The future of laws and regulations in Indiana

In Homeschool regulations ahead? Karen Francisco in The Journal Gazette writes:

Indiana State Superintendent Tony Bennett released new non-waiver graduation rates today with a news release that suggests Indiana high schools might be “counseling students out” of public schools and into homeschool. Last week, I blogged about a New York Times article on private schools “counseling out” struggling students and I cited some examples of northeast Indiana parochial school students who transferred to public schools at the parochial schools’ request.

The Department of Education news release raises suspicions about the legitimacy of transfers from Indiana public high schools to a homeschool: “While we believe the vast majority of Indiana’s schools are doing the right thing, we fear some schools may be issuing waivers for students that aren’t quite ready to graduate and even counseling students out of traditional public schools and into ‘homeschool’ where the students then become untraceable,” Bennett said. “We are doing these students no favors and must reexamine this process. Homeschool is an excellent choice for some students, and such a decision should be made with each individual student’s needs in mind. However, if a student is reported as having transferred to a home school program, that student should, in fact, be participating in a legitimate program.”

And therein lies the problem – what’s a “legitimate” home school program? For better or worse, Indiana is among the states with no regulation of homeschool instruction.

Continue reading at the link above.

In this first of three posts, titled Compelled to Attend, HEM’s Road Less Travelled columnist, Linda Dobson, is revisiting her first book, The Art of Education: Reclaiming Your Family, Community and Self, published by Home Education Press in 1995. An excerpt:

And if colleges and universities ignore the true meaning of education and accept indoctrination as their function in society, what then is the purpose of all the years of schooling that lead up to college, starting at the tender age of five or, in many cases today, even younger?

Continue reading at the link above.

Holly Craw, the Phoenix, Arizona Homeschooling Examiner, asks a question we’re hearing more and more often these days in her article Arizona loses out on Race to the Top Funds: Is this a new opportunity to strengthen homeschooling? A couple of excerpts:

The Arizona homeschool community may need to gear up for an increase in its ranks. When U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, announced yesterday the winners in the Race to the Top competition for billions of dollars in federal assistance for state education funding, Arizona had missed a $250 million windfall by 5.3 points.

This examiner predicts that there will be an upsurge in families deciding to homeschool because of the issues that are being exacerbated in the public schools.

If you are having second thoughts about your local public school, and the programs and staff that it no longer has, you may want to consider the pros and cons of homeschooling.

An interesting and enlightening article on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s website, StLToday.com, titled Adventures in Public Schooling, Homeschooling, and Living in Both Worlds by Sharon Autenrieth:

Twelve years ago my husband and I had dinner with friends. They were homeschooling their youngest child, then in fifth grade, and at some point in the evening the conversation turned to education. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “because you two are the exception. But most homeschoolers are freaks.”

Eleven years ago I became a homeschooler. Serves me right, really, after that remark. I certainly didn’t anticipate taking this path, but I’ve stayed on it, and last week began my 11th straight year of homeschooling.

Continue reading Sharon’s wonderful article at the link above.

LEBANON, Ohio — Kelly and April Kamentz would like to see all of their six children play sports on Lebanon schools teams.

But the 19-year residents of the district may not get that chance because their children are homeschooled, and like other Warren County schools that have high “partial enrollment” requirements, Lebanon requires student-athletes to take at least five classes a year.

“As a resident, as a taxpaying citizen, I’ve invested my life in Lebanon,” Kelly Kamentz said. “I hope that Lebanon will adopt what we consider to be a more reasonable definition of partial enrollment.”

Continue reading Parents of homeschool children want sports, subtitled OHSAA’s rules leave room for interpretation; each school district gets the final say, by Richard Wilson, Staff Writer for the Dayton Daily News in Dayton, Ohio.

In an article for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, descriptively titled Home schooling as a respite rather than a retreat from public schools, reporter Maureen Downey explains how Laura Brodie, author of the popular book Love in a Time of Homeschooling, never intended to embrace homeschooling full-time, calling herself a public school parent who chose to home school to meet her child’s needs. “Now, from a vantage of several years later, Brodie can see her missteps as a home-schooling parent.”

Sara McGrath, author of A Lifestyle of Learning, writes for the Seattle-area Unschooling Examiner; a recent post is titled “Seattle education reformer on the negative reality of schools”:

Last week, educational theorist and school reformer John Goodlad of the Institute for Educational Inquiry in Seattle featured in the first of three guest articles on The Washington Post education blog, The Answer Sheet. This second article, “Straight Talk About Schools,” began with this statement:

“Schools are not our major educators. Adding hours, days, and even weeks will not make them so.”

Current educational reform proposals call for longer school days.

Goodlad proposes that the role of government in education reform should not be to develop a mission for schools, but rather to fund regional centers that “provide comprehensive renewing inventories to assist local schools and communities in selecting from the richness of this planet what is important and compelling for the educational trajectory of the young.”

It’s an interesting post, exploring the negativity and the potential for change in our schools, and with links to Goodlad’s articles.

From Literacy News, which reports on literacy issues which affect the workplace and education systems, one of those countdown pieces subtitled ’10 reasons why public school is better than homeschool’ starts out with:

1. Most parents were educated in the under funded-public school system, and so are not smart enough to homeschool their own children.

It gets worse. But it’s not what you think. File under satire…

Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center Director Dr. David Katz was among those honored in the October 2009 issue of Children’s Health magazine as one of 25 leaders, experts, advocates, and role models considered to be powerful influences on the lives of our children. In a Huffington Post commentary, Attention Deficit Disorder: Ritalin Or Recess?, Dr. Katz notes a recent CDC report on children and physical activity: “As often seems to be the case, modern analytic methods and systematic review of evidence landed us right in the middle of Grandma’s common sense counsel: sound mind, sound body.”

Dr. Katz continues, “Children used to play outside. They used to have physical education and recess during the school day. More and more, we take naturally rambunctious children, send them to schools from which recess and Phys Ed have been all but banished, bolt them to chairs all day long, and then watch them grow into adults we can’t get off couches with crowbars! And, alas, along the way we medicate more and more of them for attention disorders. Could it be that WE are the ones who have not been paying sufficient attention to the natural, healthy restlessness of children?”

HEM’s Closer Look at homeschooling and physical education.

Laura Brodie, author of Love in a Time of Homeschooling, and a blogger for Psychology Today, addressed the question of Bullying as a Reason for Homeschooling in a March 24 post and Mean Girls and Homeschooling Moms on March 31. A follow-up post today, Homeschooling to Escape Bullies: What’s Wrong with That? explores “the potential drawbacks that parents should keep in mind when deciding the best course of action for their child.”
HEM columnists Larry and Susan Kaseman offered a homeschooling perspective in Does Homeschooling Prepare Kids for the Real World?