what oversight should home schools have?

Great Debates
81

The advantage is the removal of the advesarial components of the system. Leaving evaluation of homeschoolers in the hands of the board of education’s hands creates this conflict of interest. The school board often has a vested interest in students attending public school. These interests range from their own belief in the public school system and desire to support it to less scrupulous things like KellyM mentioned. It is unreasonable to expect such a system to be fair with homeschoolers.

Thus the need for a intent form which would remain on file and NOT be expunged. If a family moves without updating their form they run the risk of being investigated again, but that can be cleared up easily by asking the visiting caseworkers to simply update the file with the correct address. If a family moves and updates the address on the intent form on file then new reports of truancy can be headed off without need for an investigation.**

When I mentioned reform of the current CPS system would be needed, this is one of the aspects which would need reform. The current definition of “eudcational neglect”, in every statute I’ve seen, is based upon the assumption the child is enrolled and supposed to be attending a school outside the home. The current litmus test for “educational neglect” is excessive and continued truancy in most cases(some educational neglect cases are predicated upon the parent’s failure to attempt to meet a child’s special needs if they have some sort of disability). This test is not adequate to determine educational neglect in the case of homeschoolers. The proper test for homeschoolers will depend on the rest of the framework. If a state decides homeschooled children have to take standardized tests, then their performance on those tests could serve as part of the case for educational neglect. In other frameworks the test should be different, but its current incarnation simply doesn’t work for homeschoolers.**

And in grade school/middle school the difference wouldn’t be the courses they’d take, it would be the amount they learned in each grade. Or do grade schoolers not daydream, get sick and miss some material, or ever fail to comprehend the material? The same problems of getting a cirriculum which is comprehensive and comprehensible apply to the lower grades.**

This varies on a state-to-state basis. My younger brother had some learning disabilities, and due to my father’s health failing and the company he had worked for going out of business our homeschooling stopped when my brother was due to enter seventh grade. He went to public school in the seventh and eigth grade. He was still having great difficulty reading and he had even more problems with the authority structure. He was given a “social promotion” two years straight. In high school he got some help from the special education program and he did well in high school. If they had failed him continually in the eighth grade I have no doubt he would have dropped out and the education system would have failed him completely.**

Sure thing. Look up “Waldorf Homeschooling”. It’s a fairly deep subject, delving into a lot of child development psychology and most of the references out there tend to assume a basic level of familiarity with the principles of Waldorf education, so here’s the relevant part. Waldorf is a style of teaching which is tailored to a child’s natural development. It’s not quite child-led learning, where the parent does not introduce subjects, but lets the child’s curiosity determine what they will learn about each day. Still it’s fairly close to child-led learning. The Waldorf philosophy is a large part of the underlying philosophy behind The Oak Meadow Cirriculum. Oak Meadow is one of the largest secular cirriculum providers. As you may or may not know, most of the homeschool cirriculum providers are religiously affiliated, the largest cirriculum provider is Bob Jones University. So this satisfies the “cirriculum” part, now let’s look more in detail at what makes Waldorf-style cirriculums “non standard” enough to affect a child’s performance on a standardized test.

The Waldorf philosophy does NOT stress reading skills. It is not unusual for a Waldorf-educated child to reach the fifth or sixth grade before they begin truly reading on their own. Once they do begin reading, they often show far greater comprehension and an ability to visualize what the words MEAN than children who are taught to read with more “normal” methods. On the other hand, Waldorf-educated children often excel at mathematics at early ages. Here is an article, written by a former teacher who homeschooled four of her own children with a Waldorf style, which explains a lot about this approach to homeschooling. The emphasis of the article is on the differences in most public school’s approaches to reading and the Waldorf school’s approach to reading.

A great many homeschool cirriculums, and homeschooling parents, are influenced by the ideas of Waldorf style learning, or child-led learning. All of these, to judge by the students who have graduated from such homeschools, are fully capable of producing children with excellent educations. Put a standardized test in front of a Waldorf-style educated child before middle-school age and you’ll have an almost certain failure. Is this fair?

