I’m still on the fence about the participation by homeschooled kids on public school sports teams, but they’re in the news, so they get included. This first article from Arizona has a good mix of the pluses and minuses of public school sports participation by homeschooled kids.

• Arizona Republic, Phoenix, Arizona, 15 October 2005, Teams find good sports can start at home school

  …

  Of the 20 Class 5A Division I schools in the Phoenix area, eight now have home-schooled students playing for their sports teams.

  And while no one keeps statistics on the total number of home-schooled athletes, administrators say the number is increasing, much as the overall number of home-schooled students overall is increasing.

  …

  The college factor

  There are social advantages to playing on a high school team, and it also provides exposure to college coaches and a resume booster for college applications.

  The Air Force Academy, for instance, urges home-schooled students who wish to enroll to play organized competitive sports and asks parents to sign up their children for high school teams when possible.

  Jarod Gorla, 19, who played baseball for Mesquite High School in Gilbert, said the alternative to playing for a public school is to join a league made up of teams of home-schooled students such as the East Valley Athletes for Christ. Gorla said while that is an option for some athletes, he wanted to play against better competition in the public school system.

  …

  Liability concerns

  When the Legislature was debating the new policy in 1999, the main issue of contention was related to insurance and liability policies in Arizona.

  Rep. Leah Landrum Taylor, D-Phoenix, said the Legislature wasn’t against allowing home-schooled students to participate in organized sports, but was worried the schools would become liable for injuries to non-public school students.

  "When you get right down to it, what type of coverage would the state then be liable for these kids who play for teams at public schools?" she said.

  …

  The association warns parents that demanding access to public school sports teams could lead to more government involvement in the children’s education.

  Playing for a public school team means the state is justified in verifying grades and attendance that are normally private for home-schoolers.

This next article is in the ‘better late than never category,’ and is about a homeschooler participation in the private National Wheelchair Basketball Association’s US Women’s Basketball Festival.

• The Birmingham News, Birmingham, Alabama, 29 Sep 2005, Tourney tips off today at Lakeshore Foundation

  Ron Lykins had the formula for success at the Paralympics last year. The U.S. women’s wheelchair basketball team coach had a squad that scored more points than anybody else and allowed the least.
  …

  Twenty-one of the nation’s best women’s basketball players will be on Lakeshore’s Homewood campus. Six of those players were on the Paralympic squad last year; they have the advantage of knowing Lykins’ system.

  Three players with Alabama ties are in the festival – Gardendale home-schooler Meredith Jett and two players from the University of Alabama. Mary Allison Milford is a freshman from Arkansas; Stephanie Wheeler, a UA graduate student from North Carolina, was on the Athens Paralympic squad.

Belated congratulations to all the players.

(Abject apologies to Lerner & Lowe, and Madeleine l’Engle; sung to tune of Camelot)

A law was made a distant moon ago here, that kids and parents shall not be forgot.  And there’s a legal limit to deciding, in Camazotz.

Pre-testing is required in December, and follow-ups in March on the dot.  By order schooling lingers through September, in Camazotz.

Camazotz!  Camazotz!  I know it sounds a bit bizarre.  But in Camazotz, Camazotz, that’s how conditions are.

The kids may not leave school till after sundown, by eight the morning lessons must begin.  In short there’s simply not, a more observ-ed spot, for reading, writing, ‘rithemetic than here in Camazotz.

The other day Helen Hegener commented on a 4 Oct 2005 column in the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman newspaper titled, “Testing of home-schoolers the right thing to do.”  One of her geographic neighbors did the same thing and the rebuttal is online:

• Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, Wasilla, Alaska, 11 Oct 2005, State has no business in home schoolsYou only have a right to participate in a child’s education, Ms. Lowery, because that child’s parents have allowed you to do so, not because you have a teaching certificate, not because of some supposed responsibility bestowed upon you by the state, and not because you are part of a “global village.”

I think this is the core of Ms. Steine’s objection.  In this case either we see children through the lens of the state, or through the lens of the family.  This is not just a homeschooling issue, but an issue for all American families, including the children of the officials elected, appointed, or hired to serve us (not to oversee us, but to serve us, as in ‘public servant’).  In the ordinary course of events, who should be the arbiter in deciding what is best for children: parents or government employees?

