California says "No" to homeschooling

Homeschooling isn't something that every parent can successfully do, but every parent should nevertheless consider doing it? I see a problem brewing there.

That implies that parents already have a good idea what successful homeschooling requires, they are clear about the kinds of circumstances where it will and won't work, and that they are prepared to realistically assess their children's needs and their own capabilities.

Who said that?

You wrote right up above about parents deciding whether homeschooling is right for them. So, how should they determine that? Somebody has to be willing to talk about what it demands of a parent. Somebody needs to clarify the kind of circumstances when it probably isn't going to be appropriate.

Homeschoolers are proposing that kids be REMOVED from school. Unless we accept that conventional schooling is absolutely worthless, then nothing can reasonably be expected to be less than something. That places a burden of proof on the homeschoolers to demonstrate that what their kids are getting at home is more than nothing.

I'm sure that it isn't. It isn't at the university level either.

Homeschooling looks to me like the K-12 equivalent of the unaccredited university and most of the now-familiar arguments probably apply. Accreditation standards are often vague. Nobody has a precise definition for 'academic legitimacy' or 'credible degree', let alone for 'good education'. Most of us are convinced that some good unaccredited programs can and do exist.

But vague and unquantified as it all is, we still have to exercise our judgement every time that we log onto the internet in search of a DL program. It isn't just blind-faith and anything-goes. One of Degreeinfo's great virtues has always been that it's faced and addressed those kind of issues.

Homeschoolers typically have no teaching training and quite likely have no significant education at all in many of the subjects they are (hopefully) teaching. Their time and effort commitments to teaching are unknown. I think that if they aren't teaching successfully (however you end up measuring that), then the kids they are failing probably should be taught by professionals.

It's true that the professionals can and do fail too, for many reasons. What to do about that is another discussion entirely. (One that I doubt very much that I would participate in.)

I've read your posts long enough to trust that you wouldn't promote bad-education and irresponsibility.

 

Hi Bill,

I really appreciate your thoughtful answers. It is this sense of honest dialog that I love most about this forum.

Homeschooling isn't something that every parent can successfully do, but every parent should nevertheless consider doing it? I see a problem brewing there.

I don't. Considering and researching something is not the same as doing it. However parents who look beyond the option of the local public school may find something that works better for their children. They will never know unless they look.

That implies that parents already have a good idea what successful homeschooling requires, they are clear about the kinds of circumstances where it will and won't work, and that they are prepared to realistically assess their children's needs and their own capabilities.

It implies nothing of the sort. That is the purpose for the investigation. People research things precisely because they DON'T have a clear idea of requirements and circumstances. As someone who has both teaching and guidance counseling credentials, as well as two decades in the field of education, I can state unequivocally that many--if not most--parents know more about their children's need than a teacher who might be teaching five classes of 30 students. That is not a slight on teachers at all--it is just a product of the way that most schools are organized.

You wrote right up above about parents deciding whether homeschooling is right for them. So, how should they determine that? Somebody has to be willing to talk about what it demands of a parent. Somebody needs to clarify the kind of circumstances when it probably isn't going to be appropriate.

Although this thread (and your comments) focus exclusively on homeschooling, my posting advocated that parents investigate ALL the education options available to their children (public, inter-district transfer to other public school, charter, private, university school, virtual school, etc.). There is not a single model for home-education (i.e. structured exactly like a school, except for an un-credentialed parent trying to the the same things as a credential teacher). Now to answer your question directly, here are a few options:

--Go to the local library and check out one of the myriad of books on the subject
--Do a Google search for one of the many websites on home education
--Contact a local homeschooling organization (there are several in every state) or the Home School Legal Defense Fund
--Talk to home schoolers (there are way more than several in every state)

Homeschoolers are proposing that kids be REMOVED from school. Unless we accept that conventional schooling is absolutely worthless, then nothing can reasonably be expected to be less than something. That places a burden of proof on the homeschoolers to demonstrate that what their kids are getting at home is more than nothing.

I must admit that I am having difficulty understanding what you are saying here, so please forgive me if I miss your point. I don't think that anyone suggests that public school students are getting "nothing". However, many parents are concerned that their local schools offers more "negative somethings" than "positive somethings". What burden of proof would homeschoolers have to demonstrate to show that their needs were being met? What would have to happen if the public school was not able to meet the burden of proof as well? The national spelling bees are usually won by home-educated children. Every Ivy League school admits home-educated children. No research done in the past 30 years has indicated that home-educated children are lacking, compared to their public- or private-school educated peers.

When I was a faculty member at a California Community College (and later for California State University), I was appalled that only 30% of graduating public high school seniors in my county went to college and of those, only 26% were qualified to enroll in freshman English their first semester and only 9% could qualify to take college algebra. And those were the 30% that WENT to college! What kind of a burden of proof should we require of those schools? It seems that home-education is not our biggest problem.

Homeschooling looks to me like the K-12 equivalent of the unaccredited university and most of the now-familiar arguments probably apply. Accreditation standards are often vague. Nobody has a precise definition for 'academic legitimacy' or 'credible degree', let alone for 'good education'. Most of us are convinced that some good unaccredited programs can and do exist.

This is an excellent point. One of the differences here is that regional or national accreditation is far less meaningful in K-12 that it is for higher ed. While the regionals do accredit K-12 schools (and those schools generally promote that distinction with pride), most K-12 schools are not accredited and when it comes to college admission, most colleges and universities don't even take school accreditation into account at all. Unlike a college or university, K-12 accreditation plays no appreciable role when it comes to the transfer of units, admission to a different school or the student's resume. For a college or university, accreditation can matter A LOT. This is really an apples and oranges issue here.

