[workitoutnow]

Originally Posted by 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!

You belonged somewhere else. Glad it worked out for you.

[jackmccullough]

I can't imagine why the OP or anyone else would think they have some kind of absolute right to educate their children as they see fit without any possible state oversight.

You chose to have children and you have certain obligations to them, including the obligation to provide them with decent food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and education. Your obligations to provide all these necessities of life are subject to state oversight if you neglect them.

Whatever your pet issues (creationism? geocentrism? biblical pi?) may be, the way you treat and educate your children will have effects on their lives and the lives of others for decades to come. It is entirely reasonable that the state, in order to avoid serious neglect of the children's needs, will oversee your children's education.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, New Hampshire also has standards and regulations for home education. Home Education | Office of School Standards | Division of Instruction | NH Department of Education

[voyager977]

"Anyone who's spent 5 minutes studying this issue knows that homeschooled children do very well academically and socially and excel in college (the classroom setting.)"

Declarative statements like this on just about any topic are meaningless. While it may be true that some homeschooled children do as well or better than their traditionally schooled peers, there are no doubt many that perform less well. Very often the studies and/or polls that allegedly support such claims are limited in scope and their results should be used as a guide rather than a definitive conclusion that blankets all homeschoolers everywhere.

As to the OP's original posting. You stated that your husband has "had" to turn down 2 jobs in VT. You need to own your decisions. No one forced him to turn down those jobs. He chose to turn them down because you and possibly he disagree with VT's homeschooling requirements. VT didn't do this to you. VT is not trying to keep people away with our draconian regulations. My boys are friends with children from 3 families in our small town in NW VT who are homeschooled and while I've had many conversations with their parents, I've never once heard complaints about the restrictive regulations.

You prefer to live and raise your children where you feel less prevailed upon by society to adhere to educational requirements with respect to testing and curriculum. Good for you. It sounds like NH works for you.

Please stop trying to protect those of us across the border from ourselves or our intrusive government. You don't need the state government trying to look out for you just as we don't need you to look out for us. We're doing just fine over here, but thanks for thinking of us.

[utsci]

We homeschooled our daughter in NV where there are no regulations in our county that require any testing, etc. The only requirement is that you register with the school district when you decide to homeschool, I assume to account for your child not being in school especially if they attended school the year before.

That being said, I have seen good homeschooled families and I have seen bad ones. The good ones are followig some sort of curriculum or plan to be sure the student hits all the milestones and important points. The not so great ones have no plan, no structure, and no goals. We've observed those kids to end up working minimum wage jobs as they have few skills, and not the skills desired by any employers other than Walmart or McDonalds. On the other hand, some really great kids whose parents really cared about education have gone on to higher educations and are doing things with their lives.

I don't think testing (I certainly would agree to do the Iowa tests but not every single state/county/district requirement) or turning in a yearly curriculum is a bad request. But if you want to totally "unschool" your kids I guess NV is the place to go.

[AAAttica]

I'm always surpised by all the concern that is generated for the kids of us poor little homeschoolers. I guess it must just be that we upset the big governement types by daring to step away from the herd, and take our kid's education out of the hands of the NEA and handle it ourselves.

I say surprised, because I've been hearing a government PSA lately about how twenty-two percent of kids drop out of school and how we all need to step up and mentor them-but I don't think it was the homeschoolers they were worried about-but rather they were saying that there was a crisis with almost one quarter of kids in this country fleeing their government schools. So in Vermont while the prisions are overflowing, there are record number of people going onto welfare programs of one sort or another, heroin is epidemic, hitherto unknown numbers of adults are not working, and just today a nationwide survey was announced that found that only a third of adults could name the three branches of our government! And you guys are worried about the meger two percent of familes that decide to homeschool? When we lived in Vermont, I remember reading the school reports in the papers and being shocked that in the Royalton school district one year that not one student in the 8th grade was deemed to be proficient in math! Zero. And those same experts, the ones who produced those sterling results, were the ones who would stand in judgement of our homeschool? Right!

