It is never certain if an article headlined as homeschooling really is about homeschooling. All to frequently they are about mis-labeled public or private school programs, is more about an editor’s bias than homeschooling, or the reporter never breaks free from a schoolish headset.

This piece is about homeschooling. The reporter starts out well by capturing the flavor of homeschooling:

When 7-year-old Annabelle Kirkpatrick studies fractions and converting pints to quarts, she and her mom go into their kitchen and start cooking.

For a lesson on caterpillars, they browse around their backyard flower garden for a look at the little critters firsthand. After all, Annabelle is homeschooled, which means her parents’ two-story house in Eustis is her classroom.

The article reports a 21% growth in the numbers in local Lake County alone. When asked for the reason a district official says, “There’s not any one single thing that I would identify.”

No one has studied the recent trend, which has hit school districts nationwide. Education leaders have said the trend is likely fueled by economics. In these tight financial times, a lot of parents can’t afford private schools anymore. But they don’t want their kids in public schools, so they’re homeschooling them.

For years, one of the main reasons parents chose to homeschool was a dissatisfaction with public schools – and that has not changed, said an official with the Florida Parent-Educators Association.

It is good to see this reason to homeschool make it into print. The writers next line puts that into perspective, “But also, homeschooling doesn’t seem so odd anymore.”

Then the writer highlights the parent-child bond which is often overlooked.

Homeschooling seemed like the perfect arrangement for the youngest Kirkpatrick, who sometimes seemed to get lost in all the activity.

“I never really felt like I got to know her, spend time with her,” explained Angela Kirkpatrick. “You can mold a homeschool program to fit your family.”

History does repeat. When we started working on our first issue of HEM in 1983 the unemployment rate was similar to todays numbers. In the mid to late 80′s we received report after report from communities across the nation where a private Christian schools closed its doors and the numbers of homeschoolers doubled overnight. It appears the same dynamic is at work in this recession:

Two of Florida’s biggest private-schools [Christian Home and Bible School and Liberty Christian Academy] associations have said enrollment has dropped an estimated 7 percent to 12 percent statewide.

This is a good article to start the week with.

Bad economy may be fueling homeschooling trend

Great looking “home-grown” veggies in the pictures

Homeschooling offers a rich soil for learning Tampa Bay Times
By MINDY RUBENSTEIN, June 27, 2009

They [homeschool support group] go on field trips to local parks and to the zoo. And they work together to tend a large, thriving garden at one member’s Zephyrhills home.

They grow herbs, watermelons, strawberries, corn, squash and green beans. “Anything we thought of we’d like to eat we put in the garden,” Seal said. “And we add to it all the time.”

I wondered how accurate Ms. Rubenstein’s Florida homeschool requirement information was, as quoted below.  (My home state of Illinois has a Department of Education asking for a Home School Registration Form that is not required by law. )

According to state law, homeschool parents can choose one of several options to make sure the children are progressing: through visits with a psychologist, an evaluation of a schoolwork portfolio or with standardized testing like the FCAT.

But doing a cursory search, it appears that a psychological evaluation would suffice as a sign off for an educational evaluation.  Educational progress via psychological exams?  How does that work?  If psychology is the study of human behavior, how would that square up with educational development?

Florida: Homeschooling is “Rich Soil for Learning”

Roy Jones Jr.’s boys keep it real on the farm

By Jason Jordan/ March 21, 2009

Early morning farming

Here’s a look at a typical day.

“It’s always dark when we wake up,” D says. “Never fails.”

Today, they win by default — it’s overcast. And even though it’s just 6:15 a.m., D, a freshman at Pensacola Junior College, has to make haste if he’s going to be at music appreciation class on time and keep his 4.6 grade point average intact.

Dre and DJ are in their third year of home school, where they, too, hold down A averages. Jones was born and raised in Pensacola and graduated from Booker T. Washington High in 1987. The twins attended public school until age 11 and have been home-schooled since.

ESPN: Keeping it real-Roy Jones Jr. and family

Home-Schooled Homebuilders Win Aid, 15 July 2008, Tampa Tribune, Tampa, Florida

Sometimes, the Suggses worried the unorthodox upbringing might limit their children’s college opportunities.

But the path less traveled can be rewarding.

Last week, all three of the Suggs children received college scholarships from the Gulf Coast Community Foundation of Venice, in part because of the homebuilding experience.