Enjoy,
Steven

82

Perhaps I’m misremembering, but I thought you said earlier that there were no such requirements. What are these minimal requirements?

83

doreen, I did not say that there are no requirements in Illinois; merely that there is no requirement to register the child as a homeschooler or to submit any other documentation to any agency.

Technically, in Illinois a homeschooled child is in attendance at a private school colocated at the home. The only requirement to be a private school in Illinois is that the school must teach (at a minimum) the state-mandated curriculum of “language arts, biological and physical science, math, social sciences, fine arts, health and physical development” and “honesty, justice, kindness, and moral courage”. This isn’t that hard a requirement to meet. The effect of the law is that any reasonable effort made to teach the child will satisfy the Illinois requirement.

84

The definition of educational neglect in my state is in no way dependent on a child being enrolled in a school outside the home. In the real world, however, a substantial proportion of the calls alleging educational neglect are both going to take the form of “The children don’t go to school” and at the same time, not be about homeschooling at all.Most of the children not attending school , in most places are in fact not being homeschooled nor do their parents claim they are, and those reports will always be investigated. Most reports of any other kind of neglect turn out to be unfounded, and yet they are still investigated.

About the Waldorf method- although the information I found described a different method of teaching than is apparently (at least according to the websites) used in public schools, with far more of an emphasis on reading comprehension than simple decoding, and certainly an emphasis on reading actual stories rather than boring primers , I saw nothing to suggest that children being taught by this method will not competently read on their own before middle school age. In fact, the Oak Meadow curriculum packages for 1st and 3rd grades include books my children read in the same grades, the fourth grade package includes The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, which my son read in 7th grade and my nephew read in high school, and the 5th grade package includes Johnny Tremaine which my son read in 7th grade. And I think such books as Carpentry for Childen and a First Cookbook included in the 3rd grade curriculum are more likely than not going to cause to average 8year old to want to be able to read the instructions on his/her own.Perhaps a Waldorf taught 1st or 2nd grader may not score in the 98th percentile on a standardized test, but it seems to me that scoring around the 50th percentile shouldn’t be a problem.

85

Requiring a student to score in the 50th percentile on a standardized test in order to remain in home school is ridiculous. By definition, one half of all students will fail to score in the 50th percentile or better. Why should homeschooling only be available to the upper half of all students? Is the presumption here that “special teaching skills” are required to teach to students of less than average intelligence?

86

First, of all I didn’t even say that scoring in the 50 percentile should be required to remain in homeschool- I’m simply questioning whether that particular type of curriculum in itself makes it difficult to attain such a score. Secondly, I said in an earlier post that of course, in designing a required curriculum, adjustments should be made for the learning disabled. I’m starting to wonder if your presumption is that children should remain in homeschool whether the child is learning or not, without regard for why the child is not learning.

So the same minimal requirements apply to home schools in Illinois that apply to any other private schools. Why is it a problem to apply the private school standards to home schools elsewhere?

87

doreen, I do not consider the Illinois requirements unreasonable. Some states, however, apply different standards to home schools as to private schools, and the private school standards in some states are unreasonable either on their face or as applied to home schools. It is those regulations that I consider unreasonable.

I think parents should be the one to decide where a child goes to school. Not the state. The state should only be permitted to intercede when the parent’s decision is manifestly unreasonable and irreparably harmful to the child. Keep in mind that it is very hard for an educational decision to be irreparably harmful.

Many children with learning disabilities are homeschooled because the public school system is unable (or unwilling) to educate them. Taking these children away from the only people willing to try to educate them is stupid. (And don’t try to tell me about special education. I’ve been there. Special education is a funding game; it’s not about teaching children.) Given a choice between failing to learn at home and failing to learn at school, I’ll take the home, thank you very much.

