Posted on 08/10/2009 4:53:45 PM PDT by achilles2000
Each year, the homeschool movement graduates at least 100,000 students. Due to the fact that both the United States government and homeschool advocates agree that homeschooling has been growing at around 7% per annum for the past decade, it is not surprising that homeschooling is gaining increased attention. Consequently, many people have been asking questions about homeschooling, usually with a focus on either the academic or social abilities of homeschool graduates....Drawing from 15 independent testing services, the Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics included 11,739 homeschooled students from all 50 states who took three well-known testsCalifornia Achievement Test, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and Stanford Achievement Test for the 200708 academic year. The Progress Report is the most comprehensive homeschool academic study ever completed...Overall the study showed significant advances in homeschool academic achievement as well as revealing that issues such as student gender, parents education level, and family income had little bearing on the results of homeschooled students....
(Excerpt) Read more at hslda.org ...
7% in ten years means the number of graduates will almost double every ten years. Not too bad.
I had this discussion with a single mom a couple years ago. She had a son somewhere around 8-12 years old. I really can’t remember his exact age. I remember her telling me all the differences between school nowdays and school when we were kids(in the seventies and early eighties). She told me that kids lug around 40lbs of books or more everywhere they go. they don’t use lockers. They have tons of homework everynight, even in elementary school. There’s no recess. There’s no gym class. They get in trouble if their sack lunch has anything in it that is disposable(bad for the environment). They spend all day talking about the environment, politics, and current events. Then they are handed huge assignments to do at home. the teachers don’t do a DAM THING to teach or help the kids with their assignments. The kids are expected to do all that on their own or with some aftershcool tutor. If the parents are poor, the parents ARE the tutor.
When I was in gradeschool, there WAS NO SUCH THING AS HOMEWORK. Except for spelling tests that is. OR if you were dumb and couldn’t keep up. Otherwise, all your studies were done at school. Sometimes a big writing assignment was finished up at home if you didn’t get it done on time.
NOBODY carried a book bag until 11th grade or later, if at all. There was no text books to take home until 7th grade and then there were so few of them that no book bag was necessary. And you almost never needed to take them home anyway. They stayed in the locker. 80-90% of all homework was completed in study halls...up until about 11th grade, when writing assignments became more involved and classes became more difficult. Test time was a little different. there was always cramming for a test the night before. But that’s about it.
I wish I had a dime for every "conservative" who decries public education but defends their school because it has a "great reputation." If you opt out of private education, I don't believe you can be a conservative.
Ping for later
ping for later
It's a basic tenet of economics. Until the consumer (the parents) spend their own money for a service in a free market of education services, the results will NECESSARILY be inferior.
We’re doing our part. We’ll be homeschooling our two boys for the first time this fall.
Our church has a lot of homeschooling families that we’ve started hanging out with. It’s been fun to watch the faces of the public school families, sometimes I think their heads are going to explode.
“If you opt out of private education, I don’t believe you can be a conservative.”
Just a conservative who is co-opted by an addiction to a middle class welfare entitlement (”free” daycare)...
“7% in ten years means the number of graduates will almost double every ten years. Not too bad.”
Except that we don’t have time. The Obamanation has bureaucrats and other “friends” who want to regulate independent homeschooling out of existence. We need to get more children out now and defeat every bond levy to break the back of the government school monopoly and make it impossible for the administration to regulate homeschooling.
And that 40 lbs of books and hours of homework are based on defective pedagogy that make it impossible for children to learn effectively. For example, here is an lucid exposition of what passes for math in government schools today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
Virtually no one could learn enough math this way to be able to be a scientist or an engineer.
And there there is “whole language”...
Imagine that, small groups of kids brought up similarly learn better than large groups of kids from many different backgrounds. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.
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small groups of kids brought up similarly learn better than large groups of kids from many different backgrounds.
You forgot - taught by those who love them most and know them best...
ping
Wow, you are just starting homeschooling? We homeschooled K-12 (ok, graduated in 10th) and I could not recommend it more heartily. Our son knows how to think for himself, for a great start, and he is a conservative besides! Top SAT scores. The best part, tho, is that we had a real, woven-together, family all the way through. Traveled together during winter months, no homework wars at night, just family time. Wonderful field trips. Wonderful discussions.
You’ll have a great time.
Homework in the school system where I went was, from 7th grade on, centered around essays for english, research reports for social studies, and practice work for math. That’s it, and that’s all that should be needed.
That too. Although I think it probably is a bonus compared to what I posted. I would guess private schools (especially parochial schools) are much closer to home schooled students than public.
I don’t know if my mom or dad would have been equipped to overcome my learning disability in a home schooled environment. They did pay for and make time to drive me to the learning center to overcome it though. And that one-on-one time with a teacher probably had as much to do with my later academic success as anything.
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