And just to be clear, this homeschooling family is not some wild den of anarchists. We are not against the government having any oversight, we just object to excessive and heavy handed meddling from the NEA and their ilk. Our main concern with testing is that the teacher's union and their government enablers are constantly trying to get us to take the same tests they take in their schools, which would force us to teach to the test just like the poor government teachers have to. If we wanted our kids to have a dumbed-down, common core education we could save a lot of money and time and just send our kids to the local school. And yes, I do realize the government has a legitimate concerned that our child isn't being abused in ways that seem to be rampant in the pubic schools these days, so we don't object to any oversight-just the concern trolling that the NEA is always up to. The type of faux concern that forces us to join the Homeschool Legal Defense Fund so that we'll have legal protection in the case of government harassment.

And you're right, Jack, we did teach our daughter about the Bible. And about our Constitution and the Bill of Rights and whole lot of other things that are neglected in the government schools obsessed about gobal warming and other nonsense these days. She also did community service every semister and learned to defend herself and her beliefs and in the end she did well enough on her SATs to get into her first choice for college. And imagine, we did all that without any money or help from the government!

Oh, and if anyone wants to bring up the canard of socialization—socialization is the best reason to homeschool! The proposition of having kids spending all day being socialized by a mass of their peers is the most damaging trend in our country. When my mother came to live with us in the last years of her life, my daughter got to spend time with her Grandma, time she wouldn't have gotten if she had been away from home at school. And that experence, as tough as it was at times, is another reason why homeschooling was a blessing to her. So, even if our daughter had bombed on the SAT and was flipping burgers now, I would consider the fact that she is a happy, well adjusted young adult to be reason enough to have homeschooler her.
So while we homeschoolers will forever be grateful for big government and the NEA's concern for the welfare of our children, we realy wish you would direct that corcern where it is really needed, the poor, benighted children in the government schools.

To bring this back around to Vermont, it just so happens that my wife and I just enjoyed a partial vaction amongst the green mountain. Since I had business to transact in New Hampshire, we took the opportunity to stay with friends in Bradford. We had a great time hiking and sightseeing while catching up with how everyone in the old community was doing. But what we heard in our visits shocked even me, the Vermont curmudgeon. I was taken back by how friend after friend told us that as soon as the kids were settled, the house sold or retirement reached they were leaving the state. These folk are multi-generation Vermonters, they're volunteers in the fire department, business owners and even one teacher and they said they've had it with the taxes, the lack of good jobs, the weather and all the nonsense that Vermont has become.

While I'm sure hearing of their opinions won't make any difference to you progressives in Montpellier, who are giddy with power as you take over the state. But you should beware, a lot of your fellow citizens are looking towards the future of the state, a state they love, with tremendous apprehension. They're watching with dismay as the government rashly drives out an important employers like Yankee and a governor who won't tell anyone how the state is going to pay for its take over of the health care system—until after the election.

I signed on here to defend homeschoolers, but the reason that I was even reading the Vermont forum is that I, like our former neighbors, love Vermont and there are still times when I miss her. Really I do. I don't feel like we left Vermont, so much as we were driven out. When we were moving my wife cried the whole way to Virginia, but after our recent trip I asked her if now that we are empty nesters, if she would ever consider moving back. She said emphatically, "No." That as much as it hurt at the time, moving was the right thing to do and that the South is home now. And while ours is the story of just one family, according to the last census we are indicative of a larger trend, a trend that doesn't bode well for Vermont.

So if there is a summing up of this missive, it's this—quit picking on your homeschoolers, we're an indepedent lot and we won't abide being bullied. And if you don't, we may well vote—with our feet.

[Clavicus Smile]

You do realize that the standards are as strict as they are for homeschooling because the state doesn't want Bill & Sue to be home schooled by Grandma Betty and only learn the outdated horseradish that Grandma Betty learned in the 50's. The State wants Home schooled kids to be on par with those who are taught in a classroom. If you find teaching to the accepted curriculum to be "Oppressive then maybe you should take another look at the situation. Would you want your children to apply for College and only be on a 10th grade learning level because you couldn't be bothered to teach them to the curriculum? (I am not saying that you would do that I am merely stating a hypothetical)