88

The definition, while important, is less important than the test used to determine if a particular case is educational neglect or not. The test guidelines I’ve seen in my searches of state statutes are almost all based upon the assumption the child will be educated outside the home. The definitions are usually something like “failing to provide adequate education”. The guidelines for determining if a case is educational neglect are typically based upon the assumption the child will be educated outside the home. This New York factsheet defines educational neglect as failure of a parent to “ensure that child’s prompt and regular attendance in school or the keeping of a child out of school for impermissible reasons is educational neglect.” Presumably homeschooling would be a “permissible reason”, but I couldn’t find the relevant statutes. Still it is a good example of how the laws are designed with the presumption that children will be educated outside the home.**

I have not, and I have not seen anyone else here do so, advocated ceasing investigations of reports of educational neglect. What I have proposed is the addition of a single piece of paper for each homeschooling family which will serve as notice of intent to home educate. The existance of this notice can be checked for in the early stages of an investigation on grounds of habitual truancy. If, and only if, the notice is on file for that family at that address, the investigation will be stopped. If such a form is NOT on file, the investigation will continue. This should still allow social services to discover cases of families who keep their children home AND don’t even make the attempt to educate them at home. **

In theory Waldorf-educated children have all the exposure they need to be able to read by third grade. In practice this varies wildly based upon the student’s interest in learning to read. In a Waldorf school the adults read a great deal to the children, so much that some children don’t feel the need to learn for themselves until they get a bit older and would like to establish their independence more. The desire for independence spurs their desire to learn to read for themselves and both teacher and student find it easier, and more productive, when the child is actively interested in accomplishing the goal of the lesson. The main thing I was trying to point out is that a fourth grader(one of the cutoff ages you mentioned where promotion is not possible unless they can pass a standardized test) in a Waldorf school who can not read on their own is not cause for alarm and certainly not justification for holding them back or placing them in public school. **

I must beg your pardon. I chose a particularly poor example of a Waldorf cirriculum when making a point about the Waldorf approach to reading. The Oak Meadow cirriculum departs from mainstream Waldorf in a few areas and reading is one of them. The Oak Meadow cirriculum places a much higher emphasis on reading than other Waldorf-influenced cirriculums. In a great many Waldorf style cirriculums children do not learn the full alphabet until midway through first grade. Here is a Waldorf school in Rhode Island which has the following to say about grades 1-3

This is a closer to “true” Waldorf style education than the Oak Meadow cirriculum. This school does not truly begin teaching reading until the fourth grade. The “pictoral” introduction consists of teaching them to recognize letters and learn their individual sounds as well as introducing blends and other basic phonetics. Still this school’s students may be able to pass standardized tests(although if a student were evaluated after kindergarten they stand a good chance of not being able to recite the alphabet or count 1-10).

It’s the way the Waldorf approach influences HOME education that I’m trying to get to. I apologize for the cites I’m giving, but it’s very difficult to find a representation of what a Waldorf style education at home would be like(without citing homeschooling message boards). I’ve found Waldorf schools websites, but they are, by definition, more structured and have a more definite sequence of learning activities. In homeschools the parents feel perfectly justified in adjusting the sequence, or timeframes, of these learning activities to their child’s individual interests or capabilities. When their children do “finally learn to read” Waldorf homeschoolers have confidence their children will read well.

Homeschools who choose child-led learning(often called “unschooling”) would be at an even greater disadvantage on standardized tests. A good FAQ on Unschooling can help answer most questions about this philosophy. It should be evident from even a cursory examination of the child-led learning philosophy that standardized tests would not fairly evaluate children educated under such a system. I did not use this educational style as an example earlier because it is extremely hard to define due to its EXTREMELY customized nature. It is not really possible to fit child-led learning families into the same kind of boxes students with standard, or even published, cirriculums can often be described with.

Does this help give some idea of why standardized testing would be unfair to homeschoolers? More unfair than it is to publicly educated children?

Enjoy,
Steven

89

One of us misunderstood the other. I didn’t exactly think you advocated not investigating reports of educational neglect, just that the mere allegation tht children are not attending school should not be enough to prompt such an investigation. And homeschooling is indeed a permissible reason for not attending school in NY (that’s where I live). If you search for homeschool on that website sheet, it gives the procedure for registering for homeschooling.

