Interesting news article highlighting the history of homeschooling in North Carolina, from the Lincoln-Tribune:

RALEIGH — When Rod Helder became the second director of the state’s Division of Non-Public Education in 1985, he inherited a small staff and a unique arrangement for state regulation of private schools. Under the previous director, the state’s confrontational attitude toward private education had boiled over into civil disobedience by church schools and a class action lawsuit by the state. As thousands of parents rallied quietly in the streets of Raleigh, the General Assembly rewrote the private school law, and in the end, totally separated DNPE — and private education — from any public school oversight.

Now North Carolina boasts a healthy private school community and one of the largest concentrations of homeschoolers in the country.

Continue reading at the link above.

Home-school interest grows in hard times Houston Chronicle April 27, 2009
Expense of private schools leads some to make a change

An estimated 300,000 Texas children are homeschooled, compared to the nearly 4.7 million who attend traditional public schools.

Seems like they wouldn’t have a clue how many Texas homeschoolers there are?  Texas homeschoolers don’t register or notify government authorities about their education choice.  Unless homeschool groups are reporting their member numbers.   I would hope that the “estimated” term is used very loosely.

This piece from the article made me wonder if Texas public schools haven’t learned that fees are the new tax:

The home-schooling gains are a surprise for the leaders of the advocacy group, which feared that the economic downturn might force home-schoolers to return to public schools. It’s cheaper to attend public school than to pay hundreds of dollars a year for the curriculum, supplies and activities needed to home-school, experts said.

When our kids attended public school, we paid hundreds of dollars a year in fees in Illinois. Extra curricular activities were cheaper via park districts, libraries, zoos and museums.  The biggest benefit was educational accountability rested on us, as the parents.  Their soccer practice and games did not revolve around whether the kid passed their spelling test.

Home Education Magazine’s Mary Nix did a Closer Look at homeschooling older kids and this Mark Hegener quote seems to ring true:

I picked this particular column for Closer Look because I believe the additional pressure to buy, buy, buy to make sure your child excels causes more stress to our homeschool community than it helps. Mark Hegener, HEM Publisher and homeschool Dad once said that all you need to homeschool is love and a library card. That continues to remain true as well and I hope you will read and take to heart Cafi Cohen’s sage advice in Less is More.

Ht to TAFFIE’s Susan Frederick who contributed this Michigan article link on the Home Education Magazine Networking list.

I’m assuming the writer of the headline meant that people have chosen other methods to educate their childen, but still use the word homeschooling to describe what they do.

Homeschooling grows up, 21 February 2008, Catoosa County News, Ringgold, Georgia

While some homeschool families are learning outside the box, others are finding innovative ways to recreate the box. The array of classes, co-ops and alternative learning groups continues to grow. Students can take classes ranging from core subjects like Algebra to extra-curriculars like fencing or writing fantasy literature. They can dress up for the homeschool prom and even participate in a graduation exercise.

…

In every sizable town, classes and tutoring are offered by homeschool parents who are especially proficient in a specific area such as foreign language. Sometimes the tutoring becomes a lucrative business or even a small school with multiple teachers offering weekly classes to area students.

Other times it happens the other way around: The parents join together to form a cooperative and bring in a teacher. One of the most successful area co-ops is right here in Catoosa County.

I know it isn’t correct to say in the world of homeschooling politics, but these changes aren’t a change in homeschooling. These ‘new’ methods are merely a return to organized-group schooling, which is the standard way other groups school modern children. Classes, schools and businesses are often what homeschoolers left behind.

posted by Valerie

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith aren’t alone in their desire to share their vision. I see the co-op trend as similar to the move by some homeschooling parents to use what they’ve learned to branch out. The trend may need its own category after a while.

Will Smith Planning to Start a School, People Magazine

Having immersed himself in educational theories while home-schooling his kids, Will Smith says he and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, plan to put that knowledge to greater use by teaming with like-minded parents and creating a full school.

posted by Valerie

Parents unhappy with traditional system turn to home school, 4 November 2007, Melbourne Herald Sun, Melbourne, Australia

THOUSANDS of Victorian parents are pulling their children out of schools to educate them at home.

