And it continues to be valid. Your very own link (to the Home Schooling Legal Defense Association, the same organization that commissioned flawed studies mentioned in the analysis I linked to above) about the 2009 survey says:
That is, HSLDA itself admits that the participants in its study were self-selected: participation was determined by whether parents chose to participate.
They offer a feeble caveat purporting to “alleviate” this serious sampling flaw, to the effect that the self-selecting parents didn’t know what their children’s actual test scores were at the time they chose to participate. But that doesn’t remove the sample bias.
Again, we’ve got an apples and oranges comparison: HSLDA is comparing the test results of self-selected homeschooled study participants with test results from mandatory testing of all students in public schools. That’s not a statistically reliable comparison.
how does that follow? testing would be done as a substitute metric to ensure that curriculum and quality guidelines are being adhered to. because the home teacher is left unsupervised.
the fact that you’re leaving kids in a classroom with a teacher who has a) objective credentials, b) a corpus of teaching history which demonstrates ability to educate, (and c) constant supervision) is what the testing aims to replicate, not to ensure that facts A B and C, and skills X Y and Z have been taught. (that’s what those equivalency tests that they give every x years is for)
I’ve mentioned this: My brother-in-law is a public school high school teacher. He has a teaching credential. His daughter, my niece, is home schooled. He’s certainly qualified to teach her.
The bias is especially blatant when you consider the very nature of homeschooling. Can you imagine a homeschooled child whose parents didn’t have a strong prior expectation as to how well he/she would perform on the test?
I am awfully curious about what an “overwhelming” majority means, anyway. Aside from the obvious rhetorical flourish.
This is nonsense. Evolution IS literal fact. It’s not an opinion or a point of view. Npot only that, but it’s an essential part of understanding biology and natural history, and the origins of human beings. Your position is akin to saying schools should be allowed to teach LOTR as factual history.
Good point. Homeschooling parents tend to be very well informed about their children’s academic achievement level, so it’s not as though they have no idea at all how their test scores will turn out.
I repeat: If you want assessment data for homeschoolers that can be compared to data from other forms of schooling in a meaningful way, you’ve either got to apply mandatory testing to every homeschooler, or else figure out a way to test a truly random sample of them.
It follows easily. The test tells me if the teacher (parent, private school, public school) did their job of educating the student.
If you can shut down my home school for poor performance, then you should also shut down teachers in public and private schools for poor performance. If not, I can only assume that your goal is NOT the education of the child, but rather there is something else that concerns you.
yes, throw the baby out with the bathwater. makes sense to me.
look, if you’re an unsupervised, un-credentialed parent attempting to educate your child, the state has every right to ensure that you are performing your “job” so to speak.
teachers are supervised daily, have at least nominal entry barriers into the job, are verified-by-testing decently frequently (in states that have "graduation tests per level of schooling), are verified-by-historical data throughout their teaching career (they become known to everyone), and lastly are verified on a continuing basis because the students you graduate then proceed to the next level where deficiencies in education would be noted. this is a lot of feedback that is received as to what a teacher is doing. (note, please, that I am not discussing the enforceability of any shortcomings that crop up in these systems, rather that there are systems in place to provide this vetting)
what do homeschooled parents have to offer to compare?
jack and shit. (except for maybe credentials themselves)
continuing:
there is also a lot more responsiveness to deficiency built into a schooling system. you can note when kids don’t know shit, and correct the learning/knowledge deficiency, and it can be done without the use of a test (i.e. Ms. Smith the 5th grade teacher notes that you can’t spell words over 7 letters, so let’s work on that a little bit). there is no systematic feedback for homeschooled kids, unless you test them more frequently.
Cite. This is Great Debates - you claim that homeschoole parents have jack shit to compare? Cite. Prove it.
The ONLY cite from the anti-home schoolers here is from a study done in the UK. I see nothing from the United States, except the cites from Shodan. You have nothing except CLAIMS of amazing quality among teachers.
And my point is they’re unnecessary at school because the things that these annual tests are done for are accomplished in other ways in an institutionalized setting.
it’s prima facie. they’re homeschooled. there is no principal, there are no other teachers, there is no significant teaching history accrued because you’re only teaching your kids.
And even if there was a study that said 100% of homeschooled children were above average, I don’t see why that would mean there should be no regulation. I mean if a restaurant got a 100% of their health and sanitation inspection, would we say that means they never need to be inspected again? Or at least not until some people start getting sick from contaminated food?
My son’s (public school) teacher was the only one in the school who had 100% of her students pass the standardized test last year. But next year her students will have to take the test and the year after that and so on.
In public schools, parents can see how well a teacher is doing, and complain to the Administration if they feel it is necessary. In homeschooling, the parent IS the teacher IS the Administration. Where is the oversight, and who will tell the parent she/is is doing something wrong?
And tell me - just what is the result of that complaint?
jack shit (to borrow from a previous poster).
And tell me - if a teacher keeps on not getting a good passing rate on the annual tests, what is the result?
The Principal in the LA Unified is only required to observe once per year, and must tell the teacher in advance when they will do their review.
Proposal: Clean up the public schools of the teachers who can’t seem to teach, and then get back to me on how you are going to regulate the home schoolers. Until then, there is no fire - much less any smoke. We have parents choosing to directly control the education of their kids, and I have yet to see a SINGLE cite of data showing that is a problem.
Of course, as soon as I said that I would have no problem with some sort of evaluation system that was applied across the board - the pile-on started. Your arguement seems to be this: “There is no evidence of problems of homeschooling, but we want to regulate the shit out of it. There IS evidence of problems in public schooling, now shut up and send your kids there.”
True, but it could be argued that providing adequate food for a child is a lot easier than providing an adequate education, so your home kitchen should be subject to less regulation than your home schoolroom.
Furthermore, it’s unlikely that you would seriously compromise the quality of your child’s food for the sake of, say, your own religious beliefs. And if you did, CPS would probably be more likely to hear about it: malnutrition is easier to spot in a child than poor education.