Posted on 08/04/2004 4:22:33 AM PDT by kattracks
WASHINGTON (AP) - For more and more students, homeroom has become a room at home. Almost 1.1 million students were home-schooled last year, a 29 percent increase since the last government survey in 1999. The growth comes as more parents, frustrated with traditional schools and limits on curriculum, say they would rather handle lessons themselves.The estimated figure of students taught at home comes from parent surveys. The results were released Tuesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department.
Parents offered two main reasons for choosing home schooling: 31 percent cited concerns about the environment of regular schools, such as drugs, lack of safety and negative peer pressure; 30 percent wanted the flexibility to teach religious or moral lessons. Sixteen percent said they were dissatisfied with academic instruction at other schools.
"There's potential for massive growth," said Ian Slatter, spokesman for the National Center for Home Education, which promotes home schooling and tracks laws that govern it.
"Home schooling is just getting started," he said. "We've gotten through the barriers of questioning the academic ability of home schools, now that we have a sizable number of graduates who are not socially isolated or awkward - they are good, high-quality citizens. We're getting that mainstream recognition and challenging the way education has been done."
In perspective, the 1.1 million home-schooled students accounts for a small part - 2.2 percent - of the school-age population in the United States, young people age 5 through 17.
Slatter said the new figures accurately reflect the growth of home schooling but underestimate the number of children involved; his group says it is 2 million.
In the government's view, home schooling means students spend at least part of their education at home and no more than 25 hours a week in public or private schools. Overall, more than four out of five home-schooled students spend no time at traditional schools.
A separate federal report showed a rising number of teenagers are skipping school for fear of getting hurt, even though reported school violence is down.
That sense of anxiety - fueled by terrorism warnings, high-profile school shootings and a desire to keep children out of harm's way - probably has helped home schooling grow, said Ted Feinberg, assistant executive director of the National Association of School Psychologists.
Home schooling presents several questions that must be considered, he said. Among them: Do parents with no formal training as teachers know how to handle a variety of subjects or to tailor instruction for children of different ages? Do students get the same materials they would have at schools, from books to science labs? Are families with two working parents prepared to live off a single income so that one parent can teach at home?
Also, Feinberg said, parents must consider whether their children will emerge from home schooling with limited exposure to other children and various cultures. More federal research is needed to help resolve such questions about home schooling, he said.
"At some point, children are going to have to interact with the rest of the world," he said. "If they haven't had the opportunity to build their emotional muscles so they have that capacity to interact, how effective are they going to be outside their cloistered environment?"
Riiiiiiight... it doesn't have ANYTHING to do with the lousy quality of education provided by government schools... it must be anxiety caused by those AWFUL guns and violent video games.
Please... My wife and I would gladly home school our kids except that neither of us feels we are smart enough or patient enough. Instead, I pay a large portion of what I make to a parochial school. Anything but the government schools!
"31 percent cited concerns about the environment of regular schools, such as drugs, lack of safety and negative peer pressure; 30 percent wanted the flexibility to teach religious or moral lessons. Sixteen percent said they were dissatisfied with academic instruction at other schools."
All of the above were reasons that we decided to homeschool our daughter. In addition, we had lots of guns and knives at our school, but no one was ever threatened by them.
Here's a fun filled fact: MassPIRG (leftist organization) wanted to prove the benefits of more funding for better schools as measured by objective scores of the students. So they conducted a study. To their shock and horror, they found that there was no relationship between funding and scores, but that the determining factor was the amount of time the parents spent working on homework with the kids.
This won't get press for obvious reasons.
But let's think about something else along these lines. Americans spend maybe $11k per kid per year for vacation. We have this massive bureaucracy that ties the hands of whatever remaining competent teachers there are in the public school system. Yet these schools no longer produce Nobel prize winners. The schools that did produce Nobel prize winners included one room school houses where teachers had the decision making authority of what to teach and the towns held them accountable.
"The estimated figure of students taught at home comes from parent surveys. The results were released Tuesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department"
My guess is that 1.1 million number is on the extremely LOW side. I've home schooled my 3 girls for 9 years, and have never once been surveyed as to how/where our children are educated. Most likely, 1.1 million is the number of children who have SOME sort of record in a public school, and the parents had to officially withdraw them to home school. There are probably (only guessing here) hundreds of thousands of kids who have never set foot in a public school classroom; therefore, the gov't has no school record for them. None of my three girls have ever gone to public school...our local school system doesn't even know they're here!
Please allow me to respond to this moron.
1. Children are much better prepared to interact with the rest of the world when most of their socialization is with adults. They are more mature and better behaved as a result.
2. Homeschooled kids are far from cloistered. My kids have plenty of interaction with other kids at church, teen group, homeschool co-op, and the homeschool enrichment program they attend.
3. His underlying attitude is that our kids will not behave like the "normal" kids whose test scores sink every year, who drop out of school, who shoplift at the local clothing store, who experiment with sex and drugs, who....
Yup. For me, the single biggest benefit (for the child) is the discovery that -- people can (and should) learn all through their lives. If you want to know something -- you can just go learn about it. No excuse for ignorance. Ever.
Kids in Government Schools don't get taught that lesson.
.
I can never stand this moronic environment about "cloistered" children.
My son has been homeschooled and apprenticed since 14. His maturity and social skills put kids his age to shame. They don't know how to deal with anyone outside their age group!