Somewhat, although that wasn’t really my original comparison.
Originally I said

I’m not really even arguing in favor of standardized tests, or any particular standards or method of evaluation.An annual individual assesment, paid for by the state would be just fine with me.I just think that the appropriate comparision is not of homeschooling parents is to other parents, but rather homeschools to other private schools.The Meadowbrook School in Rhode Island had to meet some standards to be accredited by the state Dept of Education , and I haven’t seen anyone (here or anywhere else) suggest that there should be no standards for private schools.

90

Why do you make two assumptions- first that the only choice is between homeschooling and public school, and second, that a child who fails to learn at home ,regardless of the reason, will also fail to learn in school. Just as a school’s teaching style might fail to mesh with a child’s learning style, so might the parents teaching style. Would you also take failing to learn at home over learning in school?

91

This may or may not be an unreasonable position, especially since the other side of the arguement is often based upon the position “Children should remain in public school whether the child is learning or not, without regard to why the child is not learning.” Some recognized learning disabilities get special treatment in the public school system, but the effectiveness of these programs is highly debated. As lee noted above, what happens when public schools fail to educate their students? Perhaps there is accountability and some of the teachers are being reprimanded for not ensuring the students actually learned the material, but how does that help the student? What is a student’s remedy if the cirriculum was incomprehensible in a public school? **

Because the private school standards vary wildly from state to state. In New York private schools use standardized tests and state or state-approved cirriculum. No such regulation exists in Texas. Texas gives private schools far more leeway in both content and teaching/testing methodologies. As long as a few subjects are covered, and no degree of competency in each subject is mandated, then private schools are free to teach what they like in any manner they feel inclined to. Private school regulations run the gamut from “restrictive” to “lenient”. Most homeschooling advocates believe homeschools should be less regulated than private schools because they [list=A][li]Have produced students with slightly better educations(I gave cites earlier) even when they were not “overseen” or regulated in any way[]Are run by people with a vested interest in the individual child’s success[]Are not the recepients of public funding in any way(not even tax credits in most cases whereas many private schools get tax breaks due to religious affiliations)[/list]As I mentioned earlier, I happen to believe parent’s are better custodians of a child’s interests and welfare than the state, especially on an individual basis(especially relevant since the issue of homeschooling applies to small numbers of children per instance).[/li]
Enjoy,
Steven

On Preview: I started, and indeed finished, composing this post before your latest reply doreen. It’s kind of eerie how my list in this post almost exactly addresses your current question. Happenstance, I promise. Anyway, you’re right that no one has suggested there be no standards, just that there not be SPECIAL standards(which may or may not be higher/harder than standards other educational methods recieve). Alas the reasonable-sounding idea of a yearly evaluation(like SpazCat’s proposal earlier) is actually a myriad of factors which may or may not turn out to be reasonable depending on the implementation. Here’s a handful of questions about “annual individual assesment[s]” which could all be deal-breakers depending on the answer. Assesed by whom? Evaluated against what standard? With what evaluation methods? Who selects/approves the evaluator? What action is taken upon receipt of a “negative” evaluation? Is there recourse for parents who feel their children were not fairly evaluated? Can the family try to homeschool again at a later date or is this a “one strike you’re out” proposal? What if the child is simply petrified of the stranger who is supposed to “evaluate” them and refuses to co-operate?

I’m sure more questions could be asked and ultimately it’s just not a simple question and there are no simple answers.

92

Sorry about the multiple replies.

On the choice between public and homeschool, I think these are the two choices because most private schools cost money. If a child is not learning in public school it is unreasonable to expect parent’s to have to come up with the cash for a private education. In most cases families may be able to allow a parent to stay home(or have a parent who already stays home) and be able to homeschool, but not be able to afford private school.

RE: teaching/learning style mismatches. A homeschool can easily adjust their course material or teaching style without forcing dozens of other students to ajust as well. If a teacher in a classroom of thirty students tries to adjust their teaching style to reach the two or three kids who “just don’t get it” then they’re either slowing down the rest of the class, or confusing the rest of the class. The highly-customized nature of homeschool teaching styles is one of homeschooling’s greatest benefits. A student is rarely “ahead” or “behind” because the coursework adjusts to their needs with a flexibility that few to no education styles meant for larger groups can match.