This is not about families and children in trouble, or about couples who have disputes about custody after a divorce. This is about the majority of garden-variety families who go about their daily business for decades without getting into legal difficulties concerning the children.  Also, the viewpoint is not Other People’s Children (about whom we all have raised-eyebrow opinions as to how they could be raised better), but our own children.  Employment has nothing to do with it either, as the buggy-whip-producing contemporaries of Henry Ford discovered.  And just because some people have sociology as an interest, or teaching, or administration, doesn’t mean that their interest supercedes our autonomy or privacy, the trend towards ‘unauthorized biographies’ notwithstanding.

Who do you want as the Presumed Decider for your children:  You, or an Objective Professional Government Employee? 

Do you want to live in a free society, or on Camzotz?

It may be merely a ‘back to school’ focus, or it could show a desire for a return to ‘olden times’ when there was no relief from compulsory attendance at school, or a cash-flow problem for districts who either want or need more money in their system. Whatever the cause is, the number of articles about returning the oversight of all children’s educations to an entity other than their parents continues to grow.

• Wasilla, Alaska, 18 Sep 2005 Home-school testing sought (indirect link because the source page wants $5 for 1-day privileges)
  On Sept. 7, the Mat-Su School Board voted 6-1 in support of the Alaska Association of School Board’s recommended core resolutions, one of which called for continued support for implementing state control over private home-school operations.

  …

  In 2004, state Rep. Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski, unsuccessfully sponsored a bill that would have assigned 10-digit identification numbers to every child in Alaska, including private home-school children.

  Information about the child’s educational process would have then been reported to the Legislature each year.

  The Department of Education and Early Development was slated to administer this tracking system in conjunction with the Department of Health and Social Services.

  With heavy opposition from private home schoolers, however, the bill never made it to a vote. The AASB resolution indicates the issue may come up again, though, during the next legislative session.

  …

  Larry DeVilbiss, the sole Mat-Su School Board member to vote against supporting the AASB resolutions, said he thinks public education should focus on its own students rather than trying to regulate home schoolers.

  "Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against public education," he said, "but I sure don’t think public education, when we are having trouble getting kids to pass benchmarks, should be concerned about regulating everyone else."

This development may go hand-in-glove with the news article from October 2004, Mat-Su District Steps in to Meet Needs of Home-schooling Families in which my predecessor, Ann Lahrson Fisher, wrote, "It appears to me that this pro-public school at home story fits hand in glove with last week’s stories from the Frontiersman which, you may recall, advocated for a reduction of homeschooling freedom under the guise of governmental regulation of homeschooling."

In the past year there have been such reports from Mississippi, Oregon, Minnesota (PDF page 97), South Dakota, Tennessee, Oregon again, the U.K., and Oregon again, North Carolina, California, do I have to mention Oregon again? (whew!, the post after that one says the Oregonians caught a break), but only for a moment, Ohio, Alaska, and Indiana. Ten states have looked hard enough at homeschooling that the looking generated news.

It’s hard to say whether activity in ten states out of fifty constitutes a trend, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

For the past few weeks I’ve been reading through the September haul of back-to-’home school’ articles, and have been depressed because the articles are all much the same. Was there anything really blog-worthy about a single article? Was there anything really very different about any of the articles? No matter which part of the country the article is from, it invariably includes some of the following.

• There are "1.1 million" homeschooled kids in the U.S." — compared, say, to how many dropouts from schools?
• Homeschooling is ‘foreign,’ (most articles aren’t this pointed about it, though) — as if the ‘sending the children away’ style of childraising at this point in history is the only way it’s ever been done.
• Many parents are homeschooling for religious reasons — and how many public school parents take their kids to church, synagogue or mosque on Sunday and Wednesday, or Friday night, or Saturday? That Americans have religion is not news.
• The local regulations are less strict than those of other states — why don’t the reporters ever mention Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Jersey, or Texas?
• Educators don’t trust the whole process — why the surprise? How many restaurants hand out cookbooks?
• Homeschooled kids won’t know how to behave once they leave home — my husband had the same observation about the parochial school kids that entered his Long Island high school — in the mid-1960s.
• Homeschooled kids will "miss out" on public school activities if they don’t attend school — of course they will. And kids attending school "miss out" on activities that homeschooled kids do. And kids in Wyoming "miss out" on what kids in Los Angeles do, and vice versa. You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want.
• The reported-upon homeschooling parents usually have college degrees — is this to make the public feel safer so that they don’t pick up their torches, surround homeschooling homes, and tie all of us non-college grad home-ed parents to stakes?
• The patronizing remarks:
  – "With that freedom comes a responsibility to create a sensible program."
  No. We homeschool so we can read comic books at our 11am breakfasts, paint our toenails, go to a fast food place for a 3pm lunch, watch MTV for the rest of the afternoon, and then order out pizza and let the kids drink beer with us while watching reruns of Paris Hilton on reality TV.