About 10,000 children are being educated this way – and the number is growing fast.

…

Critics believe home education lacks the sense of community and the schoolyard’s rough-and-tumble that could teach resilience.

Victorian Principals Association president Fred Ackerman said home education could not match the benefits of traditional schooling.

…

Supporters say home education embraces individuality and keeps children away from drugs and alcohol.

Victorian Home Education Network co-ordinator Lyn Luxton said she received at least three calls a week from parents who had withdrawn their children from state and private schools.

posted by Valerie

Special education plans for parochial students: Private schools eligible for public school services, 22 September 2007, Waukegan News Sun, Waukegan, Illinois

Students with disabilities attending private schools or being home schooled can receive special education services from their local public school district under federal law.

A number of Lake County districts are holding public meetings to discuss their plans for providing special education services to students with disabilities who attend private schools and home schools within the district.

…

Public school districts are required to spend a portion of their federal special education funds to provide special education services to students with disabilities who attend private schools, under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act of 2004.

Private school administrators and the parents who think their home-school child may have a disability are invited to required annual meetings in their local public school district. At the meetings, administrators and parents determine how best to spend the allotted federal funds and evaluate whether a student qualifies.

For homeschooling alternatives, you can read the articles linked at:

• HEM’s Closer Look: Learning Disabilities
• Why Children Are Not for Screening

posted by Valerie

Christian classes set up for home-schoolers, The News-Press, Fort Myers, Florida An educational concept aimed at home-school families will make its south Fort Myers debut when the new school year begins this fall.

The Southwest Florida Christian Community School will bring together families who home-school their children to meet three days a week for group classes led by qualified teachers, said Debbi Coe, the school’s founder and administrator.

…

Coe, of south Fort Myers, said the school will offer a full academic slate consisting of all major subjects such as math, science, history, Spanish and Latin, language arts, logic and the Bible.

…

She said tuition for pre-K through eighth grade is $3,000 and for high school, $3,400. Registration for Pre-K to eighth grades is $200 and for high school, it is $275. Parents must pay the cost of texts and other educational materials, she added.

This is a private school that charges tuition. The clients could be anyone who desires a private school, not specifically ‘homeschoolers,’ which isn’t to say that the school won’t be useful for families whose children were homeschooled before becoming private school students.

Parents should use whichever kind of education best suits their children, but businesses riding on the coattails of homeschooling don’t ‘add to homeschooling,’ they change it into something else. Whether this is a good thing is up to the discretion of the families enrolling their children in the school.

posted by Valerie

Learning at home: Homeschooling another option for parents, children, 24 May 2007, Melrose Free Press, Beverly, Massachusetts Move over public and charter schools. There’s another game in town, and it continues to grow in popularity in Melrose and other communities. Home schooling, or “home learning” as some like to call it, was something of an underground movement even just a few years ago. But as more organizations supporting the self-educating of children have cropped up and home schoolers have grown in numbers, the movement is no longer grassroots.This year marks the 10th anniversary of North Suburban Home Learners (NSHL), a nonprofit organization founded by two parents to provide information, socialization, classes and services to home schooling families in and around Melrose and other communities in Middlesex Country.

The article is well-balanced in terms of the information offered about homeschooling, and the reactions of parents and children. The one, perhaps most predictable, inclusion that disturbs the tenor of the article is the nearly-obligatory opinion of a public school administrator.

Asked if the requirements were perhaps too lax, Muxie said, “It is difficult in terms of really getting specific info on a child and his or her progress. I would like it to be much more structured as an administrator, but can we make it more structured? No, we can’t,” she said, due to state laws. Muxie said even home visits aren’t required, and there is no standardized testing requirement, including the MCAS tests.

“I think we could tighten it up a little bit and encourage more outreach on our end,” Muxie said, adding, “We’re in the process of changing the forms that we’ve used in the district in the past.”

