One reason I’m surprised that we haven’t heard more about this ruling is that home-schooling is climbing up the list of priorities for the Christian Right. You see, the Christian Right has figured out that they do not have the legal or social means to insulate their child from fact if s/he goes to public school. The creationist/intelligent design effort fails every time it goes to court, and little Josiah or Eve always seems to learn things about this carnal world, make friends, and gasp want to be part of it. So, you see more and more self-declared Christians taking out their children to keep them thoroughly insulated from the outside world. I heard a complete radio show (I think it might have been the 700 Club?) on this last month driving around Vermont.
And where the Christian Right goes, Republicans hurry to follow. Ron Paul wants tax credits for home schoolers. Sam Brownback catered to them in his aborted campaign. John McCain, in typical wishy-washy dog-whistle style, sneaks it in, too under “Education“:
John McCain will fight for the ability of all students to have access to all schools of demonstrated excellence, including their own homes.
I’d be curious what McCain’s idea of “demonstrated excellence” is as applied to home schools.
Mind you, there are plenty of reasons people home school their children outside of religious sterilization. In 2003, we’re talking over a million home-schooled children. If a student has an attested medical issue, then the district does pay for tutors to come to the home. However, I do know of students whose families claim physiological/medical issues that are not documented, and thus home school the child. Similarly, undocumented psychological issues may be claimed as well — a child who is an ongoing disruption to the process has sometimes been pulled by parents “tired of dealing with it”. I am aware of two children who are supposedly home schooled who aren’t learning a darn thing — the family just couldn’t be bothered to discipline their child to act in a way necessary in public, so they took their child out of the system. There are other families who feel that their child will receive a better education at home than they would in a public school.
Not impossible. And that better education doesn’t even require the qualifications the California court is requiring. Much of my training is set to deal with issues that a home schooling family will not face:
- Managing curriculum (home-schoolers don’t really have a set curriculum…more on that later)
- Managing discipline (not enough of my training, but still…one would hope a family can discipline their own child, see caveat above)
- Differentiated instruction and multiple intelligences (trying to simultaneously service diverse learning styles and skill levels…not an issue in a class of 2 or 3 students).
So, much of my training isn’t on how to teach, but rather how to teach in a public school. Much of that would be wasted on home-schoolers. However, not all of it. How to “frame” learning — putting lessons within a wider context — is a difficult skill for professionals; I can’t imagine how amateurs do it. It’s bloody hard to remember how you were taught 20 years ago, much less be aware of the improvements in methodology that have arrived since then. I write a fair bit of non-fiction, but it takes months of preparation and training before my students write their first
ever term paper. I needed a great deal of help to arrange and instruct those skills.
Nor can I imagine one person decently teaching all subjects. Using myself as an example, it would be a mistake for me to teach math at a 7th grade level or beyond. Of course, I can do that math, but I can’t explain it in a fashion that is accessible to a 12 year old. Granted, there a re collectives of home-schooled children that seek to combine efforts toward each family’s strengths. That may ameliorate this issue a bit, but given how thin on the ground are great math teachers, I’d say the odds are still against them.
Although I think this California ruling goes too far, I would welcome a closer look at the state of home schooling today. I don’t know what happens in a typical home schooling environment. I know the old saw that “we’re going food shopping so she can learn about math” is often implemented fatuously: you don’t “learn math” by doing two minutes of addition during 90 minutes of errands. We all hear the apocrypha that a certain ten examples prove that home schooling works. I’m frankly tired of hearing how many home-schooled children win spelling bees. This isn’t due to superior education: those home schooled children get drilled on word lists for hours, while in public schools we’re teaching them what the words mean and how to use them.
At the end of the day, my concerns about home-schooled children are rooted in my own experiences with them. When I learn that a student is about to come into my class who has been home schooled, I can expect at least three of these will be true:
- The student will be polite and friendly to adults;
- The student will struggle with peer relations (which about half the time results in active or pre-emptive bullying);
- The student’s fundamental skills in reading/writing will be 12-24 months behind grade level;
- The student will be unaware and unprepared for the curriculum. I don’t necessarily expect home schoolers to follow the district curriculum, but if a student makes it to eighth grade without knowing anything about ancient Greece, her family has failed her.
So while this ruling probably does go too far, the idea of a license to home school does appeal to me. Passing the teacher’s test, then a bout 1 semester’s worth of courses on introductory education would be well spent. We wouldn’t have to worry about the courses designed for public school teachers, but courses on methods of learning, putting lessons in context, would be good. Where the money would come from for such a regulatory process is a question for another time.
For those minded to think on education, what has been your impression of home-schooled students or the experience in general?
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p>I knew the statues and the rough time period and that they had gods [though I couldn’t name any of ’em] and that they were scholarly. I can’t think of much more than that from my 8th grade education.
