This part of your post is ambiguous:
“I was thinking about this. As I said I know about 40 or so families that homeschool. That translates to about 60-63 kids. As I said 12 of them are exceptional and 3 are complete buttheads. Right off the bat that means that just under 30% are well above the norm.”
It sounds like you're saying 12 children are exceptional, but that would only be 20% of 60 - 63. Are you saying 12 families are exceptional?
In either event, I think your experience is still skewed negatively, probably for some of the reasons posted a few posts up in this thread by someone else - it's all in your worldview, and the fact that you're more likely to see the failures than the successes.
Nonetheless, perhaps you should moderate your rhetoric and your tone to reflect that even your unbalanced experience shows that homeschoolers succeed far more than they fail.
If 20% or 30% of homeschooled children are "exceptional," and another 10% or so are above average (although that's an interesting curve - doesn't look much like a normal distribution to me), and a mere 10% are below average, and those for specific reasons, that looks like overall success far beyond that enjoyed by the average public school.
Especially when one considers that roughly 30% of children in public schools don't even successfully complete their secondary education.
“...and another 5 are below the average. These 5 are homeschooled for special educational reasons. The families have pooled resources and received assistance from the county to meet their needs.”
Almost counter-intuitively, special needs kids often seem to do better being homeschooled than not. I say “almost” and “counter-intuitively,” because, well, this is one area where one might think that specialized training is more needed than in ordinary primary and secondary education.
And, indeed, it is.
But the “almost” part comes in from actual homeschool experience, knowing that most homeschoolers will stop at nothing to do the best for their children, including obtaining, formally or informally, the specialized training needed to take care of a special needs child.
Imagine that - that parents would care more about their children than strangers would. Who’da thunk it?
And that's what drives homeschooling - most normal folks love their children far more than any other people on the earth.
I know that many public school teachers see the kids where that just isn't the case. But even though this population has grown dramatically - and quite tragically - and may be the majority of children in some communities and populations, at this point, it's still true that most parents love their children far more than anyone else loves their children.
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