“Failing at home” could also be preferable because it shields the child from ridicule from classmates or a sense of shame for “being dumb”. Some kids are late bloomers and a homeschool can allow them to be behind in the early years without this negative stigma. I mentioned earlier that my brother had a mild learning disability. His reading was extremely delayed and when we were forced by circumstance to send him to public school he suffered at the hands of cruel classmates and it made him an extremely angry and surly child. Eventually he grew out of it, but he is a very tenderhearted person by nature and being at the bottom of his class in school(and the accompanying ridicule) hurt him deeply. When he was in homeschool he was in a class of his own and although he was aware that he did not progress as rapidly as his brothers and sisters did, he was still surrounded by those who loved him and genuinely wanted him to succeed. He was never marginalized while he was homeschooled. He was marginalized almost the first day of public school. I feel this was a clear case of “failing at home being preferable to failing at school.”

Enjoy,
Steven

93

You’re responding to the sound bite, not to the post. My comment (about preferring failing at home to failing in school) was specifically made with regard to the context of a child who had been withdrawn from school because he or she was not learning in school. You ignored this context and responded as if it were not there.

Please pay attention to the context of my comments when responding to my posts. You will be far less annoying if you do so.

That said, Mtgman’s reply covers the ground quite nicely and I see no point in extending his remarks.

94

Those who give standard tests often fail to administer them correctly. A friend of mine took her two pre school age children to be evaluated for readiness to attend preschool and kindergarten. The tester began to give a standard evaluation test, the specific name of which I have forgotten. When the children failed to correctly identify their gender or their complete home address and telephone, she stopped the test and declared they were behind their age group. Now we looked up the guideline of that test and the rest of the questions, and found that:

  1. In order to score it correctly the whole test was to be given. The tester was not supposed to assume the failure or the child to answer 2 questions would indicate failure to answer all subsequent questions.
  2. The children new the answers to many of the remaining questions. They both could count better than expected for their age group and they new their letters, shapes, and colors well, in addition to many other skills they never got to show off.
  3. The tester had marked the unwillingness of one child to be touched by strangers as indication of inability to do one of the skills. The test noted this possibility and had an allowance for it that had not been used in scoring.

The tester reccommended that both boys be started on the special ed tract immediately.

We were lucky to be college students and have access to infomation about that particular test. The results could have been much more devastating otherwise. She was able to fill in the gaps and have them retested by another facility and spared them being labeled for life.

Doreen, What makes you think that those testing homeschoolers will be more competant than the tester in this anecdote?

95

I apparently missed the part where you said “has been withdrawn from school”. I only saw:

which does not distinguish betwen a child who failed to learn in the public school sytem and one who was never enrolled becasue of the systems inability or unwillingness to educate them.

Indeed that can be one of the biggest benefits. However, that benefit only applies if the parent, him or herself is flexible. A parent who teaches only by lecture is no better than a teacher who teaches only by lecture for a child who does not learn well by lecture. In fact, the parent might be worse, because teachers change from year to year and the child might encounter a teacher whose style is a better fit.

96

I really don’t think this is a fair representation of doreen’s position. As far as I can tell she’s(he’s? I get the impression you’re female, please pardon me if I’m wrong) not in the “one bad apple…” camp. There will be injustices in any system, the important thing is to try to mimimize them without putting excessive burdens on those working with the system and to allow remedies for those injustices which are simply impossible to eliminate. In the case of poor test/evaluation results I think at least one re-test(quite possibly with a different evaluator) should be allowed before ANY action is taken, especially before students are removed from a homeschool. I also think parental input and veto power should go into the creation of the evaluation criteria. Perhaps independent evaluation or mandatory “second opinions”. Definitely the ability to request to have the proceedings double-checked to catch procedural errors like the one you mentioned where conclusions were not supposed to be drawn without a completed test to analyze.