I am a certified teacher in CA and MA, and can say that the most intellectually stunted people I ever met were the ones getting their “teacher license.” The tests and courses are a joke – an average 8th grader should be able to pass them.
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p>That said, I was a public school teacher for 7 years before I’d had enough of the dumbing down of curriculum, teaching to the lowest common denominator and/or to a test. Before I even had a child, I knew I’d homeschool – and I am now. Here are some truths:
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p>Homeschooled children generally are at least one year ahead of “grade level”. My 6-year-old is easily blowing through work in math, reading and history labeled grades 4-6.
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p>They are confident and kind, because they have generally not been subject to random bullying.
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p>They have very close relationships with their parents/siblings.
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p>Top colleges, including Harvard, actively recruit homeschooled students because they do so well at the college level and score an average of 87 points higher on the SAT than public school students.
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p>Homeschooled children generally have a broader knowledge of life and are used to being mixed with children and adults of all ages – a more authentic social structure than a single-age classroom.
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p>I could go on, but this is what I see daily. I teach classes exclusively for homeschooled elementary children on science, literature and history. These kids are bright, focused and can talk on a variety of topics on an adult level with well-reasoned arguments. I plan to homeschool as long as I can to save my children from the scourge of public education.
My wife was a public school teacher for twelve years (math & science 6-12) After she was teaching three years,prior to us beginning a family. she would come home and tell the horror stories. I vowed my children would not be subjected to that nonsense. I sent my kids to private school K-12 and then on to university and now both have a MBA’s.
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p>I have two neighbors who home school. Well adjusted, polite, and smart as whips. These kids are two to three grade levels ahead of their public school peer group. The only downside is that they are somewhat shy and don’t socialize well with kids their own age in the neighborhood. They get along better with kids two and three years older and adults (if that is a downside)
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p>I believe I have read that home schoolers are way ahead on SAT etc than theirpublic school cohort.
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p>As far as I am concerned public schools are a cancer on our society and an endless drain of finacial resource ( ie the monstrosity that the City of Newton is in the process or erecting)
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p>Every parent has the right to home school if they choose and vouchers are coming. That abomination that the state of Calif Appeals Court affirmed will be overturned by SCOTUS. You can take that to the bank.
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p>I haven’t been to church in twenty five years. I keep my own countenance with the Good Lord.
I agree the tests are easy. I take one every once in a while for fun and have yet to fail. And since they’re so easy, what’s the harm and asking prospective home educators to pass them?
I know that you alluded to this fact in your article, but it’s worth mentioning that there is a significant group of progressive-minded parents and middle-school or high-school-aged students who simply want to educate themselves outside of the public school system, which may be quite a dump, depending on where they live.
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p>I was, in fact, one of these students. I lived in the Pioneer Valley area of Western MA, where there was a sympathetic community of like-minded families who even formed a collective learning center where teens could take classes outside of school. One of these is still around: “North Star”, in Hadley, MA.
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p>This was oriented towards teens, and I don’t doubt that the early years of a child’s life are so crucial that educational programs are essential. But it’s a mistake to paint all homeschoolers with the same brush. As a whole, the “homeschoolers” I knew were smart, motivated young adults who had gotten out of their crappy school systems as soon as they were old enough to start managing their own time. Our parents got us resources and kept us on track, but there was no “blackboard in the basement”. I did math every day and took intensive music comprehension lessons at a local music center in Vermont. And it wasn’t just our little group. I now attend college, and one of my classmates is a Christian conservative from Texas who applied and got into the Questbridge program, one of the most selective scholarship programs in the country. She’s incredibly motivated and mature.
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p>Rulings like the California statute just victimize the people who are actually doing a good job of it. I only homeschooled for a couple years, but many of my peers had done so since leaving elementary school, and have now gone onto successful lives, in college or otherwise. Instead of actually working with homeschooling parents to try to set up some way that allows them to integrate themselves into the system, most school board look upon them as outcasts who need to be dealt with.
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p>This is a complex issue, and every family probably has a different approach. Nonetheless, its worth remembering that every sweeping decision like this one, no matter how benign in intent, can have harmful consequences if it’s not examined closely.
The teachers unions padding the wallets of slime ball politcians. Home schollers do better that public school kids so what’s the arguement. The arguement is teachers paychecks and unions, political power and control. Political and special interest groups will lose control of the public school gulags and stalags where they can control the thought-speak.
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p>There are two classes of people in the world. Those who have a functioning brain and educate themselves to the grave. The other group are people who have a functioning brain and have not the slightest interest in education and any intellectual challenge.
The author of this essay has very limited, stereotyped ideas about homeschoolers that don’t concord with the vast majority of homeschooled kids I have met.
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p>I brought my son home for education after 3rd grade for reasons that had nothing to do with religion or philosophy. I did it because he was miserable in school due to being twice-exceptional (gifted/special needs.) He was working on about 5 different grade levels, only one of which was the grade he was in. Neither my ex nor I have any teacher training.
