[Yakscsd]

Originally Posted by YankeeMomNH

And, Yakscsd, there are not a dozen people waiting for his job and he didn't apply for it -- it was offered to him. Few are qualified and and it is through a company he is personally associated with. They are greatly disappointed that he can't accept it (but understanding as to why.) Instead, they are working with him to create a solution in our own (freer) state, NH (which will benefit NH and take more away from VT.)

As for the notion that laws there are created to keep a certain "type" out, that makes me laugh. I wish that were provable, actually. I never knew of a state that would actively keep working middle-class taxpayers out and, what? Court the welfare crowd? Or just the rich? That's all that is left in Socialist Utopia, I guess.

Rest assured, he has a great job in the meantime.

Sure there are, the company wont stop working because they didn't get their first choice. They will jsut move to the next guy.

As for keeping a certain type out, I simply didn't know anyway to say that without sounding insulting. It is what it is.

Thanks for thinking of my rest. I'm always well rested and tan.

[FrugalYankee]

This could be the state's response to some of the communes that were around in the 1970's. There was one where the inhabitants called themselves "Earth People." My husband and I know a couple and their children who lived there. The kids grew up in that commune and basically received zero education. They were put to work harvesting millet and whatnot but can't do any arithmetic, read and write properly etc. When those people do get out they have very few job options as about all they have known is manual labor. One of these kids asked if I could help him learn math so he could try for a job as a machinist. He's 30 years old and not even at an 8th grade level in math.

I think some kind of tests should be required. I understand the movement towards homeschooling, but at the same time some of the most vocal supporters of it are the last people I think should be teaching kids (even their own) beyond the 4th grade level.

[Ohky0815]

HSLDA says:
“Between the ages of six and sixteen years, unless… the child
has… completed 10th grade.” Vermont Statutes Annotated title 16,
§ 1121.
Required Days of Instruction: None.
Required Subjects: “The minimum course of study” includes “basic communication
skills, including reading, writing, and the use of numbers;
citizenship, history, and government in Vermont and the United
States; physical education and comprehensive health education
including the effects of tobacco, alcoholic drinks, and drugs on the
human system and on society; English, American and other
literature; the natural sciences; and the fine arts.” Vt. Stat. Ann. tit.
16, § 906.
-------------
Assessment:
“Each home study program shall assess annually the progress of each of its students.”
Parents may choose between the following options for the assessment:
a. A report in a form designated by the commissioner, by a Vermont certified teacher;
b. “A report prepared by the parents, the student’s instructor, or a teacher advisory service report
from a publisher of a commercial curriculum together with a portfolio of the student’s work that
includes work samples to demonstrate progress in each subject area in the minimum course of
study” (not including physical education, health, or fine arts for children over 12); or

-----------
Seriously, why are you complaining?????? You have it 10x easier than i do in OHIO! Im a homeschooling mom and youre complaining when you have the choice to homeschool in a much easier state.

[Sporin]

That doesn't sound oppressively restrictive to me. NH's laws aren't dissimilar by my understanding. Legal Requirements | we support all reasons for and methods of homeschooling

I'm honestly curious what you find so restrictive about VT's laws which you don't have to accommodate with NH's laws?

That said, it's obviously your choice, I think what people are reacting to is the way you built it into some sweeping, 'Vermont hates Freedom' narrative.

It's like when people talk about how 'Vermont hates Business' yet there are many thousands of us happily running our own small businesses who don't feel some evil, oppressing hand from Montpelier holding us down.

Sweeping generalizations, especially when colored with our own biases and emotions, are rarely accurate.

[Logs and Dogs]

Originally Posted by Sporin

That doesn't sound oppressively restrictive to me. NH's laws aren't dissimilar by my understanding. Legal Requirements | we support all reasons for and methods of homeschooling

I'm honestly curious what you find so restrictive about VT's laws which you don't have to accommodate with NH's laws?

That said, it's obviously your choice, I think what people are reacting to is the way you built it into some sweeping, 'Vermont hates Freedom' narrative.

