Education Week posted a story about a mom who fought back within the school system and realized the problem was solved leaving the system.  Gretchen Herrera’s son, diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and Type 1 diabetes, suffered from the required standardized testing.

Testing? No, No Testing, No Matter What By Nirvi Shah

Ms. Herrera had tried to have Anthony, 12, exempted from South Carolina’s annual tests in reading, math, and other subjects when he was in 6th grade last school year. But no reason would do—not even a medical note that explained Anthony’s blood sugar could spike because of his Asperger-related anxiety, which is just what happened on the first day of testing. Anthony, who did well on the exam, stayed home during other state tests.

The federal Office for Civil Rights decided late last year that Anthony wasn’t the victim of discrimination when he was kicked out of the school.

It’s sadly true children are often lost in the system with their individual needs.  Even when parents intervene for their children trying to fix the problems preventing learning.

Congratulations in finding an optimistic solution and welcome to the wonderful world of homeschooling, Herrera family!

After nearly a year of battle with schools and the state department of education, Ms. Herrera has found peace for Anthony, now a 7th grader, even if she may face additional challenges down the line.

“I can’t be happier,” she said.

In No Magic Bullet for Education the Los Angeles Times takes a look at teacher evaluations, education reform, Race to the Top grants, standardized tests and more:

The “unschooling” movement of the 1970s featured open classrooms, in which children studied what they were most interested in, when they felt ready. That was followed by today’s back-to-basics, early-start model, in which students complete math worksheets in kindergarten and are supposed to take algebra by eighth grade at the latest. Under the “whole language” philosophy of the 1980s, children were expected to learn to read by having books read to them. By the late 1990s, reading lessons were dominated by phonics, with little time spent on the joys of what reading is all about — unlocking the world of stories and information.

This 56 page report by the Advancement Project subtitled, How Zero Tolerance and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School to Prison Pipeline is not a surprise but to see it backed with documentation is an eye opener.

From the Advancement Project’s download page:

Test, Punish, and Push Out: How Zero Tolerance and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth into the School to Prison Pipeline.

“Test, Punish, and Push Out” provides an overview of zero-tolerance school discipline and high-stakes testing, how they relate to each other, how laws and policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) have made school discipline even more punitive, and the risk faced if these devastating policies are not reformed. The report explores:

* The common origins and ideological roots of zero tolerance and high-stakes testing;
* The current state of zero-tolerance school discipline across the country, including local, state, and national data;
* How high-stakes testing affects students, educators, and schools;
* How zero tolerance and high-stakes testing have become mutually reinforcing, combining to push huge numbers of students out of school; and
* Successful grassroots efforts to eliminate harmful discipline and testing practices.

Reading this report makes one wonder how on earth anyone could call for more regulation of homeschoolers and makes any such effort all that more cynical.

Again, homeschooling is implicated in a decline in a school district’s enrollment.  In this instance, the parents are said to be exercising their “right to school choice.”  I don’t consider homeschooling to be part of the “school choice” package.

Area schools see trend of dropping enrollment, 15 September 2008, Meadville Tribune, Meadville, Pennsylvania

There are a variety of factors that contribute to the loss of students, Superintendent Richard Rossi pointed out, but said the economy is the most significant.

…

“In some cases, parents are exercising their right to school choice,” Borchilo said. “They may elect to home school, home tutor or enroll them in cyber services or private or parochial schools.”

“School choice” is a technical term decribing the government education system allowing parents to enroll their children in a public school other than the school attached to the child’s geographic home.  If a family lives in School District A, then (most usually) the children go to school in District A.  If parents want their children to attend the schools in District B, then they make use of ”school choice.” 

A system cannot offer choices not under the system’s control.  For example, at suppertime I can tell my children that, they can have eggs and bacon, eggs and sausage or eggs and toast because we are having an ‘eggs and …’ supper.  If they say they don’t want eggs and anything, I cannot tell them to go next-door and tell the neighbors’ to give my kids some of their pizza.  The pizza is not mine to offer nor theirs to demand from others.  My kids can go out and buy their own pizza (or ingredients), but if they eat at the family table, then their choice is limited to ’eggs and …’  In the example, family supper choice does not include pizza.

The state education system can offer choice within its system.  If parents choose something other than public schooling, then they have left the system.

If homeschooling parents accept the pigeonholing of homeschooling as “school choice,” and not as a natural right, then the homeschooling concept will move one more baby-step back towards the view that ‘education’ is one of the services that people cannot do for themselves (such as national defense) so that it is rightly a state undertaking.