This viewpoint makes me wonder if the public school administrators also think they ought to do “outreach” to private schools as well. I also wonder why articles about public school activities don’t include obligatory opinions from homeschooling parents or administrators of umbrella schools.

posted by Valerie

The Friar at Reason and Revelation caught my critique of one of his blog posts and appears to object to my neglect of fully fisking his original post, my conclusion, and my anti-defamation league comment*.

I guess I can rectify all that.

*(as to my seriousness, sir, the pajamas-with-feet that I proposed should be on the league crest ought to give you insight into that)

Reason and Revelation, Homeschooling 3

My statement was qualified stating that some were dissatisfied with the lackadaisical nature of the homeschool community in a certain town. The fact that they were does not decrease the value of homeschool. It only criticizes a certain aspect of homeschooling that exists in a particular place. The blogger does not even note this fact.

So noted.

What you may not have taken into account is that participation or non-participation in communal activities is not what makes homeschooling, and isn’t even a defining feature. Some families homeschool while sailing a boat around the world. Having a little help from your friends is useful, of course, but it isn’t something that can be guaranteed to anyone. It is not the obligation of one homeschooling family to provide whatever another family lacks any more that it is incumbent upon one neighbor to finance the house, raise the children, or mow the lawn of another, although if there is a need, neighbors often help out. But one doesn’t move into a neighborhood for those reasons. If one does, it is usually a commune. Much of the point of homeschooling is independence of action.

Also, over-organization can (but doesn’t always) badly affect a family’s homeschooling. The energy given to the group, especially a high-needs group with dues, meetings, committees, and co-operative teaching is subtracted from the energy available to the family in their daily lives. The entity’s needs becomes the focus instead of the family’s individual needs.

The kind of support to supply to group members is one of the key decisions the people who want to form a support group must hammer out at the beginning of the process.

• Is the group meant to be one that is informal, or formal?
• Will the group be a playgroup?
• Is a main focus field-trips?
• Will the group be mainly a social group — for the parents or for the kids?
• Does the group have forming a co-op as a goal?

Your writing leads me to the conclusion that you presume that only groups that are formal and supply significant support are worthwhile, something that the group in the Raleigh area apparently did not do. I presume that, because of this, you use the word “lackadaisical,” which is not generally known for its positive implications.

I homeschooled my children, usually without any local support. When I first started I was the only homeschooling parent I knew, and that condition persisted for almost four years. My only supports were two magazines, and many catalogs. At this time we were also living in the infamous Germany, which had yet to fully enter the public cyber-age, but our Commodore 64 wouldn’t have been able to do anything with an Internet connection even if we’d had one. Because of this, I had no online support although I read in my magazines about these mysterious things called “bulletin boards.” I could only imagine what they were. Finally, a group came together, but after two years or so, we moved (to the also-infamous Belgium). For the final two years of my children’s homeschooling I was again a loner. I was also of the unschoolish persuasion, so I used no prepared curriculum, and rarely asked for guidance.

By what I infer from your writing, our homeschooling would have been ineffective because of the lack of ‘support.’

Further the blogger does not address the critique (or vices) I raised, which was the point of my post.

(and now we revert to the post that caught my eye)

• But homeschooling is not a panacea. Not every student out of a homeschool environment is better off it seems to me. One private school, located in Raleigh, was founded because some homeschoolers were dissatisfied with the lackadaisical nature of many homeschools.

See my original reply, and above.

By the way, I have an aversion to referring to young people and children as “students.” That seems to place their entire lives solely in the context of schooling.

• The support system among homeschools was also lacking discipline.

See above.

• 1. Expectation: Some homeschool students that I have had the pleasure of teaching believe, upon arrival to a college (secular or otherwise) they deserve high grades, and when I mean high, I mean “A.” A “B” is like an “F” to them. They have usually gotten wonderful grades in their homeschool and they expect the same results. The reason for this is my next point.