  – "Ruth was home playing teacher and mom, …"
  Playing? This reminds me of a blog/article ‘confession’ I read some time ago (and didn’t save) from a teacher who confused a parent by referring to ‘my’ children. The young woman was unmarried, and fairly young, so the parent didn’t know which children the young lady was talking about. It turns out that the young teacher was talking about the children in her class. It’s one thing to talk about ‘my’ class of children, but quite another to claim ‘my-ness’ to a parent of one of those children. Parents are always their children’s teachers. Teachers are only occasionally (if at all, in this day and age) their student’s parents.

  – "If he wants to wake up late one morning, he can." (same URL as the previous statement)
  Yeah, but it takes the joy out of hooky.

  – "Critics wonder how home-schooled students can get a well-rounded education and learn to socialize with other children, and how well they will do in the marketplace. "
  Is that each or by the pound?

• And then there are the utterly clueless statements:

  – "They don’t attend the same school, but they get the same schooling. They are home-schooled."
  It isn’t all the same, that’s the point.

  – "And of course, the major criticism often leveled at homeschooled children is the danger that they will develop limited social skills as a result of being isolated from the outside world."
  Lots of scary words in that sentence to make the reader uneasy, but why does this reporter assume that the criticism is leveled at the children themselves?

In trying to make sense of this avalanche of the trite I even did a search for what constitutes a feature/human interest article and found a journalism series at the Annenberg/CPB site. I watched the appropriate video to find out what might be the hallmark of a good feature story. There was no solid answer, but it was interesting to read how feature writers sometimes ‘borrow’ a tactic from advocacy journalism in which the reporter doesn’t espouse a viewpoint directly, but the chosen quotes from sources speak for the reporter. This sounds like framing the topic through selective editing.

I already have an opinion on what to look for in reading homeschooling articles, but fisking each and every one of the annual back-to-school stories was too much like shooting fish in a barrel, and there were just so many of them. Because of all that, it was with relief that just this morning I read an online article that made me nod in satisfaction. The writer is a mum after my own heart, and one who apparently agrees with the American commercial about ‘characters’ that is now making the television rounds.

• Telegraph.co.uk, 10 September 2005, East, west, home’s best

  The first wave to hit us was disapproval from friends and relatives.

  "How are they going to get their corners knocked off?" wailed one.

  I thought this was a bit rich coming from someone with more corners than a Louis XVI octagonal table. "What’s wrong with corners?" I asked. "Why is it we feel we need to slap children down if they get too confident or clever?" There was more: "What about rugby?" "But you hated rugby. Why turn children off sport by making them play something they hate?" We moved on: "You can’t speak German – or French – and you’re rubbish at maths."

  "If they want to learn German I will send them to a tutor, or evening classes or, if I’m really fed up with them, Germany. As for French, I am looking forward to learning alongside them."

So, thank you to Karen Luckhurst (of course the homeschooling mum wrote the article herself). I can now stop collecting back-to-school articles that Google flutters at me from the cybersphere like the soon-to-be-falling leaves of autumn. I think I’ll rake the articles into a pile and have a leaf-burning.

In September, a newspaper’s fancies turns to thoughts of school. It must be because Congress isn’t in session, the President’s on vacation and there is still square-paperage to be filled. That’s what the subscribers are paying for.

I’ve got yesterday’s small weekly paper sitting here on my desk, and only just found out that it’s also online, so I’m taking the easy way out this time in finding fodder for the column by letting it come to me, and rolling up a letter to the editor with this column. The article is the first of the three-parter, so we’ll have to wait to see what the next two weeks bring.

All in all, the coverage is well-done, so kudos to the reporter for that, but a few minor niggles still appear, as they invariably do. Where would commentators be without niggles upon which to comment? (unemployed, that’s where)

• Democrat-Missourian, Cass County, Missouri, 26 August 2005, Home Schooling On The Rise

  According to Families for Home Education, which is based in Grandview, an estimated 1.6 to 2 million children are being taught in the home by their parents. And home schooling is growing at 11 percent per year.

We all know that the ‘number’ of homeschooled kids is of continuous concern to those who watch these kinds of things. Still, to assign a specific growth-percentage to a porous pigeonhole clouds the reality that homeschoolers are merely those parts of the general public that have chosen to privately home educate–this year. There is also the reality that in some states homeschooling is growing, while in others, it seems to be slimming. There isn’t so much a growth in educational style, but more of a migration between systems.

Then there is the perennial legal concern.

