Author Topic: Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]  (Read 984 times)

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Offline Rapunzel

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Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]
« on: January 22, 2014, 11:00:00 pm »
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2014/1/21/in-home-schoolingafearofchildrenfallingthroughthecracks.html


Jan 21
Should home schooling be regulated more?
by David Martin
   
Tune in to Sheila MacVicar’s report Tuesday at 9 p.m. and midnight ET and watch the rest of America Tonight’s education series "Getting Schooled" every night this week.


Rosanna Ward is a passionate advocate for home schooling. She devotes hours a day in her Tulsa, Okla. home teaching her 8-year-old son Joel.

"You can tweak your curriculum and your teaching style more to the way your child learns," she explained. "For me, it's an awesome and fulfilling thing to be there when my children are learning."

Ward has some experience. She home-schooled her two daughters Ginny and Hannah, and was even home-schooled herself as a child, a rare enough event that it earned her a picture in the local paper.

Back in 1980, when it was largely seen as a faith-based fringe movement, home schooling was illegal in 30 states. By 1993, it was recognized as a parent's right across the country. And today, Ward's son is among the nearly 1.8 million home-schooled American children, according to the Department of Education. That's more than double what it was two decades ago, and matches the number of children enrolled in public charter schools. Uniting religious conservatives, progressive "unschoolers" and parents simply fed-up with their local public school, home schooling has become a mainstream educational option, with the reasons for why parents choose it, and the resources, support groups and curriculum available to help them, growing every day.

Despite its explosive growth, home schooling is still a remarkably deregulated enterprise. Half of all states require parents to simply register their intent to home school, and 11 states have no regulations at all. It’s hard to do a comprehensive count of home-schooled students, when in many places, they don’t have to notify anyone that they exist.

Though many home schooling families and advocacy groups, including Ward, credit the lack of regulation with providing more flexibility and space for creativity, some critics charge it can leave children vulnerable to educational neglect, and even abuse, with few ways of finding help.

Falling by the wayside
Doney soon realized that she didn't want to wind up like her parents, and wanted to go to school.

In line with their conservative Christian faith, Heather Doney said her parents wanted to keep her and her younger siblings away from the local public school and its wordly influences. But as their family grew to 10 kids in all, Doney said her mother and father spent less and less time at their New Orleans home educating them.

“It got really bad. It got to where I was doing a lot of the cooking and the cleaning and the babysitting, and education just fell by the wayside,” Doney said.

By the time she was 12, Doney was the only one of her siblings, including her 10-year-old sister, who could read.

“There was a little neighborhood boy that I liked and he found out I couldn’t do multiplication and division, and he said, ‘Ha, ha. You’re going to spend your life flipping burgers,’ and I went inside crying,” Doney remembers.  “And it suddenly hit me that I was either going to have a life like my mother or I was going to spend my life flipping burgers. He was exactly right.”

That revelation prompted Doney to make a desperate plea for help. She hid behind the couch and called her grandparents, who intervened.

Doney and her siblings went to public school the following year. She worked hard, and did well. She went on to college and then graduate school, where she researched home schooling. Doney realized that her situation was far from unique.

“Some of the most powerful stories I get are: ‘I thought I was alone…. I thought I was the problem. That I was responsible for all these things that happened to me,” said Doney. “I’ve been ashamed and I’ve been hiding all these deficits that I have in my education.’”

The experience prompted Doney, now 30, to start the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), an organization of formerly home-schooled kids that is pushing for more oversight of the practice.
A patchwork of regulations

�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2014, 11:00:36 pm »
Like Aljazerra should have anything to say about this.........
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Oceander

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Re: Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]
« Reply #2 on: January 23, 2014, 12:15:25 am »
Sometimes even a stopped clock gets the time correct.  Home schoolers should be required to meet some minimum set of standards for competency.  A child who hasn't mastered all three of the three Rs by the time she's 10 isn't being home-schooled, she's being used as a scullery cook or a housekeeper.

