The Peace Corps had already coined the phrase, ”The toughest job you’ll ever love,” otherwise it might have become the rallying slogan of those known as home-schoolers.

The practice of home schooling, of course, long predates the K-12 system and even the one-room school-house. After many quiet decades, home-schooling quietly resurfaced in the 1970s following the publication of books like John Caldwell Holt’s, “How Children Fail,” and similar publications by other authors.

While home-schooled children are vastly outnumbered by those who complete all of their education in public schools, their numbers have grown. What had once been a quite unusual approach to education has again become a more commonly understood and accepted means of education.

Continue reading this editorial commentary from The News-Review, Douglas County, Oregon.

A Tough Job?

Interesting article about homeschool numbers and factors in homeschooling, from Oregon:

Douglas County boasted 727 homeschoolers last year, according to the Douglas Education Service District, which serves as a checkpoint for families registering each child’s exit from a school district.

After a boom several years ago, the number of students in homeschooling locally has plateaued, Shirley Pasley, the Douglas ESD’s secretary of student achievement, said Friday.

“It’s been pretty stable for a while,” she said. “Basically, it’s those parents that are going to continue doing it … there are some that do it for a while and then realize it’s pretty tough.”

Homeschool parents say each family has been affected differently by the economic downturn. Some have had to end their homeschooling as mothers returned to the job force to supplement the family income.

The county had the eighth-largest homeschool population in Oregon in 2008-09, according to the Oregon Department of Education. The ODE reported 19,070 students registered as homeschoolers that year.

Read the rest of this lengthy article at the link above

Homeschool Numbers

Home school in the Willamette Valley
By Therese ONeill WillametteLive

If there remains one way to shock friends and family in an open-minded 21st century society, it is to tell them that you are considering home-schooling your children.

Home education is a burdened concept, calling to mind the odd classmate from high school that couldn’t make eye contact or the family at the library that dress like pioneers.

I thought we were a little past home education being “shocking”. High school students not making eye contact?  That might be considered a burdened concept regarding “peer pressures, school pressures…“.

This is an interesting explanation that I like:

Hilda Rosselli, Ph.D., is the Dean of the College of Education at Western Oregon University, the foremost teaching college in the state. She sees in the surge of home schooling as a connection between society becoming more individualized, and the growing dissatisfaction with a homogenized school system. If a family can choose precisely what they want to eat, the news they want to read, what they want to be entertained by, why shouldn’t they also expect customized education?

“While we know more now about students’ learning needs, whether they be diagnosed with autism or highly gifted, we still tend to find schools have changed in relatively small increments over the past 30 years,” Rosselli said. “This combined with the fact that more and more individuals are telecommuting, there is increased flexibility for some parents to be at home and work while providing childcare and home schooling options.“

Parents choose this complicated path for their children for a number of reasons.

The beauty of homeschooling is the lack of complications and the fact that you are on your own schedule. A knotty timetable not of your choosing can be frustrating.  We’ve done public school and we’ve done homeschooling.  A homeschooling path is not complicated in comparison.

There’s always one of these charmers in the family or around the community.  (This one being an 18 year looooong public school teacher):

Alice. a Salem-area public high school teacher for 18 years, has taught many home school transfer students, and has six nieces and nephews who have been home schooled. Her opinions on home schooling, particularly in the area of isolationism, are strong.

“I’ll speak generally of it – understand that I realize there are exceptions. Home-schooled students who have been in my classes, generally speaking, show a lack of tolerance and understanding for the different people encountered in a public setting. This is true of my nieces and nephews as well,” she said. “If a home-schooling family has a quirk or is very strange, then the children, isolated from their peers, may develop problems that only get more difficult to solve the longer they are isolated. This is true if the child is abused or neglected as well.

We’ll just take Aunt Alice’s opinion for what it’s worth.  Wonder that she doesn’t see her 6 nieces and nephews too much?  Maybe her concept regarding lack of socialization hinges around her family and their avoidance factor (like the plague, I would think), along with choices about positive influences in children’s lives.  Hard to say, but I’m always skeptical about individuals and their intent while ‘outing’ family members like that.  (Her concurrence with the NEA anti-homeschooling/anti-parental choice resolution speaks volumes.)

Don’t ask Alice about “very dangerous” homeschooling.  Ask Dr. Rosselli, who does seem to have an open mind about education.

Oregon Homeschooling-Don’t Ask Alice

I thought the name Cynthia Whitfield looked familiar [scroll to near the end of the comments] …

Tough school year? Check home schooling, 18 June 2008, The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon

As the school year ends, many parents are thinking ahead to September and a new school year. If all has gone well, most parents expect next year will also work out.

However, parents of children who have struggled through the year may find themselves considering alternatives to public school. One of those alternatives is home schooling.

All-round article by NewsComm commenter

HomeSource’s link with district still uncertain despite special bill, 27 May 2008, The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon

At last week’s Eugene School Board meeting, board members seemed divided on whether to continue allowing students to attend HomeSource, a publicly funded private alternative program that offers courses for home-schoolers at its center off Highway 99 North.