I advocate no active oversight, but I recognize the value to both homeschoolers and the state alike to have some measuring stick to check their progress against occasionally. What I’m against is the state forcing the parents to stand against the stick and threatening to take their children from them if they aren’t at least some arbitrary mark high. My wife and I check our children’s progress against their publically-educated peers on occasion, but the difference is in our case it’s completely voluntary and if we choose not to emphasize math this year we’re not running the risk of our daughter being placed in public school against our wishes.

What I’m trying to do is help determine what a reasonable, and extremely flexible, framework would have to look like to ensure homeschooled children are fairly evaluated, if they have to be evaluated at all. With enough checks and balances the system could work well for both parties and eliminate enough of the advesarial aspect to allow real focus to be placed on the child’s development. Many of the frameworks I’ve seen proposed so far tend to be nothing more than applying public school evaluation methods to homeschools(unfair for a good number of reasons as I’ve tried to show in several posts so far) or exercises in how well parents can write progress reports to appease their overseers. We need to find a happy median. Requirements which are not intentionally, (as with the abuses of power by some school boards) or unintentionally (as with the idea of testing a Waldorf-educated kindergartner by checking to see if they know their ABCs) designed to make the parents/children fail, yet which still ensure(with as small a margin for error as possible) that children are indeed being educated.

Enjoy,
Steven

On preview:

I know of no such homeschooling parents. My parents were extremely flexible when one of us did not understand a subject. Our friends who also homeschooled when I was growing up were flexible as well. I can’t think of a single homeschooling parent who simply lectured or sat their children down with the book and expected them to learn. My own experience as someone who was homeschooled and as a parent who homeschools and interacts with other homeschooling parents through co-operative learning programs and joint field trips/social activities has never brought me into contact with any homeschooling parents who thought lecture-only was an acceptable homeschooling method. Of course by definition I would not have encountered these people because they wouldn’t be part of the groups. Still I’m compelled to wonder if this is a significant enough practice to be of concern.

Do you have any information on the prevelance of this teaching style in the home-educating community? I’ve been around/involved with homeschooling for over twenty years and I’ve not seen, or even heard of, even a single incident where the parents did not try to tailor the cirriculum to their child’s needs. I’m actually at a loss for words because I’ve simply never considered that someone may actually try to homeschool with such a method. It seems especially odd to me given the current trend of forming homeschooling “groups” and doing things like joint field trips. Not to mention the studies results showing a median of five extracirricular activities per student. Obviously it’s possible, but I just can’t imagine it. I may be sheltered or have had the good fortune to never have associated with such people.

We should try to investigate the actual frequency of homeschoolers who simply lecture their children instead of taking a more active hand in the learning process. I’ll do some digging and see what I can find. Obviously this would be a problem if it turns out to be a significant percentage. What would be the difference, quality of education-wise, if a child sat at home and watched nickelodean all day versus sitting at home all day and tuning out their parent’s as they lectured at the child? If this method is prevelant then I would certainly support some safeguards in the system to detect it and help the parents understand the disservice they are doing their children as well as some basic educating of homeschooling parents who think lecturing is adequate on how to teach more effectively. Even in the case of such an incompetent home educator I’d rather see the parent shown the error of their ways than have the child taken from the homeschool and placed in public school. I believe homeschooling parents are, (the vast, vast majority) truly interested in providing a good education to their children. If they are using the “lecture only” style, and it is incompatible with their child’s learning style, AND they’re oblivious to their children’s struggle to comprehend the lessons then I’m sure they would change if they knew how to improve their education methods. As I’ve said before, they have a vested interest in their child’s success and I trust them to do their best to do what they believe to be best for their children.

The main difference between me, a homeschooling advocate, and people who do not advocate homeschooling is that I also trust the parents to decide what is best for their children. Opponents of homeschooling trust the parent’s intent, but not their judgement or capabilities. I trust the parents in all three areas, intent(desire to do what is best for their child), judgement(to know what is best for their individual child), and capabilities(to adequately educate their child).

