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And how does that compare with education superstars such as South Korea in terms of percentage of, say, GNP spent on education? Maybe the increase should be even bigger if too little was spent before. Plus, your country is still growing, unlike most western countries, so naturally education will consume more and more money.
I am in favor of getting rid of the Department of Education
all together so I am not one to discuss adding more money to it Bring education back to the local level where it belongs. No child left behind was a disaster. Teachers need to teach to learn, not teach to test (if that makes sense).
I have stated the very same thing earlier in this thread, and 90% homeschoolers flip out when you mention a competency exam.
I have nothing wrong with people using alternative means of educating their children, but there must be standards set to ensure their children are actually being taught the basics.
As I said back in my first post on this thread, I question States that do not test OR evaluate on a yearly basis. I have had my son take Standardized tests yearly - and he has done extremely well (bragging)
With that said, remember, some home school parents are totally against the "tests themselves that the government uses" - so it defeats the purpose of their choice of freedom. They don't want to involve the Government any more than they have to. After all they have rejected the system they represent Many of them use a yearly evaluation by a certified teacher of their child's portfolio though.
I prefer the standardized tests because, after all, my son will be going to College But that is me, and I
respect the reasons others do not.
I am okay with it and I think the family should be compensated for home schooling... if the state and fed spends $8k per student, then the family should get a non-taxable $8k per child that is home schooled HOWEVER, I would still require an exam every year to make sure they are meeting progress compared with the students that are in public education... the reason is that not everyone is gifted to be a teacher and schooling is about the child...
Gee... then as a childfree person, I'd like a $8K credit for NOT having a child and NOT using the public school system... or actually more than that, whatever the average family size is and multiply that by $8K.
I said I was going to stay out of this discussion...but I can't help it.
While we have always had our children take standardized tests and I think it's a good idea to do so, I have some questions about requiring it.
For example, what would you do if the home schooled child tested lower than the 50th percentile. What if they were lower than the 25th percentile. Maybe...God forbid they were lower than the 10th percentile.
What would you do? Require them to attend public school? If that is true, what about all the public school students that are lower than those percentiles?
I have 4 children, 3 of them test near the top percentiles. One has some learning problems and has always struggled. But we refused to get her tested for these issue because I knew she would be labeled. We have worked and worked with her and she has a very good work ethic. She works very hard for everything that she accomplishes in school. She has to work much harder than her peers.
This is the first year that she is not home schooled, she is attending a boarding school at her own preference because this school has an aviation program. We refused to allow her to take the math program at that school but to work independently in the program she has used for years. They agreed to this as long as she checks in a with a teacher once a week. She sent me a text today, " I'm pretty much the math genius here...weird huh?" She is further advanced than anyone at that school in math and the students and teachers recognize it. Can you imagine where she would have been if we would have given in to the people who wanted us to have her tested and put into a public school program because of her test scores?
What would you do? Require them to attend public school? If that is true, what about all the public school students that are lower than those percentiles?
Each child participating in a nonpublic home-based educational program shall be evaluated when such child reaches grades three, five, seven, nine, and eleven.
If the child's composite score on said test is at or below the thirteenth percentile, the school district shall require the parents to place said child in a public or independent or parochial school until the next testing period; except that no action shall be taken until the child is given the opportunity to be retested using an alternate version of the same test or a different nationally standardized achievement test selected by the parent from a list of approved tests supplied by the state board.
Each child participating in a nonpublic home-based educational program shall be evaluated when such child reaches grades three, five, seven, nine, and eleven.
If the child's composite score on said test is at or below the thirteenth percentile, the school district shall require the parents to place said child in a public or independent or parochial school until the next testing period; except that no action shall be taken until the child is given the opportunity to be retested using an alternate version of the same test or a different nationally standardized achievement test selected by the parent from a list of approved tests supplied by the state board.
LOL, I would have loved to hear that debate.
"Shall we make it 15, no it should only be 10...ok, let's settle on the 13th percentile. If they are up to the 14th percentile then they are doing OK."
Some students are more gifted than others. There are new types of schools being tested, for instance those where students belong to various grades at the same time depending on the subjects. In other cases students from various grades are even taught in the same class room by several teachers.
Many of these new school models try to cope with the old problem that some students simply learn faster or have different strengths than others. And of course smaller classes are always a good thing, but they cost more. Another reason why I think more rather than less money should be spent on education. It is a long-term investment. Teaching has to be made a worthwhile profession, teachers have to be paid and treated well rather than being considered cheap all-around employees (teacher/psychologist/mother etc.) that cure all the social problems modern kids tend to bring to school.
Schools as such are important in my views. The experience of being away from home, among other kids from all kinds of backgrounds etc. It is the way human kids have always grown up until the 'invention' of and overemphasis on the nucleus family, when parents started to consider children as their property and separate themselves from the rest of society.
I attended a school similar to what Neuling is describing. 30 kids max and Sophomore-Seniors in grouped classes. 2 teachers. We studied English for 2 months, then Social Studies for 2 months, etc. Intensive on one subject rather than multiple at a time, with a daily focus on applying what we learned to real life situations. Lots of trips to learn hands on and interact rather than memorizing textbooks.
Unfortunately, they closed the program down last year due to budget. That school shaped me into being a fantastically productive adult and prepared me for the real world. I donated money for their trips every year, as did other alumni, but it fell on the chopping block one too many times and was shut.
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Bring education back to the local level where it belongs. No child left behind was a disaster. Teachers need to teach to learn, not teach to test (if that makes sense).
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