Henry Cate at Why Homeschool, has a link to a humorous post about the “NCLB version of football.”  A couple of the funny points are that all teams will win championships and only game scores from the 4th, 8th and 11th games will count towards the team’s standing.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act does not apply to homeschooling families because the federal government does not give them any money for their children’s educations. Still, I must comment because this wording in the NCLB discussion bill puts everyday family life into federal law.

Miller-McKeon Discussion Draft, PDF-pages 276 – 277

(d) SHARED RESPONSIBILITIES FOR IMPROVED STUDENT ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT.As a component of the school-level parental involvement policy developed under subsection (b), each school served under this part shall jointly develop with parents for all children served under this part a school-parent compact that outlines how parents, the entire school staff, and students will share the responsibility for improved student academic achievement and the means by which the school and parents will build and develop a partnership to help children achieve the State’s high standards. Such compact shall

(1) describe the school’s responsibility to provide high-quality curriculum and instruction in a supportive and effective learning environment that enables the children served under this part to meet the State’s student academic achievement standards, and the ways in which each parent will be responsible for supporting their children’s learning, such as monitoring attendance, monitoring homework completion, and monitoring television watching; volunteering in their child’s classroom; and participating, as appropriate, in decisions relating to the education of their children and positive use of extracurricular time;

[emphasis added]

The tax dollars given to schools should support the children and families, not be a means to hold the children and families in thrall. For more on that attitude, see the post below about recapturing children.

I understand that the best use is made of the money given to schools if the children have safe, happy and interesting family lives. Children must be able to take in the attention given to them in school or that time and money is wasted. But having the federal government legislate parental responsibilities, especially by presuming that Federal Knows Best on the “positive use of extracurricular time” — as if childhood is merely an adjunct to ‘curricular time,’ i.e., school! — is an affront.

Whoever wrote this must not see families as sons and daughters, mothers and fathers; that person or people must see us as students and employees.

posted by Valerie

The writer of this article may have got the financial information right, but the sentence about homeschooling and the federal No Child Left Behind act is wrong.

Liberating Kids From The Classroom — But Not Exams, 20 August 2007, Investor’s Business Daily

Also, with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2000, [the homeschooling] children have a more stringent round of standardized tests to pass.

That is not even close to the facts.

No Child Left Behind — A Desktop Reference, 2002, Page 176

Federal control of home schooling is prohibited. Home schools are not subject to NCLB or NCLB assessments.

The rest of the article is about virtual schooling, and specifically K-12, Inc. In a recent discussion about another online lesson provider, my advice was to “follow the money.” This article underlines my advice.

Liberating Kids From The Classroom — But Not Exams

Auspiciously founded the same year that the No Child Left Behind Act passed, K12 develops online curricula for this unique market. The company draws revenue from a mix of government contracts and direct sales to families. K12 profits to the tune of $8 million in net income the past nine-month school year.

Virtual schools do not liberate children from classroom-type learning, as the article’s title states, but all schools liberate money from the bank accounts of all of us. It is true that state-funded schooling, virtual or brick & mortar, does not cost families direct tuition, but the programs are not free. I doubt that any curriculum-provider/virtual school just drops off the materials at the state DoE and then drives away. It is unlikely that the virtual providers are happy with only the warm glow of satisfaction from providing an education for the children any more than teachers show up at neighborhood schools without the expectation of paychecks. K-12, Inc.’s $8,000,000 net income (meaning the money left after K-12′s obligations are paid) did not fall off a printing press.

Home education is a hot market, but the cash is not in homeschooling, it is in what states pay for virtual schooling. This cost is part of the half-trillion dollars the fifty states and the federal government spend yearly on K-12 education.

Remarks by Secretary Paige at the Executive Leaders Forum, Committee of 100, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, 28 June 2004

It’s time we recognized a central, cardinal fact: education is a big business. It is a huge part of our economy, a large segment of our gross national product. Last year, as a nation, we spent more than half a trillion dollars on K-12 education.

For those with a technical bent, that would be $500,000,000,000.00+ (as for how much half a trillion looks like ….)

• a million dots — scroll to the right at the site (I believe you would need fifty thousand of those pages to make half a trillion)
• a million gallons — would need a pool 267 feet long x 50 feet wide x 10 feet deep (a football field is 300 feet long without the end zones, and 160 feet wide — so fifty thousand of those pools)
• a million asterisks fit on 302 Microsoft Word pages (about as many pages as an average-size paperback book). I just tried it so you wouldn’t have to. It would be a pity for all of us to spend time and electricity counting asterisks on pages. If my math is right, a trillion asterisks would fit on 15,100,000 8×10 Microsoft Word pages, roughly the page-equivalent of 533 sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica Macro- and Micro-pedia.

