This article from Massachusetts is, overall, a pleasant article, but ‘pleasant’ usually isn’t eye-catching, is it? Thoughtful readers like to dig for the differences.
- Tri-Town Transcript, Beverly, Massachusetts, 31 March 2006, Home for the duration
But the social aspect is just a fraction of the reason she and her husband chose home schooling. The ability to customize their children’s curriculums, take vacations on weeks other than the busy school vacation weeks, and the overall efficiency of schooling are other critical reasons, said Breuer.
Fellow Topsfield home school mother Laurie Hanna, a former elementary school teacher, said the difference in time efficiency is an important reason she choose to home school her own children.
Of course, there is the de rigueur inclusion of what homeschoolers are legally bound to submit to the authorities by way of paperwork. Where would an article about homeschooling be without Da Rules?
- To keep home schooled children in step with their peers, parents must send a copy of curriculum plans for the year to the school district’s superintendent, said Hanna. At the end of the year, families must also send an evaluation, either via a standardized test or portfolio of the children’s work.
Now, if X% of former-teacher parents choose homeschooling because it is an “efficient” form of education, they probably have a solid experiential base for comparison, and it apparently plays out the way these parents expect as they report that they continue homeschooling. But what does ‘keeping in step’ mean?  Do Massachusetts parents have to slow their children down if the kids surge ahead of their peers? And which peers? The A-student kids, or the … other … kids? Do the parents need to present anti-bullying programs (scroll down a scootch), or to read ‘alternative lifestyle’ materials to their five-year-olds?
Stating that homeschooled kids must stay “in step with their peers” sends the message that these homeschooled kids need to be kept up to scratch with kids in public schools, but what does ”in step” really mean?