Defending home-style ABCs [Homeschooling Ping]

Los Angeles Times ^ | 4/3/08 | Seema Mehta

[kiriath_jearim]

Madison Browning, 8, spent a recent school day coloring, playing on swings at a park and whirling to Japanese string music at a cozy dance studio. Caedyn Curto, 13, studied biblical scripture at his family's kitchen table before tackling decimals, completing a biology test and revising a journalism essay.

The Browning and Curto families, both of whom live in the South Bay, have embraced very different styles of education. But they now find themselves on the same side of a battle to continue teaching their children at home in the face of an appellate court ruling that home schooling in California must be conducted by credentialed instructors.

The February court decision is not being enforced pending appeals. The 2nd District Court of Appeal agreed last week to rehear the case in June, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pledged to support new legislation allowing home schooling if the decision is not reversed. Meanwhile, the ruling has forged a rare alliance of religious and secular home schoolers.

[sitetest]

Dear modest proposal,

“There may be some success stories with homeschooling...”

Therein lies most of your problem, in that you show baleful ignorance.

Whether you listen to the anecdotes of homeschoolers or look at the studies published by prestigious research organizations, homeschoolers nearly always succeed, and at levels exceeding the medians attained by public school students.

Which isn't to say that no one who goes to public schools has a satisfactory, or even highly-successful educational experience. Only that 1) homeschoolers succeed in achieving a good education at a significantly higher rate than those who attend public schools, and 2) the median academic achievement of homeschoolers exceeds that of public school students.

Approximately 30% of public school children fail to even achieve a high school diploma, a relatively modest achievement in today's educational environment. If homeschoolers failed at this rate, or anything near to it, homeschooling would have been near to outlawed by now.

“seems like it will be proportional to how much money + time you are able to spend on it...”

Time is important, but money really isn't. I know folks who have done amazing stuff on a few hundred dollars per year of school materials. Even my own family, using a relatively higher priced boxed curriculum for some years, never spent more than fifteen hundred dollars per year per child. Contrast that to the $4000 - $5000 tuition at local Catholic schools, or the $6000 - $7000 spent by my local jurisdiction per elementary school student for operational costs only, or the $10,000 - $20,000 tuition of some of the tonier local private schools.

And even time is usually much more efficiently used. Even my sons in sixth and eighth grade seldom spend more than 4 - 5 hours per day on schoolwork (with the exception of my older son's class at a nearby Catholic high school).

“I get the impression peope who homeschool have labelled all ‘government schools’ as horrible places of little value that exist only to indoctrinate kids to one viewpoint.”

Many of us view government-run schools as being philosophically incoherent in a free society. I know I do. But that's not a question that goes directly to the question of, “How should I best educate my children in my own personal circumstances?”

Even if government-run public schools are philosophically indefensible in a free society, that doesn't mean that a particular public school isn't doing a good job of educating its students at a particular time and place.

Most homeschoolers believe that there are some public schools in some places that offer decent and even good educational opportunities for some of the children who attend them. We know children who have succeeded in public schools.

But we also know that on average, homeschooled children do better than public school students, that nearly all homeschooled children succeed educationally, and we also know that many public schools don't come anywhere near close to fulfilling the promise of educational achievement that our kids deserve.

Finally, you badly misperceive what homeschooling is really all about. What it's about is freedom, liberty, choice, the opportunity to direct the education of one's children as one sees fit, according to the best needs of each child.

Although parents have some limited ability to fit education to the needs of their children through the availability of different types of traditional schools in their communities, whether public, charter, private, religious, etc., the easiest way of precisely fitting the best education for one's child is through homeschooling. That doesn't mean that parents and children can't make public schooling or private schooling work for them, only that homeschooling offers significantly more freedom and flexibility to meet the needs of each child.

sitetest

[blu]

When you can learn to praise your kids without denigrating mine, we'll have some common ground.

How 'bout this? All kids deserve the best education the system can provide, whatever that system may be?

I think maybe you're overreacting here. Only speaking for myself, I NEVER assume that my homeschool students are better than the public/private schooled ones. My judgments are meant only for the teachers, admin, and parents who let kids go thru school with a defective education.

[blu]

There may be some success stories with homeschooling (seems like it will be proportional to how much money + time you are able to spend on it)

You are having an argument with a bunch of people who know way more than you about education and kids. I suggest a little research on your part.

[blu]

Preach it!!!

[humblegunner]

i would never homeschool my kids. Then again i wouldnt send them to public school in alabama.

That's a great blessing to them.