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]
« Reply #3 on: January 23, 2014, 12:20:09 am »
Sometimes even a stopped clock gets the time correct.  Home schoolers should be required to meet some minimum set of standards for competency.  A child who hasn't mastered all three of the three Rs by the time she's 10 isn't being home-schooled, she's being used as a scullery cook or a housekeeper.

Then explain why year after year home-schooled kids are getting the highest SAT scores.  It isn't surprising for Aljazerra to go looking under a rock for something they could throw out there... hell we are turning a lot of kids out of high school who haven't mastered the 3R's
« Last Edit: January 23, 2014, 12:21:09 am by Rapunzel »
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Oceander

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Re: Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]
« Reply #4 on: January 23, 2014, 12:38:58 am »
Then explain why year after year home-schooled kids are getting the highest SAT scores.  It isn't surprising for Aljazerra to go looking under a rock for something they could throw out there... hell we are turning a lot of kids out of high school who haven't mastered the 3R's

All homeschooled kids, or just a cherry-picked few?

I'm not denying that homeschooling can be orders of magnitude better than just sending your kids off to public school and ignoring their education from there on in; I am denying that it is some sort of miracle cure for all that ails you and that every child would be above average if only every parent homeschooled.

I have a better anecdote for you:  in college I had a friend who was recently divorced, had three kids, and owned a farm where she ran a dog kennel and also sold jewelry from a stand in the local mall.  Her kids all went to the public schools.  All three of them set the curve in their respective classes and one of them received a full scholarship to a prestigious private high school because of her accomplishments.  Why?  In part because she spent a lot of time in the evenings with them on their homework - not doing it for them, but pushing them hard and asking questions from different perspectives to help them figure it out on their own.

Hopefully that anecdote should help flesh out the real point here:  children do better - much better - when their parents are actively involved in the child's education, whether that child is homeschooled or not.

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2014, 12:47:27 am »
All homeschooled kids, or just a cherry-picked few?

 

Hopefully that anecdote should help flesh out the real point here:  children do better - much better - when their parents are actively involved in the child's education, whether that child is homeschooled or not.

Of course they do, this is why charter schools require as a matter of admission that parents sign a written pledge to spend x number of hours a day sitting with their kids and going over what they are learning..  this is the method successful teachers in the inner cities (few as they have been) have been successful - they went outside the school administration and insisted the parents get involved in their childs schooling.  One of the most famous was in Harlem - has now returned to North Carolina where he runs a group of charter schools.  The key to any child's success in school and life is involved parents... and as a "general" rule of thumb in this day and age parents who home school are more involved.  My sister was a prime example - gave up a lucrative career to stay home and school her two youngest. One who now holds two masters and the other is now in medical school.  Her oldest who was more a latch-key kid  (she was a single mother and had to work) went to public school  - the best thing about him is he never married and had kids of his own.......
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline Relic

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Re: Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2014, 04:16:10 pm »
This isn't about standards, or concern that home schooled kids aren't getting quality education.

This is about indoctrination, and concern that home schooled kids are avoiding it.

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2014, 08:15:00 pm »
This isn't about standards, or concern that home schooled kids aren't getting quality education.

This is about indoctrination, and concern that home schooled kids are avoiding it.


Exactly...
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]
« Reply #8 on: January 24, 2014, 01:10:57 am »
Parents are so desperate to get their kids out of public schools - Common Core has sped this up - that home schooling is exploding, but so is Charter Schooling. Currently there is a waiting list around the country of over 500,000 for MINORITY students alone and almost two million for all groups -  to get into Charter Schools - even black parents want their children to learn - not be indoctrinated.

The public schools believe - like Melissa Harris Perry keeps saying - our kids belong to the collective. Conservative and libertarian parents believe their kids belong to them and should learn the 3R's and leave the social engineering to their home environment and not in the schools...
« Last Edit: January 24, 2014, 01:14:24 am by Rapunzel »
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

rangerrebew

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Re: Should home schooling be regulated more? [ALJAZERRA]
« Reply #9 on: January 26, 2014, 12:39:45 pm »
This isn't about standards, or concern that home schooled kids aren't getting quality education.

This is about indoctrination, and concern that home schooled kids are avoiding it.

 :thumbsup: :hands: