In defense of home schooling, 26 July 2008, The Times Gazette, Hillsboro, Ohio
A request was made by a local public school administrator at a recent board of education meeting that the newspaper “do” an exposé on home schooling.
…
Why challenge the newspaper? We are not the home school police. Frankly, we have enough to do to keep up with those public bodies that spend more and more of taxpayers’ money each year. But I digress.
Sounds as if the public school administrator might be an advocate of the style of journalism practiced by the Akron Beacon Journal.
Among the articles are positive stories about people involved in homeschooling, but the overall picture is one of murderously incompetent adults who are pretending to know how to raise the children that they’ve stolen, and lying about how well they’re doing, while trying to take over the world in their spare time.
What if, instead, the paper published Ohio Achievement Test (OAT) results for local public schools in the education section of the paper? That seems a bit more reasonable since the public schools use public money, unlike homeschooling families who use what’s left of their own money.
- Bright Elementary
- Hillsboro Elementary
- Hillsboro Middle
- His Elementary (no decline in scores, unlike the others)
I don’t like appearing to bash public schools by pointing to test scores, although highlighting public information is only just referencing information bought and paid for by the public and available to the public — it isn’t the fault of the person doing the pointing out if the information is ‘unattractive.’ But calling for an “exposé” in a public forum — especially “by a school board president” — is as good as writing slurs about people on the walls of public bathrooms. You don’t even have to follow up the information; the seed of doubt is planted.
If the school board president knows that something is amiss, then tell the proper authorities. This is required of public school employees.
If this was a re-run of the Harper Valley PTA, then dummy up.
Mary said on July 27, 2008
It has been reported that a local homeschooler was the reporter that the question was directed to and that the comment followed the administrator complaining that funding was being lost to homeschoolers and private schools.
I was going to comment here, but the more I searched, the more I discovered, so I commented here:
http://www.tiprr.com/blog/?p=172