But vague and unquantified as it all is, we still have to exercise our judgement every time that we log onto the internet in search of a DL program. It isn't just blind-faith and anything-goes. One of Degreeinfo's great virtues has always been that it's faced and addressed those kind of issues.

You are absolutely correct. However, I have know thousands of parents for whom the local public school is precisely a blind faith and anything goes issue. Parents cannot just show up to see what is happening is their children's classes. Parent-teacher conferences happen only a few times each year and most of the teachers that I know are dismayed at the fact that there are many parents who they never see.

Homeschoolers typically have no teaching training and quite likely have no significant education at all in many of the subjects they are (hopefully) teaching. Their time and effort commitments to teaching are unknown. I think that if they aren't teaching successfully (however you end up measuring that), then the kids they are failing probably should be taught by professionals.

Well, I have taught hundreds of college and university professors and almost none of them have any teacher training and yet, amazingly, many of them teach well (and many do not). The idea that subject matter expertise alone makes one an adequate teacher is a fallacy. I had to develop training for Intel Corporation because too many of their subject matter experts were incapable of teaching novices. Many of us know great musicians who are lousy music teachers.

Another honest mistake that many make is to assume that the current school structure of 40-50 minute concentrated periods of discreet (and unrelated) subjects taught by subject-matter credentialed teachers to large groups of children segregated by age is the optimum way for most children to learn and that a home-school parent must try to replicate this model. The "industrial" model of education exists because it is considered to be the most cost-effective way to manage large groups of students. Each student receives a very small amount of individualized instruction from any given teacher (unless the student is in a special education program or is a discipline problem in class). It is not the optimum educational (or social) environment for young learners.

Home-education occurs in a totally different environment, which may include as little as a 1-1 teacher-student ratio. Instead of having just a nine-month window of opportunity to "cover" a body of curriculum that some committee or textbook publisher has determined is "grade appropriate," a home-educator preparing a child for college has many years to make sure that the child has the necessary skills. If the child wants to focus exclusively upon social studies for the bulk of a year, cover twice as much math later. This is a more natural way to learn anyway. If that shocks you, I would be happy to expound further on this.

It's true that the professionals can and do fail too, for many reasons. What to do about that is another discussion entirely. (One that I doubt very much that I would participate in.)

But I would be opposed to a situation that would impose different penalties for the same outcome, just because one person had a certificate and the other didn't.

I've read your posts long enough to trust that you wouldn't promote bad-education and irresponsibility.

And I have read your posts long enough to know that you don't either and that you consider things with thought and insight. Your responses to my comments are just another evidence of this. Please feel free to challenge and engage me further--I love this topic.

Tony

 

I stand with Jennifer on this as well!

Shawn

 

Thank you Jennifer and Shawn. I believe that there are people with honest concerns about home education and they deserve honest answers.

By the way, Shawn, I hope that your PhD is going well. I just completed service as a dissertation committee member for a Capella learner in the Instructional Design for Online Learning program--it was a great experience.

 

Thanks Anthony. The PhD is going well. I have recently submitted my proposal and my chair is happy with it. The chair is going over it with a fine tooth comb, but she has instructed me to spend the next couple of weeks preparing for the oral defense.

Shawb

 

Credentialed Teacher Support for Homeschooling

On March 25th, the California ruling was vacation and the court granted a re-hearing, scheduled for June 23.

The California Homeschool Network has initiated a petition for credentialed teachers to sign in support of homeschooling. Many have also included comments, which are reported on the website below:

http://californiahomeschool.net/resources/teachercomments

 

This is demonstrably false.

From a 2005 article in the Journal of Religion and Society:

Although the late twentieth century STD epidemic has been curtailed in all prosperous democracies (Aral and Holmes; Panchaud et al.), rates of adolescent gonorrhea infection remain six to three hundred times higher in the U.S. than in less theistic, pro-evolution secular developed democracies (Figure 6). At all ages levels are higher in the U.S., albeit by less dramatic amounts. The U.S. also suffers from uniquely high adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, which are starting to rise again as the microbe’s resistance increases (Figure 7). The two main curable STDs have been nearly eliminated in strongly secular Scandinavia. Increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator, and negative correlation with increasing non-theism and acceptance of evolution; again rates are uniquely high in the U.S. (Figure 8). Claims that secular cultures aggravate abortion rates (John Paul II) are therefore contradicted by the quantitative data. Early adolescent pregnancy and birth have dropped in the developed democracies (Abma et al.; Singh and Darroch), but rates are two to dozens of times higher in the U.S. where the decline has been more modest (Figure 9). Broad correlations between decreasing theism and increasing pregnancy and birth are present, with Austria and especially Ireland being partial exceptions. Darroch et al. found that age of first intercourse, number of sexual partners and similar issues among teens do not exhibit wide disparity or a consistent pattern among the prosperous democracies they sampled, including the U.S. A detailed comparison of sexual practices in France and the U.S. observed little difference except that the French tend - contrary to common impression - to be somewhat more conservative (Gagnon et al.).

The entire article is available online at: http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.html

Common sense would dictate, and statistics bear out, that when young people are informed about the real risks of sexual behavior (as opposed to the abstinence-only crock that's taught in our schools), they take effective measures to protect themselves. Sticking our heads in the sand and thinking that our kids not going to succumb to normal teenage curiosity because we take them to church every Sunday is parental negligence, IMHO.