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Just as it's not fair to lump all homeschoolers together, I think people really need to take a step back and stop lumping all public schools together. I agree with the statement above: "the schools are only going to be as diverse as the surrounding area." It's just as out-of-touch to paint a picture of all, or even most, public schools as places where teachers (or others) force conformity on kids or otherwise hold children back or limit their potential, as it is to say that all homeschooled kids are socially backwards (or alternatively, all are working ten grades ahead of their age and in the other room reading the Illiad in ancient Greek). Public schooling works very well for many children, even gifted kids, but does not work for everyone. Homeschooling works very well for some kids, yet other children would be better off in a public school.
And don't you teach in a charter school? Is there any acceptance policy with charter schools, or are they run the same as public schools? Is parental involvement the same as in public schools? (I don't know anything about charter schools. I know a bit about magnet schools, but I believe they are not the same thing?)
In this school system, neither magnet nor charter schools have to take children who require ESE services. They can, and do, accept ESE kids, but if that child needs speech, or OT, or something similar, they are not accepted (because those schools don't have those professionals on staff).
Thus those schools are able to cherry-pick-- and not surprisingly, show higher scores than their local counterparts. I mean, is it really surprising that the Schools for the Gifted and the Fundamental Schools are consistently ranked among the top in the state? Is it appropriate, by those measures, to call them "public" school? After all, they send their failures off to mingle with the great unwashed, just like we elitist homeschool folks reportedly do.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
Private schools are closer to charter schools only charters have to take everyone. Most private schools I know of do take anyone because they won't turn down the tuition. Most I've looked at have a sliding scale for tution based on family income. I know one mom of six who sends her kids practically for free.
There are private schools and private schools. Many "country day schools" here will take anyone who isn't wearing a pentacle or hijab (though they might take them, too, if they paid up front and agreed to keep quiet during religion class). OTOH, there are quite a few who actually have significantly higher standards-- Tampa Prep, Jesuit, and a few others come to mind.
I see no advantage to learning things early. As I said before, there is no prize for the first one out of the gate. I also don't like the idea of education bieng tailored to my child. I expect my children to grow up and function in a society that isn't all about them. I'm more concerned that they learn to be contributing members. That's one of the things my daughter would lose if she were homeschooled. The opportunity to mentor younger kids who benefit from her being there.
Only if you homeschooled in a box. Which, of course, you have every right to do (at least in Florida), but I know few homeschoolers who actually have.
My son volunteers at a radio station where he's a good twenty to forty years younger than most of those he works with. He's learned from the more seasoned volunteers, but also gets to help along new ones. And he's hoping to host his own show when he gets a bit older (though I don't know that the current blues guy is ready to give up his spot!).
My kids have taken classes with age ranges from six to eleven, and nine to fifteen. When my daughter is sitting in a homeschool co-op mythology class learning about Joseph Campbell and his theory of the hero with a thousand faces, she's sitting beside a seven year old whose mother is teaching, and who consequently knows the material better than she does. OTOH, R doesn't read nearly as well, and my daughter helps her with that. Thus she learns not only can she mentor younger people, but she can learn from them-- something that would behoove many in our society to learn. In a middle school classroom of eleven and twelve year olds, there'd be precious little opportunity for such a thing.
Now of course, nothing says publicly schooled kids can't take extra classes or volunteer at community radio like my kids do. They can have those opportunities. IME having to supplement public school is rather reinventing the wheel, but there are those who choose to do that, and I wish them well of it.
Just as it's not fair to lump all homeschoolers together, I think people really need to take a step back and stop lumping all public schools together. I agree with the statement above: "the schools are only going to be as diverse as the surrounding area." It's just as out-of-touch to paint a picture of all, or even most, public schools as places where teachers (or others) force conformity on kids or otherwise hold children back or limit their potential, as it is to say that all homeschooled kids are socially backwards (or alternatively, all are working ten grades ahead of their age and in the other room reading the Illiad in ancient Greek). Public schooling works very well for many children, even gifted kids, but does not work for everyone. Homeschooling works very well for some kids, yet other children would be better off in a public school.
You really have no choice if you want to compare entities. That's why we look at averages. How does the average compare between different types of education and that has to be tempered with how you'd expect them to compare.
I'd expect charter schools to be below average compared to public schools because charter schools attract students who are either from bad districts or students who wern't doing well to begin with (When kids are doing well, parents seldom change schools. It's when there are problems they change.)
I'd expect homeshooling to be, significantly, above public schools because of demographics, the fact you're dealing with a body of children who all have involved parents and they're more likely to have an educated mother (maternal education is one of the biggest predictors of outcomes), they're being taught in a situation tailored to their percieved needs and there is a low student to teacher ratio. All of this spells success to me so I'd expect very good results from homeschooling.