Grades? Sorry, I didn’t ‘do’ grades, or assignments, or testing. John Holt was my guru, and GWS was my magazine (along with HEM).

• 2. Achievement/Smarts: Homeschool students usually believe they deserve all “A”s because they have been told (usually by their mother) for years that they are special, bright, smart, and will be successful. While well meaning, this is probably not the wisest thing mothers do for their children. It actually hampers them when they get out into the real world and have to deal with people who are not their mother.

Hmmm, just as I didn’t take into consideration that you were writing about a local lazy league of learners, so, too, you do not take into consideration that what you’ve written is meaningless in the context of unschooling.

The closest I can get to giving you an idea of our outlook is to quote some signs that I hand-lettered (I liked calligraphy), and that were hanging around for a while.

If you can’t be a good example, you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.

If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re probably right.

Richard Maybury‘s Two Laws as enumerated in his book Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? (and others):

Do all you have agreed to do.

Do not encroach on others or their property.

Floss [under hand-drawn picture of the Cheshire Cat's grin]

As for the ‘real world,’ what world do you think we live in? Do you think the world of school is ‘real?’

• 3. Narcissism: Homeschool students who go to college find it unnerving when their professors do not lavish attention on them the way their homeschool teacher did. In fact, some are downright offended when a prof does not lavishly praise them, spend time with them, etc., as they are accustomed. After all–and I have heard this from numerous students: “my parents told me I am special, and thus, you should pay more attention to me.” This is reflective of a bit of narcissism, and it’s unhealthy.

The kids you know say, “and thus?” My.

[calling out in a fluting voice to daughter, who commented on the last blog post] Rose, darling! What was it that Sue-J. said to you at college? (arch aside to readers: Sue-J. was the professor urging her to go to grad school) Wasn’t it something along the line of she was glad you were homeschooled because she didn’t have to coddle you? And who was the teacher you student-taught with?

[I'll have to shout louder for the other daughter, as she doesn't look around much online] Cindy, dear! What was it your chemistry grad-student-teacher said about your homework? Wasn’t it how it was so much more fun to grade because of the (copyrighted-by-my-daughter) King Monkey cartoons explaining your work? Mummy got that right, didn’t she, dear?

The boys don’t read me, so it’s no use yelling for them.

I’m assuming, sir, that we are at an impasse as I can see your experiences-with-homeschoolers-in-college, and raise you two grads-with-honors, and one doctor. Our publicly-schooled son also graduated with honors, so either I did as well as the public school teachers, or they did as well as I.

• There is one thing I have seen from homeschool students in the college setting that does not bespeak of narcissism–the penchant for some to want to show up to class in their pajamas–so careless are they with their appearance.

Guilty as charged, she sez as she sits blogging in her pajamas. (t-shirt that says “Front” and “Bach” — with appropriate image –, orange, pink and green-striped britches from WalMart, and black-patent leather Birkenstock sandals) I’m formal today.

Working in pajamas, by the way, is ecologically sound. If there is no need to dirty a second set of clothing there is a decreased need for laundering (which, to my credit, I’m doing concurrently with blogging) and that saves on the Seventh Generation laundry detergent, the wear and tear on the machines, and provides a decrease in the use of electricity and water. If the ‘good clothes’ do not wear out as fast, they don’t need to be replaced as often, and, as mentioned in … Zoolander, was it?? where the reporter is chastised for asking questions-of-little-substance and then goes for the jugular, …. the textile industry is a source of significant environmental pollution.

• And I should add that my experience is anecdotal–that is I should state that the 3 vices above are not generalizable.

Ditto on my replies.

Now to return to the current post:

However, many parents do share resources and some in my example found that wanting. THAT was the motive for some to start a private school. Where’s the illogic in that account?

In itself, that is not illogical, but your argument drifts away from homeschooling and into alt.ed. This is the source of a lot of online discussion where ‘ideas from all over’ butt into each other: where does homeschooling stop and ‘something else’ begin?

