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From now on I will start a new thread every day...

ping : )

Stand and Deliver Revisited (public education's failure to accomodate success)

the other day, my niece needed me to take her son Christopher to school for her... he is 5 and in kindergarten--and extremely bright... he had just begun last Monday... when i went to pick him up, his mother went to her doctor's appointment, so Christopher, my two sons and i hung around until it was time for me take him to school... as we were waiting, i asked Christopher how he liked his school, and he said he liked it a lot--he said, "it's way better than homeschool!" i told him i didn't agree, and told him some of the nice things about homeschool... anyway--four hours later, when he returned home from school, i asked him what he did... he showed me the craft he did with the colors black and brown (the two colors they learned that day) and told me they sang songs... i asked him what songs? and he said, "you know, 'Twinkle Twinkle,' and 'Mary Had a Little Lamb.'" i said, "but don't you already know those songs? and i know you know your colors." and he said, "yes, i do--but there are other kids in the class who don't." and that is but one of the many reasons homeschool is better than public/private... my kids don't have to wait for other kids to catch up before they go on to learn new things... and my kids don't have to worry about being left behind because they didn't quite understand something before the class moves on... i didn't tell Christopher that... but i wish his mother were there when we had our conversation...

If you start a new thread daily, it may be good to put the date in the title.

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FR Homeschool thread 31-Aug-2002

bump

Great idea, still trying to get the wife onboard.
She had private Christian school upbringing and has no idea what the indoctrination stations (public schools) are all about.
Our little one has a couple of years to go yet and I pray
to convince mom by then.
Thanks to all involved-

This was a message on one of the homeschool message boards I frequent. I posted it elsewhere on FR today, but it is appropriate here as well.

"Inge Canon had a lot to say about Carnegie Units at the transcripts seminar I went to recently.
"36 weeks x 5 session x 45-50 min each =135 -150 hours. School administrators then assume that this will generate another 65-150 hours of "outside" preparation. So a Carnegie Unit is assuming 200 hours of work."

Mrs. Canon went on to say that homeschools should, rightly, adjust this time requirement since the tutorial setting is so different from classroom instruction. She then had us read this study done on "Time-on-task" in public high schools. The author of the study was invited to do it, and surveyed close to 2000 high schools. Here are the results:
Gross School Year = 1080 hours
subtract 15% absenteeism=918 hours
subtract 40% of the day allocated to non-instructional activities (lunch, homeroom, class switching) = 551 hours
subtract 12% of class time for administration = 485 hours
subtract 25% for students being "off-task" (various reason, most teachers said they were being conservative with this figure) = 364 hours

"After 1080 hours in a typical high school year, the average high schooler is getting just 365 hours of actual instruction time! Amazing, isn't it?"

"So while we want to be totally honest in our reporting of time when using Carnegie units, we can see that we have some leeway for demanding exact numbers. Diane's 120 hours sounds much more resonable for a homeschooler than 200 hours."

This homeschooler went on to say, "Also, if you are keeping track of this yourself, you can mix Carnegie units with other forms of tallying credits. Math, for example, is a good example of something that really needs to be kept by "completion of book" rather than number of hours. Science may be another one if you are using a standard text."

I thought some of you homeschooling freepers, especially those in states that have a requirement for a number of hours of instruction might find this useful. Just count up the hours like they do in the public schools! Actually, homeschoolers have lots MORE hours of instruction than the kids in public school. That may explain why they are cleaning their clocks in standardized tests!

We homeschool in southern Ohio. I say we loosely since I don't get many opportunities to school; though I seem to get plenty of chances to exhort, cheer, incite, be an audience, etc.

We have a 6 y.o and a 4 y.o. We're doing the Charlotte Mason thing primarily for language arts, Miquon Math, very much a Well-Trained Mind approach to history.

The library is our most frequent stop. We use a Barnes & Noble charge card to help pay for books (1% back in credits.) We have access to the local library and the Cincinnati library which has an excellent lending policy for homeschoolers.

We joined CHEC but dropped out, too many folks wanted a co-op (their own school instead of a public school and that got weird). We belong to a couple of Catholic homeschool support networks and the church we belong to has a high proportion of homeschoolers. Mostly for support and ideas.

We also belong to HSLDA for its lobbying and legislative management efforts. I understand some folks think HSLDA gets in the way. But I don't have the time to lobby and am willing to pay a professional.