• State statutes also require parents who home school to maintain records of subjects taught, activities engaged in, samples of the childs academic work with evaluations and a written log showing the hours required under attendance. Unlike other states, Missouri does not have an annual testing requirement for home schoolers. [emphasis added]

Unlike which other states? Texas? Alaska? Oklahoma? And, among others (click on "Level of homeschooling difficulty"), far-from-the-wild-wild-West, Connecticut?

Just as an anecdotal aside, my three kids weren’t ‘tested’ until they took the SAT … after they received their ‘high school’ diplomas. (they did fine, and are doing fine, just like their older, publicly-schooled brother)

Some parents find that daily life with their children keeps them well-informed about how well their children are assimilating information deemed necessary for growing into productive, self-sustaining adult citizens. Other families may decide that they like testing–perhaps the children view the testing as an enjoyable game, and for them, three cheers! In a voluntary situation it comes down to "different strokes for different folks" (an antique phrase that’s still valid)

Then there is the sacrifice concern:

• Home schooling is not for wimps, Bird said. It takes time, hard work, perseverance, discipline, especially for the educator, being able to handle frustration and a great deal of sacrifice. You have to put your child before your wants. It may mean sacrificing a job for money that would be used for nonessentials and being able to have time alone.

I always find this argument out in left field because, through all our military moves, I held just one full-time job, for one year, in a civilian personnel office (I don’t count my later stint as a GS-2 lunchroom & playground monitor–yes, the government has a GS-rating for lunchladies and meanies with a whistle). We didn’t have a lot of *stuff,* but the photos from those times don’t show undernourished, blank-eyed waifs with aluminum plates begging on the street, any more than the photos from my childhood do. So we didn’t have everything, who does?

• Parents must be dedicated to their home schools and minimize distractions that may interrupt the school day, she said. It is important to be organized, disciplined and have a plan for success.

I viewed the experience as a marvelous adventure, not as an exercise in discipline. Where someone else apparently sees hard work, perseverance and discipline, I saw the longest, funnest hooky I ever played. Distractions were what we lived for. I wasn’t so much an ‘educator’ as an unindicted co-conspirator, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. It reminds me of the description of life at the Yahoo group of one of my husband’s former co-workers, "Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting, ‘… Holy crap … what a ride!"

I look forward to the next two reports on ‘home schooling.’ I hope there are fewer niggles.

Kids learn at home, but no one’s watching is one recent Michigan article that hearkens to the "critics" who complain that homeschooled children aren’t subject to sufficient oversight. Because the spectacle of large numbers of homeschooled kids falling through cracks is a hoary chestnut, I was ignoring the article while waiting for unique, positive homeschooling news to rise up out of the cybersphere. While I was waiting another article appeared as a search result. It is apparently well-meaning, but yet feels like a small dagger into the heart: Home Schooling Away From Home: Improving Military Policy Toward Home Education. The premise behind both articles is that Big Brother ought to be keeping tabs on all children, and this theme is persistent within most modern nation states. A problem with the concept, though, is that Big Brother doesn’t have a handle on The Best Way to raise children, if there is one.

Across the nation, and probably around the world, there is no single standard even within the Brotherly halls of academe on what constitutes an adequate education. Military Brats whose servicemember parents can be transferred across the country, and around the world, have been dealing with this reality for decades. I know my grasp of geometry still suffers. In the Survey of Army Families IV, Spring 1991, question 95 on page 31 went as follows:

• Spouses with high school-aged children who accompanied them on PCS moves reported their child(ren) experienced the following problems because of changing schools:
  – Difficulty making social adjustments (make new friends, etc.) in the new school (44.0%)
  – Fell behind in coursework because of moving (28.7%)
  – Felt under-challenged because of quality of education at the new school (27.1%)
  – Lost credit (no credit given) for a course completed (24.9%)
  – Felt over-challenged because of quality of education at new school (17.1%)
  – Lost credit because the course was not offered at the new school (and thus could not be completed) (15.1%)

Around the country and the globe, textbooks differ, teaching methods differ, ‘appropriate’ subjects differ and expectations differ, but because local news is so very ‘local,’ larger comparisons aren’t usually offered.