Public schools, I'd expect results based on demograpics. While the charter I teach at ranks low, compared to the schools in the district I live in, we do pretty good compared to the districts we get our students from. The Jr. High and High schools near me rate poorly compared to other schools in the city but once you account for a large ESL population, scores are about where they should be. Since my kids aren't ESL, this is not a deciding factor for me.
Reality is, the only thing we can do is compare averages, look at what we'd expect based on demographics and other factors and then decide if there is reason that explains any deviations.
As far as a six year old learning geometry, is that because he is truley so far ahead or that his parents want to brag that he is that far ahead? As far as curriculum, because it is so braod with homeschooling, and the parents and kids can choose, how does a homechooling parent know that the curriculum is effective? I am just wondering how they assess what they know and how it is working. Ethusiasm for learning and bragging about doing geometry is great, but if you are not a trained educator how do you assess a program that is so unregulated? Not trying to stir the pot, just truley wondering how you make the content age appropriate.
We are assessed each year by a licensed teacher, who reviews our portfolio and interviews the children. Others may choose to take the FCAT or another standardized test.
More importantly, I know when my children are truly learning because they apply it to real experience, such as when my daughter observed that one of her assigned reading books followed the structure of a classic hero quest, or when I discover that my son is no longer relying on spellcheck. If you know intimately what your children are studying, and how they learn, you needn't rely on tests to tell you these things-- though I understand why third parties require them.
Only if you homeschooled in a box. Which, of course, you have every right to do (at least in Florida), but I know few homeschoolers who actually have.
My son volunteers at a radio station where he's a good twenty to forty years younger than most of those he works with. He's learned from the more seasoned volunteers, but also gets to help along new ones. And he's hoping to host his own show when he gets a bit older (though I don't know that the current blues guy is ready to give up his spot!).
My kids have taken classes with age ranges from six to eleven, and nine to fifteen. When my daughter is sitting in a homeschool co-op mythology class learning about Joseph Campbell and his theory of the hero with a thousand faces, she's sitting beside a seven year old whose mother is teaching, and who consequently knows the material better than she does. OTOH, R doesn't read nearly as well, and my daughter helps her with that. Thus she learns not only can she mentor younger people, but she can learn from them-- something that would behoove many in our society to learn. In a middle school classroom of eleven and twelve year olds, there'd be precious little opportunity for such a thing.
Now of course, nothing says publicly schooled kids can't take extra classes or volunteer at community radio like my kids do. They can have those opportunities. IME having to supplement public school is rather reinventing the wheel, but there are those who choose to do that, and I wish them well of it.
My kids, certainly, wouldn't be out 7 hours a day interacting with other kids. That would be OUT of home schooling, lol. I imagine if I homeschooled, my kids would spend more time with each other than they would with other kids on school days.
I disagree. Supplementing is not reinventing the wheel. It's seeing to your child's particular needs that happen to deviate from the norm. I'd think you'd be reinventing the wheel even more with homeschooling as you'd be a first year teacher for each grade/subject you taught every year. First year teachers aren't very effective. Maybe this explains why homeschooling doesn't deliver the great results we'd expect.
As to volunteering. It's required at the high school I teach at. Each student has to clock 120 hours in order to graduate. They have 3 years to do those hours. Some volunteer more and some less. Kind of like individual homeschoolers would.
I admit they're kind of liberal with what they consider volunteering. They count my dd babysitting for a local stay at home mom with more kids than she can handle for free as volunteering. I've had a talk with her about this. She needs to do something constructive for me to consider it volunteering. Something that gives to the community. Babysitting is something she does anyway. She's trying to keep from going outside of her comfort zone and I'm not buying what she's selling .
If your kids are taking classes, are they really homeschooled? Or do you teach the classes in your home to other kids? Still that would be more like an exclusive private school.
Also, I have to ask how you handle things like chemistry and physics labs? You shoudln't be buying chemicals without training in storage and disposal of said chemicals. I know I have to prove I'm a chemistry teacher to buy what I buy. I can't imagine running some very standard labs at home if I did have the equipment.
Thanks, I've always been curious about this. I'm kind of surprised there isn't some kind of alternative education lab where parents can pay for the labs their kids do.
You can't gage the success of any educational system by the success of one child, it has to be everyone. So we need a large amount of educational reform in this country, all around, before we can say what the magic formula is for education. We need the best of all education programs to be pulled together to improve the American system of education......
Do you think, honestly, that there is one magic formula? I don't believe there is. I think human beings, in our gloriously infinite variety, will never fit into one system. I think, given a big enough school system, with a large enough range of options, will probably serve most. But even in ours (one of the 20 largest in the country), I was told there was nothing which would be a really good fit for my kids (particularly my daughter, who, as noted a bit upstream, has multiple exceptionalities).