They would never learn proper capitalization from you.

[humblegunner]

But we also know that on average, homeschooled children do better than public school students,

My public schooled kids shrug off your insult and suggest
that perhaps your kids are weenies who get beat up and can't cut it in the real world.

See how that works both ways?

When you learn to praise your kids without slamming mine, we can talk.

[itsahoot]

In your case such a skill might make you less ready to tar and feather anyone who dares to question homeschooling

I am a retired teacher, my wife is still teaching, so take a deep breath, we know what is happening in schools.

What concerns me is not, what is not being taught, but what is.

Besides I don't think I was addressing my comment to you. If you fail to see the irony then......

[itsahoot]

But, I would like to see someone define a “good school district.”

A good school district is like your congressman, all of them are crooks except yours. Parents tend to believe schools in general are in real trouble, but not their school.

[JenB]

There may be some success stories with homeschooling (seems like it will be proportional to how much money + time you are able to spend on it) but I get the impression peope who homeschool have labelled all ‘government schools’ as horrible places of little value that exist only to indoctrinate kids to one viewpoint

I'm not completely sure I understand your point. There are not "some success stories" with homeschooling, there is evidence based on SAT and ACT scores, colleges attempting to recruit homeschoolers, and thousands of successful homeschool graduates that it works. As for money, I doubt my parents ever spent more than a couple hundred dollars a year on curriculumn. Time? A couple hours a day, less on the parents' part as the kids get older and can do more themselves.

I'm not sure that schools are "horrible places" uniformly but I don't think I would have been happy, or as successful, in one, and I would never let my kids attend one.

I did "ser" and "tener" drills too and though I don't remember much Spanish now, that's more because my brain is wired to speak computer languages than foreign human ones.

[savedbygrace]

That's Figure 1 from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/

Also check out the other research reports here:

http://homeschoolinformation.com/homeschooling/homeschool_statistics1.htm

Then there's Figure 2:

The grade equivalent score comparisons for home school students and the nation are shown in Figure 2. In grades one through four, the median ITBS/TAP composite scaled scores for home school students are a full grade above that of their public/private school peers. The gap starts to widen in grade five. By the time home school students reach grade 8, their median scores are almost 4 grade equivalents above their public/private school peers.

[sitetest]

Dear humblegunner,

“My public schooled kids shrug off your insult...”

I didn't say anything about your public-schooled children.

I spoke about public schoolchildren in the aggregate. Although having you as a parent likely badly handicaps them, it's possible that they are above average for publicly-schooled children.

If you cannot distinguish between statistics that apply to large groups and the facts of individual persons, then your public-schooled children are fortunate that you don't homeschool them, as they would not go far.

“suggest
that perhaps your kids are weenies who get beat up and can't cut it in the real world.”

My homeschooled children do well enough in the “real world.”

My eighth grade son is currently taking one course - sophomore-level Honors Latin II - at a local Catholic high school at the invitation of the school's administration, to persuade him to attend full-time next year (it worked - he'll be starting full-time in the fall). He's in a class with about 15 10th graders. There was some initial teasing and such at the beginning of the school year. This was aggravated in part by the fact that he's one of the top three students in the class, and I guess it made some of the 10th graders uncomfortable being shown up by an eighth grader. But he deftly handled it with his usual humor and charm, and is well-liked by his fellow students - all two years older than him. They accept him as a peer.

Academically, he just completed the National Latin Exam, and was one of the three students in the class to score at the highest level nationwide. Ironically, the other two of the top three were also both homeschooled through eighth grade.

But I guess that's a comparatively easy place to make it - most of the young men at this high school came from Catholic schools, and there aren't too many thugs among them.

For that experience, my son was in baseball camp during the summer, mostly with a public-schooled crowd. Except for a couple of stupid little public school morons, he got along well with his peers. The little morons, well, they stopped giving him a bad time after he gave them a little taste of what they could look forward to if they'd have persisted.

“See how that works both ways?”

Yes, my son can kick the snot out of most kids both academically and physically. And has done both.

“When you learn to praise your kids without slamming mine, we can talk.”

When you learn to distinguish between statistical comparisons of groups and insults aimed at particular individuals, you'll be worth talking to.

Until then, don't go away mad, just go away.

sitetest

[humblegunner]

I didn't say anything about your public-schooled children.

Sure you did, just today. Remember?

homeschooled children do better than public school students

That was you, Zippy.

Except for a couple of stupid little public school morons

There you go again, proving my point.

You have to bad-mouth normally educated kids to make yours look good.