…

Several board members seemed to be leaning toward no longer honoring referral requests, including Craig Smith, who has been a steadfast opponent of publicly funding HomeSource. He compares it with a private school voucher system, contending that taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be used to subsidize the education of children whose parents have taken them out of the regular public school system.

But others, including Jim Torrey, indicated they’d like home-schoolers to continue having access to HomeSource, which offers a broad range of courses, including chemistry, Latin, Advanced Placement world history, trigonometry, ballet and calligraphy.

…

HomeSource opened in 1995 and was on the brink of losing all its contracts with school districts due to more stringent interpretations of alternative education law by state Department of Education officials.

Districts were told they had to be accountable for determining appropriate placement and monitoring progress of students referred to HomeSource — a process Eugene and several other districts deemed too costly and at odds with the wishes of home-schoolers.

One of the strings attached to public funds is public commotion.

A reader of The Register-Guard wrote in to support HomeSource:

HomeSource is misunderstood, 3 June 2008, Letters in the Editor’s Mailbag, The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon

I am concerned that there is a misunderstanding of the role of HomeSource in a home-schooling family. The choice for us is not between public school and HomeSource, but rather home schooling with HomeSource or plain home schooling.

I know families who were denied transfers from their home districts. They didn’t put their children into public school but continued home-schooling on their own. We don’t home school because HomeSource exists; HomeSource exists because we home school.

HomeSource may not exist solely as a service to families that homeschool. A 1996 booklet with historical documents about the founding of HomeSource, “Bonding with Homeschoolers,” (2.08 MB, fyi) indicates that the ‘recapture’ of children was at least one reason for the establishment of the service.

From pages 7 and 10:

This viewpoint makes as much sense as a former homeowner saying that she still felt attached to the home she’d just sold and would be coming by to do the gardening. The rationale that “they’re taxpayers” doesn’t follow because no one offers taxpayers without children any school services.

Oregon HomeSource still in the news

Home schooling six sons leads to success, 1 February 2008, Hillsboro Argus, Hillsboro, Oregon

The Bergtholds, Jim and Jane, believe their boys get more out of education at home. Jim Bergthold, a former physician, is a part-time researcher at Summit Research. For the past eight years, Jane has managed their home and facilitated studies for their boys, who range in age from 9 to 16.

So successful has home schooling been for this family that the eldest son, Caleb, 16, maintains a 4.0 grade point average at Portland State University, where he plans to major in Computer Science.

…

“We never want to sound like we’re elevating ourselves or putting others down for making choices that are different from ours. This form of home schooling has been a good fit for our family and we are privileged and thankful for it.”

posted by Valerie

Oregon family and Charlotte Mason curriculum

Bill bails out home schooling program, 16 July 2007, The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon Proponents said the legislation – written hastily in consultation with representatives from the Bethel district, the Oregon Education Association, the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators, the Oregon School Boards Association, the Oregon Department of Education, HomeSource and The Ulum Group, a Eugene public relations firm that lobbied for HomeSource – should restore HomeSource to the popular, thriving program it once was.

This must be a “Where’s Waldo?” picture, but instead of looking for Waldo the reader is supposed to look for homeschoolers.

posted by Valerie

h

Bill bails out home schooling program

Republicans try, fail to force votes on Oregon school bills, 19 June 2007, OregonLive.com, Portland, Oregon

Oregon House Republicans on Tuesday tried to force votes on three of their priority education bills, but Democrats turned back their efforts with dispatch.

All three issues, however, are expected to resurface as campaign fodder in the run-up to the November 2008 election.

…

Eliminated the requirement that home-schooled students participate in state testing.

…

On the home-school proposal, [Rep. Peter Buckley, D-Ashland, who chairs the House Education committee] called state tests, “the only way we can see if they (home-schooled students) are making progress.”

Children homeschooled in Oregon are expected to be tested, “the year that the child completes grades 3, 5, 8 and 10.”

Does that mean the year the children were 8, 10, 13 and 15 between September of the previous year, and June of the current year?

I presume it would be improper thinking outside of the box to “flunk” the child in second grade, but then find out that she did so well the next year of second grade that she could test out of third grade and be advanced to fourth. That situation is unlikely, but surely not impossible.

posted by Valerie
homeschooling, home education, Oregon homeschooling, homeschool testing

Oregon homeschoolers still required to test

The Register Guard, Eugene, Oregon, 20 February 2007, Few oppose bill that would help education center

“We are going to have parents who decide to home-school their kids no matter what – that’s going to happen,” he said. “The next best thing we do is we try to entice them in by providing a program like that that will lead to better educated children that are better socialized in our society than if they didn’t have this program, and use it as a tool to maybe move some of them – not all of them, but some of them – into a public school setting.”

See also:

• Oregon public-funded home ed — is it homeschooling or not?
• Oregon homeschooling 101

posted by Valerie

Oregon setting out bait