Now I suppose I could have invested scores of hours in meetings with the LEA folks, and thousands of dollars in attorney fees, in trying to insist they come up with something, at great expense to the school system. But as a taxpayer as well as a parent, that seemed rather silly when another-- and an excellent-- option was at hand.
So, public school worked for your child and home schooling works for your child....so where's the advantage?
Ivory, you've asked this in a couple of different ways throughout the thread and I don't understand. Why does homeschooling have to be "better than" public school to be acceptable? If both are good options, does it matter which is chosen?
As far as a six year old learning geometry, is that because he is truley so far ahead or that his parents want to brag that he is that far ahead? As far as curriculum, because it is so braod with homeschooling, and the parents and kids can choose, how does a homechooling parent know that the curriculum is effective? I am just wondering how they assess what they know and how it is working. Ethusiasm for learning and bragging about doing geometry is great, but if you are not a trained educator how do you assess a program that is so unregulated? Not trying to stir the pot, just truley wondering how you make the content age appropriate.
The introduction to geometry has been pulled down to kindergarten here. It has to do with the fact that there are basic concepts in algebra, geometry and statistics (the three that have been pulled down) that can be taught at that level. I question how much actualy geometry, alegbra and statistics is really learned though.
I do like replacing blanks with variables simply because it increases the child's comfort level when dealing with variables but the math problem is the same whether it's X = 3 + 4, what is X or 3 + 4 = ____. It's not like they're using the pythagorean theorem to solve for an unknown.
I, actually, disagree with pulling all of this down. We teach too many subjects per year as it is. We needs to cut back the number of subjects and let some of them come later. I'd much rather my children be taught in depth than bredth. For some stupid reason, we Americans think more topics equals more taught when it's really the opposite. Asia has shown us that teaching in depth is what works.
I've read that we teach something like 14 math topics a year to their 7 or 8. One reason some countries give for not taking the TIMMS test in 4th grade is they haven't gotten to all of the topics on the test (the test favors our way of teaching....you'd think we could manage to score average IF IT WORKED) but by 8th grade they have and they beat the pants off of us in testing.
Flitting from topic to topic the way we do, there's hardly time to teach anything in depth and to automaticity. I compare our way of teaching to digging a ditch by scooping one shovel of dirt and moving over 8 inches, scooping another and moving over 8 inches until you get to the end of the row and then you start over taking a scoop and stepping over. I'd compare what they do in Asian countries to standing in place and digging the full depth of the ditch before moving to the next spot. In the end, both dig a ditch but you take way fewer steps (exert less energy) their way.
I've read that we repeat (the buzzword is "spiral") topics for 3-6 years (meaning they are brougth back up for 3-6 years, reviewed and taught, hopefully, in more depth) while Asian countries repeat for 1-3 years. They don't need to repeat as much because their kids learn in depth the first time. There is an efficiency here. Every time you come back to a topic, you have to review it and that is wasted time. Let's say, hypothetically, review takes only one day. For one topic, we spend 3-6 days reviewing to their 1-3. Using averages, that's 4.5 days for us and 1.5 for them. We, litereally, lose three days of school per topic. Mulitply this by all the topics taught in just math and it's easy to see why we're behind. That and a too short school year to begin with. That's another thing we need to copy. Their longer school year.
I question the judgement of a parent wno removes a child from an environment they are thriving in with no good reason. If the child is thriving, why mess with what is, obiously, working? What is the logic of changing things.
Define thriving, please? I would guess that XXXX Elementary School might have defined my son as "thriving", since he made a perfect score on his 3rd and 4th grade math FCATs, and had straight As. OTOH, he hated reading and couldn't spell worth a darn, despite his straight As, so I suspect "thriving" is a subjective term.
Were a child happy, engaged, and truly learning, I personally know of no one who would pull them out on a lark, just to engage in what is really a lot of work, no matter how enjoyable. They may indeed exist, somewhere, but I just don't see them as even remotely typical.
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Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
I'm in favor of giving safety nets to children. With children in a school, parents are the safety net for the school and the school the safety net for the parents. If a homeschooling parent gets it wrong, where is the child's safety net?
My children have a safety net which is comprised of their community and their extended family. Which, to be honest, I trust far more than I would the county school system, which has no stake in whether they are safe, healthy and happy, just as long as they keep getting those 5s on their FCATs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
IMO, the social aspects of school are more important than the academic. Our children's peers have more to do with their success/failure than we do. You have to keep in mind that they are, biologically, programmed to break away from us and form families and society with their peers. School is training for adult life.
I honestly don't see school as training for adult life. Now, granted, I'm only fifty, but I've yet to be asked to engage in anything socially or vocationally similar to any of my school experiences, once I left them. Of course, had I become a schoolteacher, that might vary. But I am not, nor are my children likely to be.
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