…

The family dug out the home’s foundation three times because of summer rain. The plumbing failed inspection twice.

…

And the Suggs twins got practical experience with math and building materials that should come in handy as professional engineers.

“Pick a material, they’ve touched it and worked with it,” Mark Suggs said. “They have the practical experience engineers wish they had.”

Homeschooling experience leads to scholarships for teens

On The Mark: No better way to spend one’s time, 28 May 2008, Marconews, Marco Island, Florida

Every year, Florida hosts a large and ever-growing convention to promote homeschooling and assist parents in understanding this viable alternative to public education for their children. The convention is sponsored by the Florida Parent-Educators Association and the yearly conventions, held in May, are centrally located within one of the larger hotels in the Orlando area. If you ever thought of taking the plunge into homeschooling, but were skeptical of whether or not you could make it work, this convention provides the answers and methods to help you overcome your doubts.

Homeschool conventions worthwhile

A ping-pong article. The people who homeschool support homeschooling. The experts aren’t so sure about it. Assertion then rebuttal; pick a side. Rinse and repeat.

More children going to school at home, 20 April 2008, Miami Herald, Miami, Florida

… Statewide, more than 55,000 students are home-schooled — a 34 percent increase since 2001 and a remarkable number, experts say, considering that the practice was illegal in Florida a little more than two decades ago.

…

Over the past decade, the trend has given rise to a multimillion-dollar industry. Co-ops and support groups abound. Online, virtual support groups and lesson plans are just a click away.

…

For years, home education has been a subject of intense criticism. Teachers unions across the country have blasted the practice, saying that parents are underqualified to teach their children.

…

Psychologists have also raised concerns about socialization. But Monica Dowling, a child psychologist at the University of Miami, said that educating children at home does not necessarily inhibit social development.

…

”Most people think that we don’t have any friends and we don’t get out much,” said Loren Pizarro, 18, a spirited and well-spoken teenager from Davie. “That’s totally not true. We have a lot of fun together.”

…

Experts caution that home schooling is not for everyone.

Florida homeschooling said to be growing

A news outlet summarized a talk by “Home Education Coordinator Robert Schiavone” to the League of Women Voters in St. Johns, Florida, by emphasizing the need for ‘oversight’ of homeschooling families in order to prevent mistreatment of children by their parents.

LWV Learns Undetected Child Abuse Possible Among Home Schoolers, 22 March 2008, My St. Johns Sun, St. Johns, Florida

As the popularity of home schooling grows, so does the question of undetected child abuse, Home Education Coordinator Robert Schiavone told the League of Women Voters at their March meeting in St. Augustine Beach City Hall.

Apparently, that’s not what was heard by one in-house reporter for League.

LWV Jacksonville, April 2008 newsletter, page 3

Our speaker for March was Bob Schiavone, Student Services Coordinatorfor St. Johns County. He discussed the Home School program and what services they receive from the County and State. There are about 900 County students in this program. Each household is considered a private school and there are strict state laws limiting control by the local board. The students are evaluated once a year. They are not required to take the FCAT tests and do not receive a regular diploma. Some of the reasons for home schooling are health problems, problems in school, and religious reasons. Also many of the home schoolers feel there is too much government control. Mr. Schiavone believes that most home schooled students do well scholastically.

I, for one, am happy that there is a discrepancy in the reports because when laws affecting homeschooling come up for approval or disapproval, most homeschooling parents would rather have voters — women or men — who understand something about homeschooling writing to their elected representatives about it. Unfortunately, there are probably more readers of the news outlets that ran the ‘abuse version’ than there were women in attendance at the LWV meeting, or readers of the LWV newsletter. LWV Learns Undetected Child Abuse Possible Among Home Schoolers and Risks, benefits of home schooling discussed

The ‘abuse version’ of the talk detailed various concerns Mr. Schiavone has about homeschooling:

• undetected child abuse
• an increasingly popular system that grants enormous parental independence
• “The family can move and our office doesn’t know where the child has gone,”
• Schiavone said home school parents have an exceptionally strong lobby that wants to retain freedom. Their privacy is protected by federal laws.

The outlook Mr. Schiavone presents appears to be that the school system is between children and their parents, and that schools act as advocates for the children.

