I don't think you have disagreed with what I have said. I am in favor of "all of the above." If you are happy with what ever system you are using God bless you go for it. If people want to homeschool great I support them. If you want to use public schools or parochial ones great.
What I am against is certain posters labeling ALL public school teaches as communists or "useful idiots." Including many other insults veiled and otherwise.
When I taught in New York (rural school district) We had about 8- 10 families that had to use out facilities to take a basic (ninth grade) Earth Science test. 90% of our students passed 90% of the homeschoolers failed one scored a whopping 23 out of 100.
Since moving to VA. I have become acquainted with about 20 homeschooling families both through work and people at our Church. Two families in particular are exceptional with 12 children between them. Then there are the three that that are the opposite end of the spectrum. all three of these were put into our school because their parents were not able to handle them. We had to have one of the "little angels" (age 17 yrs 6 months)removed by the police and get an order of protection because he targeted a 14 year old girl to "date". He had a violent outburst one day when I separated them and did about $500 of property damage. One of them was dropped off at our building an hour later we received a call from his mother that she was not going to pick him up was instead asking us to have him committed to the children's Psych center because he had beat up her and her mother that morning.
The rest of them are just average, no better or worse than the kids I have in my class every day.
For kids with intact families, that can manage to scrape together the mortgage or rent payment on one income, and will do without many of the luxuries of life, homeschooling is usually the best choice for most kids.
Intact families, wow that is an oxymoron. I have 60 students right now. I can count on one hand the number of families that are "intact." And keep in mind this is a rural school district in VA. Out of those 5 only one does not have both parents working.
Like I said I am in favor of "all of the above." If it works for you God bless you go for it. But please don't attack me or insult me for doing the best I can do to help the maximum number of kids I can, because the sad reality is that while I only spend an hour and a half with these kids it is an hour more than many of their parents.
The problem with your posts is that you often speak with what seems to be a forked tongue.
You first say:
“I am in favor of ‘all of the above.’”
But then you post all sorts of stories about failed homeschooling efforts which are out of all proportion with the actual experiences of actual homeschooling families.
That is dissembling.
For years, we worked with the fellow in our county who was in charge of supervision of homeschoolers. He’d been a public school teacher for about 20 or so years, and was kind of burned out (don’t blame him). So, because he was well short of retirement, they gave him the job of supervising the homeschoolers, and he brought a rather confrontational attitude to the job. He was notorious throughout the state! In the first years that he held the job, he was stern, nasty and tough. Dot every i, cross every t.
But after about three years, he mellowed out. He figured out two things:
1. The vast majority of homeschoolers weren’t trying to scam the system, weren’t too lazy to take their kids to the local public school (LOL! What a laugh! As if teaching your kids at home takes LESS time and energy than dropping off at the local public school!! LOL!!), and were generally good and decent people trying to do the best for their kids, and;
2. Most homeschooled kids did better, covered a broader curriculum, scored better on standardized tests, were more polite and civil, better behaved, and related better to folks not their own age, especially adults, than most public school kids.
By the time he retired, nearly 20 years later, he'd declared that working with homeschoolers had been the best part of his job, the easiest position he'd had in the public school system, and the most pleasant. It was a delight to see parents so involved with their kids' education, and a delight to see such an overwhelming population of happy, academically successful children.
So, your counterexamples, to the degree that any of them are true, are the exceptions, not the rule. Don’t believe me? Look at the research that’s been done. Here’s just one data point: The median standardized test percentile rank for public school kids is, almost tautologically, 50%. For homeschoolers, it’s 86%.
You’re pointing out the anomalies and posting as if they were usual homeschooling experiences.
Like I said, that’s dissembling.
With that promotion of falsehood, I disagree.
Although homeschooling may not work for everyone, and although there are some public schools that provide a decent education, and a few that are pretty darned good, homeschooling generally beats public schooling. By a significant, and measurable amount.
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