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p>The author of this essay writes “When I learn that a student is about to come into my class who has been home schooled, I can expect at least three of these will be true:…”
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p>The only one of the 4 items that is true of my teen is that he is polite to adults (except not always parents – after all, he is a teen.)
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p>My son went back to school for 1 year in 10th grade. He did not struggle with peer relations, was ahead of grade level in everything except writing at the start (and writing caught up after a quarter), and – far from being unaware an unprepared for the curriculum – he found that he was at or near the top of every class except English Comp (which he still got an A- in), including in 12th grade math.
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p>He left to take classes at the local community college because he had used up the high school’s math offerings. After 1 year of cc, he started taking math at a local 4-year college because he’d used up the cc’s math courses. He has a 4.0 in his college classes (including Freshman English), got a 32 on the ACT and was accepted at an excellent 4 year college for full-time study next year. He also got along well with college classmates and professors, was a peer math tutor at the cc, and volunteers at the local science museum. He is also not as overloaded with busy work as his friends and cousins in high school, leaving him with more time for a social life and to pursue his own interests.
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p>As a previous comment mentioned, top colleges now welcome homeschoolers because they’ve found these students to be more self-directed, independent, and intellectually curious that students who have been in institutionalized schools all their lives.
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p>No form of schooling is right for everyone. There are good and bad public schools, private schools and home schools, and there is no need to malign any one of these options in favor of the others.
I’m not speaking about your child…don’t know him or her in all likelihood. I’m not even speaking necessarily of the children educated by families who like to go to a political website and engage in political debates.
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p>I’m talking in the sum total of my (still short) educational career, and my exposure to 12 students. I didn’t generalize beyond that and made clear that I was talking about personal experience.
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p>It is true that home schooling is a sound decision for some families and students. However, in the wider context of the nation, and all demographics, what holds true on this site will not hold true.
You teach in a rural area of Vermont. When you are forty years of age and have dabbled in several careers (the dreaded private sector) and had several children grow to adulthood, paid for a home, automobiles, college educations, and gasp—-may serve your country in its defense, you may have a different take on things.
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p>When you are a little kid going a half mile from home is an adventure. When your 18 you can spit that far. When you are sixty it is a pain in the ass because you’ve done it ten thousand times before.
You mean “from my ignorance and prejudices I would suggest…”
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p>The number of incorrect statements in your little passage is astounding, and I’m surprised that you would want to project your own experiences onto somebody else’s biography given the degree to which your claimed history changes in tune with your current argument.
In the above article it stated in the context of parents not being qualified to teach all subjects…
If good math teachers are really so scarce, doesn’t that also make it unlikely that my child will get a good one in public school? Does that also apply to other subjects or is it just math we need to worry about? A teaching credential doesn’t guarantee that someone will be a good teacher. It should increase the chances but it is not a guarantee. I think we can probably all rememebr great teachers we had growing up but also some horrible ones – and they all had degrees. Certainly among homeschooling families some will be more “successful” than others, (and some of that will depend on how you measure success).
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p>Is homeschooling for everyone – probably not. But neither is public school. Homeschooling is one option that works well for many. For those families, the vast majority of students are well above their peers academically (even without the benefit of a “great math teacher” guiding them).
Given the high numbers of people who’ve registered to comment on this thread (not quite sure what’s driving the traffic to this post), I thought I’d pull out the numbers from a federal DOE report.
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p>Turns out that 30% of home schooling happens due to the family’s desire to install “religious or moral instruction” while another 31% was due to “the environment of public schools” which includes “negative peer pressure”. These are the top two answers, and far higher than I expected. Though these answers are not identical, I think there is significant enough overlap to state that 1 of 3 students are home schooled for reasons clearly outside of reason for education. The fact that about 350,000 Americans are getting the education they are from people who do not place the quality of that education atop the list is surprising to me.
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p>So far, the data sources I can find on eventual success outcomes for homeschooled students come from advocacy groups, which I tend to view with a jaundiced eye (for example, there’s this argument that plumps for home-schooling, but a quick look at the site tells you what flavor of home-schooling they want.) This unsourced report marks a slight uptick in SAT and ACT scores for home-schooled students, but nothing that indicates if this study controlled for parents’ education, income, and other relevant factors.
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p>I just mentioned my own experience. Of course there are many successful cases of home schooling…those are the ones that I likely never see. However, I do see the results of families who think home schooling is an easy way out, discover otherwise, and thus send their student back into my classroom. Given the number of new friends who’ve appeared in this thread, is there anyone who would care to present a link to data from an unbiased source? This Globe story is more of the same…vague generalities punctured by specific examples. I’m hoping for better than that.
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p>What’s coming out is that often home schooling is simply good schooling. The difference is that home schoolers don’t have ignorant “reformers” breathing down their necks, so they have the freedom to do what they — and most public school teachers — know is the right way to do it.