Undetected Child Abuse

The “undetected child abuse” that is such a concern is not a part of homeschooling. The main point of homeschooling is not to hide children away, even if parents want certain aspects of mainstream society diminished in effect. The point of homeschooling is to give the children an education. On email lists, or at support group meetings, I have never heard a parent ask, “Where can I live so that my children meet no one.” (which doesn’t mean that no one has ever considered this, only that I have never heard it) I have heard years’-worth of requests for “What is the best curriculum?” In my experience, education is the point.

Despite the indications of the apparent majority of parents who turn to homeschooling, homeschooling parents have been guilty of child mistreatment, sometimes appallingly so. Still, are these parents the bulk of the iceberg of “undetected child abuse?” National statistics do not support that viewpoint.

The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) reports that:

Studies in Colorado and North Carolina have estimated that as many as 50 to 60 percentof child deaths resulting from abuse or neglect are not recorded as such (Crume, DiGuiseppi, Byers, Sirotnak, Garrett, 2002; Herman-Giddens, Brown, Verbiest, Carlson, Hooten, et al., 1999). [emphasis in original]

These children are not all homeschooled.

A chart provided by NCANDS shows that even if some homeschooled children are at risk, they are not in the ‘high risk’ range.

Over 80% of child abuse fatalities happen to children who are below the age of compulsory school attendance. If the concern is for the safety of all children, and not just homeschooled children, perhaps children from birth to three years of age should be the ones going to ‘school’ for oversight purposes.

If parents have raised their children up to the age of compulsory school attendance without any problems, then the probability is that they will continue without problems once the children are school age, especially since homeschoolers constitute only about 2% of the school age group.

A System that Grants Enormous Parental Independence

First off, homeschooling is not a “system.” It may look like a system to someone who isn’t ‘in’ it and who is predisposed to think only of systems, and some people may want their program to look like The System, but there is no formal organization to it all. (yet) Families either choose to do it, or not, and even after choosing to do it, there is nothing to keep them in the loop.

Secondly, homeschooling does not “grant” parental independence. All parents, whether homeschooling or not, have this “enormous” independence of action as an inherent right and responsibility as the parents of their children.

Families Can Move At Will

Well, gee whiz. Whodathunk. The citizens of the United States have freedom of movement.

I hope that the American school system’s purpose is to educate children, and not to function as a de facto surveillance system of families with school age children. The records that schools keep on children ought to be a synopsis of the child’s school career so that future instructors have an idea of what the child has already been taught so that they don’t put the kid through the same thing all over again, or perhaps omit something crucial. Records are useful in case a child moves to another place. Schools ought to maintain records for the benefit of a child and his family, not as a confidential internal tracking system although when I withdrew my children from school, the (friendly) principal joked (?) that it probably wouldn’t do her any good to seal the records in the envelope with tape. I didn’t laugh out loud, but I did smile and shake my head ‘no.’

And, by the by, I have experienced living in a country or two in which personal movement is tracked. I have been registered with local police departments and other government entities so that my whereabouts, and the whereabouts of my unenrolled children, were known. I was asked about their lack of enrollement.

The Strong Homeschool Lobby

Again — oh, my, goodness. Citizens are standing up for themselves? What is this world coming to? And homeschoolers’ privacy is protected by federal laws? Goodness gracious.

In truth, there is no organized ‘homeschool lobby’ as industry-funded advocates whose job is to befriend politicians. Yes, the HSLDA, a membership organization, puts together homeschool lobbying efforts, and does (or did) fund specific politicians just like other lobbyists. Howerver, homeschooling citizens themselves do the majority of ‘lobbying,’ especially at the local level. This is not lobbying on behalf of someone else; this is grassroots petitioning of public representatives by the people they represent. There is a difference.

And as for the protected privacy, again, the federal laws that protect homeschooling families protect everyone. There are no ‘federal homeschool privacy laws’ (or at least I hope that didn’t fly under my radar).

The canary in the family section of the civil rights mine is homeschooling. If legislatures pass laws to specifically restrict ‘homeschooling freedoms,’ then the identical freedoms of non-homeschooling parents will be equally affected.

The articles end with:

“We have to be careful of the rights of parents,” [Schiavone] noted. “Personally I’d like to have more time to work and contact, but by law I can’t.”

