion, which doesn’t require evidentiary support.
But when you claim that the studies you cited provide evidence that homeschooling is more effective than other forms of schooling, even after it’s been explained to you how the studies are statistically flawed, that’s intellectually dishonest. You (and Bricker as well) are not doing the homeschooling movement any favors by giving the impression that its adherents don’t understand basic statistical concepts and/or don’t argue honestly about statistical evidence.
2. Yearly academic testing only ONLY if all public and private school kids take the exact same test. I would not accept any actions against the parent UNLESS equivalent actions are taken against the public/private school either.
Example: If you decide that my kid can no longer be homeschooled by me because he did poorly on the test, then the Principal and Teacher of the local school lose their job as well if a percentage of the kids do poorly.
No. The right is to be allowed equal access to the education, not to equal outcome. Obviously, a lot more money and effort needs to be pumped into public schools, but the answer sure as hell is not for parents to cockblock what little bit of decent education they actually can get.
So why would that be a problem? Why would I object to that?