These kids ARE one of my classes as I arranged to have only them together for one period. And they are doing rather well I think. We use a word study program developed from University of Virginia and all of them are close to a stage referred to as "syllable constancy." (One is solidly in this stage as he came in about a 2nd grade level) In a nutshell, they recognize all single and double consonant patterns, long and short vowel patterns and can join them to create compound words. Unfortunately, this level is by far the longest and the hardest. They will be here for a very long time.
You may well be a good guy, a conservative, a Christian and seriously so in all cases, but you work in the government's school system. For triple your salary no homeschooling parent ought to want to be caught dead doing what you do where you do it. If you could understand the depth of the homeschooler's despising of government schools, it would be obvious to you that none of us would ever, under any circumstances, lend aid and comfort to government schooling.
There is no point in dialogue. There is only the commitment to protect our children from exposure to government schools and their agendas and the commitment to resist being forced to fund government schools and their despicable programs and agendas. We have the government's gun to our heads to confiscate the tax dollars that support the monstrosity that government education has become. We may have no choice but to fund it until we have succeeded in shutting it down altogether. So far, we still have the freedom to protect our children from it and to urge others to do so.
If you are actually conservative and actually Christian, get out of a system that encourages abortion, wncourages homosexuality, mangles history, and serves only to provide education for drones while perverting the minds and morals of its charges, and, whatever you do, get any kids out of such a system if you can.
Governemnt schools are the parochial schools of secular humanism and worse. Remember Christ's words to those who would harm children that they would be better off having a millstone hung around their necks and be cast into the sea.
If you are tempted to assume that I am just some ignorant anti-government school bigot, I will leave that for you and others to decide but I am an alumnus of a Jesuit prep school so long ago that the Jebbies were still Catholic and have a doctorate in law. My wife graduated Yale. No child of ours has ever set foot in a government school. May that always be the case.
It seems you have ruffled some feathers with your question about homeschooling! My wife and I have been homeschooling both our kids since middle school (about four years). Our daughter is now in college and doing well with a full load of core courses. I.E. A's B's. Our son is in Junior High school and takes more effort than our daughter did to keep him on course. They both have good basic skills, speak a second language(Spanish) and play musical instruments to the point of being able to read music. The problem that we have seen with homeschooling families is that there are a fair number of people who are keeping their kids out of the public school system for many good reasons; but are unequipped to properly educate their children. This is the dark little secret about homeschooling. It is just not for everybody. I believe it is a great thing if you have the skills and discipline to do the job, but, that said, there are a lot of people out there that just should not be homeschooling their kids. We are very happy with the results and the way our family has come together because of our decision, but it's just not for everybody. Hope this helps.