97

doreen, how else are you going to know that the public school system is unable or unwilling to educate a child other than by attempting to enroll said child and having enrollment refused or the child admitted but not educated? :rolleyes:

98

Mtgman, in my experience doing advocacy in the special education system, it is very rare to see a standardized diagnostic instrument administered properly. This generally only happens when the administration is performed by an outside testing agency after the parents have caught the school using one improperly, demanded a retest, and had the denial appealed and overturned by the regulatory review process.

Many of the safeguards you call for are present (in some form or another) in the special education system. They are also ignored or circumvented on a regular basis by school personnel. Only those parents who are extremely aggressive in fighting for their children’s rights (and frequently only those who have good lawyers) actually get those safeguards observed, and even then only occasionally.

I am loath to allow the same people who make a shambles of the the administration of special education anywhere near homeschooling. At least with special education you’re always free to walk away. Homeschooling is where you walk away to and if we lose that where will we be, eh?

99

When homeschools are outlawed, only outlaws will homeschool. Stupid cliche I know, but I simply mean to point out that it will not be possible to truly take this option away short of becoming a police state of Orwellian proportions. Still I am also leary of putting all the cards in the hands of the boards of education, as I have mentioned before in this thread. All my proposals have included significant homeschooling parent involvement/representation in selection of evaluation methods and evaluators. Are my proposals realistic? In many states I’d say they are. Perusing the HSLDA map on which states currently regulate homeschooling and how restrictive their framework is I notice that about half of them are green or yellow, meaning little to no regulations on homeschools. States like New York(one of the most restrictive) may find it hard to keep their restrictions seeing that other states, with lesser requirements, are producing results every bit as good as their restrictive methods are and have a much lower barrier to entry. They’ll really have to prove their restrictions add value. I wouldn’t want to be a homeschooler in New York, or any highly-restrictive state in the coming years. I fear a witch hunt may occur. It is my fervent hope that it does not, but I am not hopeful the beauracrats will give up their power without a fight.

For other states I see homeschoolers as coming from the position of strength in this arguement, bolstered by the outstanding performance of students who are home-educated and a growing community of homeschoolers who have banded together to form even more effective co-operative groups. Homeschooling has proven it works. For educators to try to clamp down, or reign in homeschooling would require proof on their part that homeschooling produces greater percentages of abuse/neglect or a less effective education. Absent such evidence, in most states, it’s the current educational system which is bearing the burden of proof as more and more confidence in mandatory public schooling slips away and people turn to private or homeschools. I simply don’t believe the anecdotal scare stories of “I knew a lady who homeschooled and her kids were…” can hold out when the other side of the scale is loaded with incidents of bullying and school shootings along with losses in educational performance. When deciding which side to legislate for I think the people, and the people’s representatives, will give individual families the freedom to educate their children in whatever system they believe works best.

Enjoy,
Steven

100

[quote]
originally posted by Mtgman
Do you have any information on the prevelance of this teaching style in the home-educating community? I’ve been around/involved with homeschooling for over twenty years and I’ve not seen, or even heard of, even a single incident where the parents did not try to tailor the cirriculum to their child’s needs.{/quote]

Wouldn’t say I know or even think that particular example is prevalent. It could be the opposite, too- a parent who’s very into field trips and such teaching a child who learns better from a book (I was such a child). I do know however, of many parents who attempt to teach their children various non-academic skills, and are clearly not using a way that works well for that particular child. Its quite possible that , due to self-selection the average homeschooling parent is tends to be flexible, but not all homeschooling parents are doing it for the same reasons. Remember that family I encountered? They homeschooled specifically to keep their children away from the neighborhood children, and and had quite rigid beliefs about many things. They would not have been joining any homeschooling groups. I, too, would prefer that incompetent home educators be educated rather than the children being forced into public schools. But they can’t be educated if they and we don’t know who they are. That they exist is certain- every human occupation has its skilled practioners, the less skilled, and those so unskilled that they don’t even realize their lack of skill and homeschooling is no different.