Current newspaper articles from around the country show that The World of School is far from uniform:

• Easy college prep classes get the boot
  "Because so few take the tests, the quality of many programs remains an unknown. Fewer than 40 percent of all AP class students take the spring exams."
• Investigation of 1,697 cheating allegations not vigorous
  ". . . of the 1,697 test security violation reports reviewed by the (the TEA’s Security Task Force) for the 2003-2004 academic year, approximately 6 percent were deemed to be credible and serious enough to warrant referral to the State Board for Educator Certification."
• Schools’ major minus
  "The plodding performance of Georgia students in math and science does not simply indict the state’s high schools; it reflects failure at every level of the education chain."
• The making of a textbook
  "’It’s amazing how many textbooks are inaccurate and have bad information,’ Kremer said. ‘By having professionals review it — people who are actually using those concepts every day — you catch a lot of those inaccuracies."

Are the Michigan "experts" and "critics" who watch homeschoolers, and complain about the state’s liberal homeschooling laws of the same caliber as the people who don’t have students take AP tests, are involved in cheating allegations, teach science and math ploddingly, and write error-prone textbooks? My point isn’t that all should be ‘perfect,’ but that there has yet to be a noticeable decline in the state of the nation because of the ‘homeschool effect.’ Still, ink continues to be spilled concerning the ‘problem.’ In the meantime, in the opinions of some, homeschoolers continue on their merry ways.

In the ‘real’ world, business needs differ from artistic needs although, in the capitalistic world, sales and marketing may be a common interest. Military needs and scientific needs may also have a point-in-common, which can also have a general intersection with mothering needs (moms keep up with science, too, as in the effects of various environmental conditions on their children, as well as nutritional information). In considering the needs of people in the ‘real’ world, how does the childhood of a biochemist differ from that of a ballet teacher? Are there commonalities between the early interests of a tennis pro and a highway construction worker? Do geologists find long hours at the piano as useful to their careers as do concert pianists? Are astronomers natural night owls, and did their parents have difficulty getting them out of bed in the morning during their high school years? (and as I sit here while the plumber communes with my sump pump that ‘got a headache’ while I was writing today, do plumbers naturally plumb, or is it merely a matter of a more lucrative job choice than that of freelance writer since my ‘month +’ will pay for his ‘hour – ‘ ?)

The web of human life has thousands of threads that can be woven in many patterns: variety is the spice of life. But, when looking at opinions from the meta-entity that used to be popularly known as The Man (who now appears in the guise of "experts" and "critics"), the underlying theme is standardization. The Man continues to worry that because "no one’s watching," the corners of homeschooled kids aren’t appropriately shaved to fit into the round holes of The Man’s perception of the standardized ranks and columns of the pegboard of life. While The Man frets about his pegboard, homeschool families are weaving life tapestries with unique patterns, color combinations, and designs that their children can ‘wear’ for the rest of their lives.

This is my final News and Commentary post. Leaving this job – one that I have loved doing and that embodies such important work – is very difficult for me. I am loathe to go, but the time has come to move on. I want to thank you, the readers, for your feedback and comments that have helped me make Newscomm better than I could have dreamed. I also thank Mark and Helen Hegener for believing in me and for both the opportunity and the freedom to do this work as I saw fit.

I’ve learned, I’ve grown, I’ve gotten angry, I’ve learned, I’ve grown, I’ve been dumbfounded, I’ve learned, I’ve grown, I’ve laughed until tears came “what a good time I’ve had, learning and growing! I hope that my next projects are even half as interesting and fulfilling as writing the Newscomm column has been.

My life has pulled me on to other good and interesting activities, including a couple of writing projects that have tugged at my sleeve for years, but already I miss this important work and the many friends I’ve made while writing this newsletter/blog/column for Home Education Magazine.

One thing is certain: I’ll still be hanging around in the homeschooling world. My fascination with homeschooling issues has not dulled one iota, and I expect I’ll be watching and opining on homeschooling issues for years to come. You can always write me at Ann Lahrson Fisher or visit me at Nettlepatch Press.

Now, please help me give Valerie Moon a warm welcome as she steps up to the News and Commentary Editor’s Desk.

Although we’ve not met in real life, Valerie and I have been e-friends for years. Like me, she is a long time homeschooler with grown kids and a love for living the learning lifestyle. Valerie has also been writing about important homeschooling issues for years. Valerie is a keen blogger who also maintains an extensive website, The Military Homeschooler.

Valerie brings so much to this job! Her knowledge and awareness of homeschooling news is topnotch. She is an gifted writer with a knack for making me giggle. Besides being insightful and witty, she has a flair for getting to the nub of an issue and applying her outstanding researching skills, digging deeply into core issues.

Some readers may remember that I’ve quoted Valerie’s wisdom <in Newscomm from time to time – with good reason! The work she did following the Akron Beacon Journal series on homeschooling last fall was a fascinating analysis.