It's like when people talk about how 'Vermont hates Business' yet there are many thousands of us happily running our own small businesses who don't feel some evil, oppressing hand from Montpelier holding us down.

Sweeping generalizations, especially when colored with our own biases and emotions, are rarely accurate.

Well written

[thunderkat59]

My Wife was in the VT educational system for a few years. "Homeschooling" means potential for bad stuff going on at home. A lot of people try to homeschool to keep authoritarian people from investigating bad things going on in their houses.
Not implying that is your motivation, just letting you know it is a reality in the homeschooling community anywhere.

[AAAttica]

My wife and I left Vermont seven years ago and one of the reasons was how the state treated our homeschooling family.

The straw that broke the camels back came when we received an alert from our homeschooling association that the legislature was discussing another attempt to force us homeschoolers to teach to the states tests. So we rounded up the tykes for a civics lesson and trekked over to Montpelier to voice our objections.

The education committee had decided to have its meeting in a room that wouldn't hold more than a dozen people and were shocked when more than a hundred homeschools showed up. After some loud complaining, they reluctantly moved their meeting to a larger room. They then proceeded to have their discussion sitting with their backs to us! Our 'betters' in the government declined to take questions, but my wife, being the persistent type wanted to make her case for why she was against these new standards. So we waited around until she could meet with one of the representatives. When she finally got the attention on one of the reps (who's name I don't recall now, but I remember he was Progressive from Burlington), she was calmly making her case when this people's representative, who clearly had an attitude, cut her off and condescendingly asked her where she had gotten her education degree from! Before she could answer him, he said that, "He would never vote for anything that made homeschooling easier!" Then he said he had to go, turned and walked off. My wife is a doctor and is probably vastly better educated than that buffoon and yet that Progressive lover of tolerance and diversity felt it was okay to treat her with such disrespect.
On the trip home, while my wife decompressed, we began to question why it was we were paying five thousand dollars a year in property taxes to support a system that held us in such obvious contempt. A year later we had sold our house, packed up the family and my business and moved to Virginia.
People can and do vote with their feet and from the last census we see how that's working out for Vermont.
And incidentally my daughter just finished in the top three percent of the SATs and is off to Hillsdale College this fall.
Viva la revolution!

[GregW]

Try new Hampshire. There are plenty of socially inept home schooled kids around here displaying their ignorance.

[miu]

Originally Posted by GregW

Try new Hampshire. There are plenty of socially inept home schooled kids around here displaying their ignorance.

The OP already lives in NH...

BTW I get the feeling that part of the reason she made this post was to brag about her husband. But count me as not impressed.

And I support states checking up on home schooled children and making sure that all of them are being taught properly. On one side of my house, both parents are alcoholics. The wife is a stay at home mom and super opinionated like the OP. I'd hate to think of her trying to home school her children. But if she wanted to, I'd definitely want NH to be checking in on the situation.

I hope that the OP is getting her kids together with others of their same age. One skill that can't be taught at home is how to deal in various social situations and to function well when others don't think them the center of their tiny universe. And when it comes time to apply to top universities, teens graduating with top grades from high schools with the best track records for their graduates will be more desirable than any home schooled child. And that is because colleges pick students who they think will do well in their environment and become a successful graduate... and that adds to the college's prestige and their hope for future alumni donations. Mommy and daddy can't follow their child into college life, so a home schooled student can be at a disadvantage in this new and foreign social and academic environment. How will a home schooled child react to sitting in a classroom with 40 students?

[Logs and Dogs]

Separating the OP's personal situation from the meat of the discussion.........

Doesn't this really come down to the fact that while many of us like the idea of the government staying out of things, for every child/person that can thrive in that environment there are one or more who would end up either taking advantage of the system or becoming a longer term burden to the state?

So how as a governing body do you find a balance to allow the freedom for home schoolers to guide their children's education while putting enough safeguards in place to at least minimize the impact of the second group who eventually go off the reservation and become a burden?