The National Debt Storm by U.S. Representative John Tanner

One trillion seconds ago 31,688 years Neanderthals walked the earth.

Since we know that the article did not provide accurate homeschooler/NCLB information, should we hope that the education-cost information, both from the article and overall, is correct?

posted by Valerie

homeschooling, home education, virtual schooling, public school at home

This article is from an unusual source, EnergyBulletin.net. The site’s focus is the peak (and the downhill slide afterwards) of the global oil supply. The article’s author Richard Embleton has written other articles about education, and those articles are at his blog, Oil, Be Seeing You.

Energy Bulletin, 29 January 2007, Give me a child until… (italics in original)

Richard Embleton’s essay below makes the strong case for viewing the school system as a form of forced indoctrination. I’ve made a few notes following it about existing alternative models. -AF

…

If we are ever to gain serious momentum toward ending our suicidal destruction of this planet – our home planet, the only one in the universe we know to support life – we must start with our children. We must stop allowing them to be essentially brainwashed into supporting the societal norms that are responsible for our race to self-destruction. We must also reach our leaders and do what we can to get them to look ahead and realize that the bridge is out and get them to start leading in a different direction. Is either likely to happen? Not likely, but we must keep trying. I think the long-term of our species is worth the effort. For a more detailed review of the debate over the government and corporate indoctrination taking place in our public schools follow the links below.
————————————————————
1) Science a la Joe Camel – By Laurie David
2) Software business profits from influence, good timing
3) influencing future decision makers by Dr Sharon Beder
4) Echoes of corporate influence
5) How Business Gained Influence over Chicago Public Schools
6) The Religious Policeman
7) PUBLIC SCHOOLS: ENFORCED SOCIAL CONVERSION & PARENTAL DENIAL 8) Fifth Annual Report on Commercialism in Schools / The Corporate Branding of Our Schools
9) New Education Initiative: Public Education as Transnational Corporate Welfare
10) United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (January 2005 December 2014)
11) Education for Sustainable Tyranny: The United Nations Plan for Our Children
12) Smaller Learning Communities: Preparing Workers for a State Planned Economy
13) Government Can’t Run Schools Like Businesses
14) American Indoctrination — The harsh reality of public school
15) Are Lady Liberty’s Books for Education or Indoctrination?
16) The Central Fallacy of Public Schooling By Daniel Hager
17) Nightmare Awaits Under Globalization – effects on public school system in Canada
18) High School Indoctrination
19) Indoctrination and filtering
20) Political indoctrination seeping into private schools
21) Political indoctrination in the curriculum during four periods of elementary school education in Taiwan.
22) FIRE Has Never Been ‘Sheepish’ on the Danger of Confusing Free Speech with Indoctrination
23) The Road to Democracy Starts at the Schoolhouse Door; Teaching our Children Beyond the “Three Rs”
24) Brainwashing and Thought Control in Scientology — The Road to Rondroid
25) Throw Out Your TV- Mass Mind Control
26) Public Schools Warned: Requiring Ritalin Is Unlawful
27) How Public Schools Coerce Parents Into Giving Mind-Altering Drugs To Their Children
28) 18 Ways Public Schools Can Hurt Children and Parents
29) Just Say Yes to Ritalin!
30) Nature vs. Nurture: Are We Really Born That Way?
31) Freedom: Transcending Enculturation and Choosing for Ourselves
32) Avatar and the Restoration of Free will
33) IS MANIPULATION REAL?
34) Propaganda
35) Pulling kids out of government schools
36) Central High School
37) Education or Indoctrination?
38) Bill Gates and the Corporatization of American”Public” Schools
39) Schools With a Slant
40) A Citizens Guide to Adopting Commercial-Free School Board Policies In Your Community
41) Curbing the Commercialization of Public Space
42) Naming Rights Sold — This Time, at High School Field

…

Alternatives

One of the positive things to come from this is the realisation that learning isn’t a chore in the way many of us have come to think of it, nor are the we and the people around us so inherently stupid as we might think! While changes, as Richard point out, would be effective at the national levels, it’s at the local level where the problem doesn’t seem so overwhelming. Homeschooling, Montessori, or Waldorf methods offer alternatives.

posted by Valerie