Posted on 08/25/2009 3:34:01 PM PDT by christianhomeschoolmommaof3
“Homeschooling is the sleeping giant of the American education system,” is the opening line of a recent article by Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews.
He’s right.
He’s also right when he says, “All surveys of home-schooled students so far indicate they have higher achievement rates on average than regular students,” and when he dismisses the claim that homeschoolers might not be properly socialized by saying, “Homeschoolers go outside often and get just as big a dose of pain and joy and ignorance and wisdom as regular school kids.”
Where Mathews goes wrong is his support for a recommendation by Robert Kunzman, an associate professor at the Indiana University School of Education whose new book Write These Laws On Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling, calls for all homeschoolers to be subjected to regular, compulsory, standardized state testing.
(Excerpt) Read more at hslda.org ...
PIng
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/08/three_smart_rules_for_home_sch.html
Link to the original article in the Washington Post.
“We put so much heat on the author of the bill that she pulled her support for her own bill. “
ROTFLMAO!!
So... if illiterate and innumerate is passing for a government school child, why bother to test homeschoolers? Evidently there are no standards for the government child. If there are no standards for the government child, there should be no standards for homeschoolers either!
Huh?
Also...If the government school child fails his standardized test should he be forced to homeschool?
Read comments at this link. I LOVE IT!
Keep up the good fight, homeschoolers!
I support home schooling. If I had kids I’d do it. But their should be testing, otherwise how do you judge the kids progress. Plus, don’t you think kids need to learn how to take tests. They’ll have to take them all of their life. Why do you oppose testing?
I oppose State Standardized Testing. I test my students at home on what I have taught them. We are studying World History right now with my 4th and 2nd grader. Fourth graders in public school are studying WV State History. I will not get there for several more years. Why should my children be evaluated on what the public school students are learning. Would it be fair for me to give the public school students a test on what we are learning in my homeschool?
The funniest part about it is that she withdrew her support on live radio on the Tom Roten morning show in Huntington WV. Someone from HSLDA was on there with her.
Great job.
If the government is not handing me a check to educate my kids, they have no right to demand anything from me.
They don’t own my kids and can go take a flying fig.
That being said, every homeschooling family I know (and I belong to four different groups) say the same thing I do. Homeschooling is not about home, it’s about school. None of us want our kids to grow up dumb.
That being said, my 11 year old is working on a very popular CD-Rom curriculum. (9th grade) She will be attending the local community college in two years. The 9 year old is half way through 7th grade. The state would be stupid to test the homeschoolers. It would show what an inadequate job they are doing.
>>Would it be fair for me to give the public school students a test on what we are learning in my homeschool?<<
It would be hillarious!
How about my girls in their second year of Latin?
Test a fourth grade public school kid on THAT!
“Why do you oppose testing?”
Standardized testing will allow the State to direct a fair of what you teach, when you teach it, and how you teach it. It would presumably require political indoctrination as well in order to answer certain questions correctly. It is a bad, bad, idea that only sounds good when looked at as an idealized plan where schools are run by educators, not bureaucrats.
There should be no mandatory state testing for any school....
Most of these tests really do not measure how much a child has learned...and most schools just teach in order to pass the mandated test
Homeschoolers or any schoolers should not have to take these.
This madated state testing is courtesy of your Bush/Ted Kennedy No Student Left Behind garbage....and people thought Bush was “conservative”...he was a big government liberal
“Socialization” in school is why we are homeschooling. I don't accept socialization of my kid by peers from dysfunctional families in a trashy culture. We socialize in sports, Scouts and Sunday School.
Do you use a separate Latin curriculum?
Standardized testing absolutely is not necessary. I know many homeschoolers who have never taken a standardized exam. That you find it necessary is may be due to your own culturalization of having been institutionalized for your own schooling. One of the things that most homeschooling parents need to learn is to let go of their own institutional schooling experiences, habits, and expectations.
My children never took a standardized test. The **first** standardized test that my two younger children took was the GRE for entrance to graduate school. They finished B.S. degrees in mathematics at the age of 18, and needed the GRE to gain admission to graduate school.
The oldest will soon take his first standardized test when he finishes his MBA ( accounting) and sits for the CPA exam. ( Certified Public Accountant).
I believe that gummint skewels should be abolished and taxpayers freed. I hope I am not a “big government liberal.”
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