Again, is it really that difficult to understand that some people try homeschool, and find it is not for them in one way or another? And then, resolve not to put their kids into public school, but put them into a private school. Sounds reasonable to me and other homeschool supporters who responded to the original post.

Founding a private school isn’t at all unreasonable, but it isn’t about homeschooling. It is about the personalities and needs of people who decided that homeschooling, with its inherent independence, didn’t fit them. This lack-of-fit isn’t a failing of homeschooling any more than not having a bat with which to hit the ball is a failing of football.

You are ascribing the founding of a school to a failure of homeschooling to meet the needs of these people who apparently ‘aren’t homeschoolers’ — which isn’t to blame them. I am not a rock-climber, or an airplane-flyer, or a person who enjoys buildings of over … say … 4-stories in height, so is this a failure of rock-climbing, flying, or skyscrapers? No. They haven’t failed. What’s more, I haven’t failed. I am just an ocean-swimmer, train-rider and ranch-house-liver, which leaves more room on the cliffs, in the airport waiting lines and in penthouses. Win-win, we’re all happy.

The school in Raleigh was founded because that is the framework these people needed. Founding a school is fine, maybe even wonderful. But you don’t have to blame homeschooling because independent home education didn’t meet their needs.

And that is where the illogic comes in: one thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other in the context you gave it: ie, the founding of a school by people who are ‘not homeschoolers’ (at their core — it’s just ‘not them’), because of homeschoolers whom you find to be insecure, narcissistic, and slovenly.

The blogger also does not mention the many positive statements I made about homeschooling (which I support–mine was not an attack on homeschooling).

Uh-huh.

Homeschooling is a viable and worthy alternative, but we ought to be aware of some of the natural(?) and potential pitfalls of such an endeavor. With the continued failure of many K-12 public schools, homeschooling should be considered. However, to avoid some of these pitfalls, it might be worthwhile to check out the private arena.

I think that’s called ‘damning with faint praise.’

posted by Valerie

I wonder if there is some kind of root instinct in people for banding together, because that’s how the co-op phenomenon looks. I even tried a co-op class for the kids, once upon a time, so I’m familar with (one form of) the motivation.

I don’t know if it’s an ‘instinct’ or ‘urge’ or merely a desire for efficiency, but it seems, among some people, to work ‘against’ family homeschooling. X-number of people in a geographic area independently decide to homeschool, and before long they get together as homeschoolers, and soon there are co-ops and hired teachers, and everyone appears to be taking the first steps towards a private school. The phenomenon almost looks like an expansion (into homeschooling), then a contraction (back to the school model).

I don’t mean this to be a squeaky-squawky outburst, it’s just that I’m seeing this trend in more news articles.

Kentucky.com, Lexington, Kentucky, 4 February 2007, Home-schoolers gain socialization, specialized teaching

Home-schoolers commonly attend enrichment classes and take field trips, learning about unique subjects, meeting the expectations of someone other than their parents and having a chance to socialize.

Many members of the FAITH (Families Acquiring Instruction Through Home schooling) support group take part in regular enrichment classes, where more than 100 kids turn First Christian Church in Elizabethtown into a school. …

“A doctor actually teaches me biology,” he said. …

Parent Michelle Piscatello, for example, is an electrical engineer but has a passion for art and wanted to pass it on to children, she said. …

In another case, a police officer and father of home-schooled children teaches a D.A.R.E. class.

At the high-school level, parent Cindy Vaughn organizes the classes and teaches literary analysis.

Is the school model more efficient? Is it the manifestation of the ‘tribe’ passing along their culture? Is it just the model we’re imprinted with? Has that model become inevitable in this place and time?

No answers, just questions.

One caution: On an email list there was a recent warning about the IRS considering homeschool support groups who hire professional teachers to be employers — and to be responsible for FICA and Medicare withholding, and issuing W-2 forms.

Homeschool CPA: Hiring paid teachers: Are they employees or independent contractors?

posted by Valerie