We laugh at your hot-house pansies.

[sitetest]

Dear humblegunner,

“’I didn't say anything about your public-schooled children.’

“Sure you did, just today. Remember?”

No, I never referred to your children specifically at all. I don't know anything about them except their misfortune to have you as a parent.

“’homeschooled children do better than public school students’

“That was you, Zippy.”

Ah, a troll from DU.

What I said was:

“But we also know that on average, homeschooled children do better than public school students,”

Like I said, when you can distinguish between statistical comparisons between groups and insults aimed at specific individuals, you'll be worth talking to. Until then, I'm just extending a kindness to you in continuing our conversation.

“’Except for a couple of stupid little public school morons’

“There you go again, proving my point.”

You'd have a point if I were referring to your public-schooled children, or even to public schoolchildren in general. I was referring to - and this was obvious to those who don't have a chip on their shoulder - was two specific individuals who were students at local public schools, and who were morons.

“You have to bad-mouth normally educated kids to make yours look good.”

Gee, I hope those two morons were not normally educated public school students. I was kinda hoping that they were the exception, not the rule.

“We laugh at your hot-house pansies.”

Although you don't know my children, it seems the only poster actually insulting specific children in this thread is you.

It's clear to any reasonable person on this thread that you're the one taking potshots at folks, insulting other folks' kids, that you're the one with the problems.

Kinda sucks to be you, huh?

sitetest

[humblegunner]

Kinda sucks to be you, huh?

No, it's great being me.

I don't need to prop up my kids by insulting other folks kids.

[sitetest]

Dear humblegunner,

“No, it's great being me.”

As long as no one successfully bursts your delusions:

“I don't need to prop up my kids by insulting other folks kids.”

You've yet to demonstrate where I insulted your children, although I note that you did insult mine.

Projection is often a sign of a serious delusional system.

You should try to get some help for that.

sitetest

[humblegunner]

You've yet to demonstrate where I insulted your children

Do your own damn research.

When you post that public schooled kids are inferior, you insult my kids.

Is that clear enough for you?

You can quote all the stats you like, it is still a slam on my kids.

You've yet to demonstrate where I insulted your children, although I note that you did insult mine.

How do you like it, clown?

Not so much fun when it denigrates your kids, is it?

[Balding_Eagle]

i would never homeschool my kids.

That’s probably for the best. You haven't learned proper grammar yourself, and shouldn't be trying to teach it.

[sitetest]

Dear humblegunner,

“When you post that public schooled kids are inferior, you insult my kids.”

There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I don't know where to start.

First, the statistical comparisons I've cited are about educational attainment. Superior educational attainment, even on the individual level, doesn't make a person a superior person to others. Facts are facts - some folks do better educationally than others. Even if making individual comparisons, if based in fact, that's not an insult, it's a recognition of reality.

But, superior educational attainment no more makes a person "better" than others than does being better in basketball, or in music, or art.

Thus, even if I did know enough about your children specifically to compare them unfavorably academically one or more homeschooled children, if it were based in fact, it would be no insult.

But I've only posted that statistically, one group does better than the other.

If you can't distinguish between statistical comparisons of groups and insults to your children, you have a real, abiding problem, humblegunner. And your failure to make that distinction exposes to all fair-minded people who read these threads just what you are.

“You can quote all the stats you like, it is still a slam on my kids.”

Sorry, it's not a slam. The facts are the facts. If you think that the reality of comparative educational attainment in this country is a “slam on [your] kids,” then your problem is that reality itself is going to make you mighty unpleasant as you go along.

There is no logic to interpreting statistical evidence as a personal insult, aimed at a specific individual. It's an argument borne of bitter anger, not of reason or rationality.

“’You've yet to demonstrate where I insulted your children, although I note that you did insult mine.’

“How do you like it, clown?”

Couldn't care less. Calling my children “hot house pansies” is funny.

But that's really comparing apples to oranges. I haven't said anything specifically about your children. You've specifically insulted mine. Guess who the poster is on this thread who is making it personal. Look in the mirror.

sitetest

[Balding_Eagle]

You sure do make an effort to be offended don’t you?

Why not stay away from home schooling threads?

Oh, yeah, then you’d have to find something else to be offended about.

Home schooled kids are the future movers and shakers and leaders of this country. Your kids might be too, but as public schooled kids, that will be by exception.

[savedbygrace]

If your children are insulted because ON AVERAGE home educated children get higher test scores than public and private schooled children, sitetest is not the source of their problem.

See my post #90 for more data and factual information.