Damn straight. The thing for non-homeschoolers to keep in mind is that if the winds of change blow educational trends in a direction that they object to, will they or won’t they also want the right to educate their children as they see fit? The protection of Constitutional rights is especially important when the people insisting on their rights are the people with whom you do not agree. That is one of the blessings of liberty.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Homeschooling “accountability”

At 15, he’s meeting the challenge, 16 January 2008, St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, Florida

For most of his life, Andrew has been homeschooled. Sure, there was that stint in preschool. But Andrew was already reading back then, Mrs. Stoeve said.The Pasco schools didn’t offer a gifted program until third grade, so Mrs. Stoeve, who, like her husband was a nurse at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point, decided to cut back on her hours so she could homeschool her son.

That worked pretty well for a while. But when Andrew turned 12, he told his mom that he hadbeen coasting academically and that it was time to get on with his life.

“I think he was bored with homeschooling and wanted the interaction with teachers and other students,” said his mom, who began seeking alternatives that would meet his academic needs.

They sent an application to a local private school but were told the school couldn’t meet his needs because he was so advanced. Dual enrollment classes at PHCC seemed to be the best fit.

The young man is getting on in life, and his parents did what they needed in order to support him. We all have needs that are special to our circumstances. Congratulations to Andrew and his family.

posted by Valerie

Working on bachelor’s degree after receiving dual associate’s at 14

The myth is that there are ‘subjects’ that ‘parents can’t teach.’ I presume that the logic is that because a person has not professionally trained in a certain ‘subject’ that he or she can’t help younger people learn basic information about that ‘subject.’ For me, that brings to mind an aphorism I had hanging up when the kids were home. “If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re probably right.”

“Got Art? Got Music?” is couple’s way of giving something back to …, 4 January 2008, Baker County Press, Macclenny, Florida

Parents of locally home-schooled children have found the classes to be beneficial. Art instruction is sometimes not covered in the home-school curriculum because parents don’t feel qualified or have any idea how to teach it.

In pointing out the myth, I don’t mean to denigrate private classes in anything, or the instructors. Private classes by people with talents have been around for years, decades, centuries and millennia. Learning at the knee of a master (or mistress) has a venerable history.

What irks me is the ‘parents can’t teach’ meme. (the “home-school curriculum” meme — as if there is One Curriculum To Bind Them All — raises hackles, too) The writers of this myth miss an important aspect of homeschooling — learning alongside the kids.

In high school, I wasn’t college-track material (I’m guessing mainly because of boredom and wisecrackery), and I missed classes such as chemistry and physics. I learned astronomy on my own, but schools rarely offer high school astronomy so it isn’t something I would have learned there, anyhow. It wasn’t until I was homeschooling my younger three kids that I had the opportunity to find out what basic chemistry and physics were about. The learning was fun, and my own education continued. Why should I have been denied that learning opportunity because I was unqualified to teach? To my way of thinking, denying me learning at any stage would be a net loss. Aren’t we all supposed to be buying into the Lifelong Learning jazz, or am I only supposed to accept instruction from the instructors someone else chooses?

As it turned out, I was able to explain some aspects to my kids using ‘adult logic and common sense,’ and conversely, they were able to explain some aspects to me (mostly concerning those slippery numbers). We helped each other.

As for art (the subject of this post’s article), the kids and I traveled the path together again.

• Mommy, It’s a Renoir
• Ed Emberley’s books
• Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
• Drawing With Children

Couching learning in a professional student/teacher relationship perpetuates the idea that children must always be instructed, and that if a person isn’t professionally trained, he or she is most useful as a doorstop. What a dreary, march-in-time-to-the-drummer, existence. I prefer a slightly edgier, and adventurous path.

posted by Valerie

Parents unable to ‘teach?’

Thanks to girl, Shell Key’s birds safer, 26 December 2007, St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, Florida

At 9 years old Nora Jade Flower is already a member of the Audubon Society of Florida with an affinity for spotting rare shorebirds.

She frequently volunteers for bird counts and conservation efforts with people four times her age.

…

She spoke before the Pinellas County Commission on behalf of one of her favorite places for bird watching, the Shell Key Preserve.

…

She was advocating the 2007 Shell Key Preserve Management Plan, which was adopted by the county in October and finalized by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection earlier this month.

…

[Nora's mother] homeschools Nora Jade and her younger brothers Miles, 7, and Ramsay, 2. Part of their education has been regular trips to the preserve.

posted by Valerie

9-year old is Audubon Society volunteer