To me, the big story about homeschooling should be how well rounded the kids are socially and mature they are emotionally.
Lots of people do "Constitutionl Right" homeschooling - they won't report or in any way let the state know what they are doing. They just figure it's none of their business, and with the history of Hs, the state can't bother you if it doesn't know you are there.
They always seem to fixate on the moral/safety questions.
After years of HS, I would say, my #1 reason for homeschooling is, it builds a strong family and gives everyone quality time with each other. It's such a pleasure to be with my children.
I never see this addressed.
Here we go again. They just can't sing any other song but this same old tired one. My homeschooled kids interact witht the rest of the world every single day. Educrats like this guy would like to paint the impression that homeschool kids are never let outside their homes until they are grown up and leave the home. Hence, his use of the term "cloistered environment". That is designed to convey a sense of being walled away. Actually, that's kind of the impression I get when I drive by the government schools and see the walls, and the chain-link fences, and the kids all shut up inside.
Exactly right. The majority of new schools built in Texas can be easily converted to prisons later...no windows, high chain-link fences and metal detectors. Who says our officials don't plan ahead?
Ain't it the truth!(a little uneducated lingo, there)
I home schooled my two sons starting 20 years ago. This was before home schooling was "cool". The educrats were whining the same things then as now. Broken records, all.Can they not come up with something better than these?Noooo!
And, ahem, my sons are both officers in the Navy. Social misfits? Not on your life Mr. Public Educator! Oh, and they both graduated OCS in honor classes. I guess it was just a fluke....
My wife teaches public school, and we are difinitely send our kids to a private school.
Teachers have become nothing more than politically correct propagandists who do not work for the communities that hire them and do not teach objective facts but disseminate for the National Education Association and United Teachers Federation who spew out socialist, cultural relativist junk!
I only hope that between charters, home schooling, and four more years of Bush and then more conservative leadership, the unions that have destroyed education will self destruct.
My older son is finishing up Plebe Summer at USNA ... tested out of Calculus 1 & 2, Physics 1 & 2, Chemistry 1, and turned 17 1/2 years old last month - not bad for a home-schooled boy! (He did play football for his 11th & 12th grade years .... but that was his ONLY presence at the local high school - except when the school wanted him present at the Seniors Honor Assembly to add him to the "credits" of high honors earned by students.
Mike
Ditto and........see my tagline.
I have to disagree, my kid goes to a "government school" and she learns outside the classroom everyday - because we teach her. It is a parents responsibility to teach - morals, manners, reading, writing, arithmetic, etc....
We are our children's first teachers.
You said: "my kid goes to a "government school" and she learns outside the classroom everyday - because we teach her."
So I will repeat: Kids in Government Schools do not learn that they can learn things outside of school.
I guess I need to expand: That sort of learning is done by Parents in the home -- either through Home Schooling, or through supplementing what Government Schools do. But the bottom line is that Government Schools want everyone to think that "teaching" can only be done by by highly trained (and unionized)professionals. You (ya see) are doing the impossible by teaching your child.
Read my original post again: you and I do not disagree.
Good points.
No mention of homeschool basketball teams, swim teams, debating teams, etc.
No mention of enrichment programs, field trips, and the like.
There are many convenient omissions in this article.
>>Please allow me to respond to this moron.
Excellent points, all.
As I (half-)jokingly comment on these threads, if you want to simulate the public school experience while homeschooling, take your kids to the bathroom, blow cigarette smoke in their faces, swear at them, beat them up, and take their lunch money.
One of the reasons for hope for the future of the U.S.A. is the increasing number and percentage of privately- and home-schooled kids. These young people will have an influence far out of proportion to their numbers in the years to come.
"2. Homeschooled kids are far from cloistered. My kids have plenty of interaction with other kids at church, teen group, homeschool co-op, and the homeschool enrichment program they attend."
That's the problem, as Feinberg see it.
You are sheltering your children from children of other backgrounds and they see this as a problem.
I mean, don't you think it would be wise to expose your children to all the losers at school who do drugs and don't plan on making anything of their lives, just so that they can be enriched by that experience? I mean, you can't possibly teach your children not to be racist, classist, tolerant, etc., without the public schools system to show you the way. </sarcasm>
Cathy, let me tell you a little of my PS experience. My son was diagnosed as learning disabled and the school insisted he be put on Ritalin. The ritalin made him teachable for a few hours a day, but when it wore off his behavior was impossible. Eventually the PS sent him to a school for behavior problems 40 miles away.
The bus picked him up at 7 and dropped him off at 5. When I got him off the bus he was uncontrollable (Ritalin sundowning). He would be so exhausted by his long day he would fall asleep early, then be up all night because ritalin wrecks your sleep cycle. Then up again at 6ish to be ready for the bus. There was no such thing as extra work in the evening - we couldn't even do homework. Heck, we couldn't do anything with him - we never saw him. It was as if the school was his parent, and we were just the boarding house.
When I tried to change things I met the intractable wall of the school bureaucracy. I didn't even know my own child. Finally, when he was 12, I just withdrew him and started hs.
It was wonderful. We went places, did things together with other hs friends, and I got him apprenticed to a mechanics shop, which he loved. We both discovered there were lots of fun and educational things to do as a family, everyday, and that we LIKED each other.
I also was able to teach him to read within a few months, because it turned out the be the pressure and inability of the school to adapt that was causing most of his problem. He is 19 today, and earning a man's salary, has his ASE licenses, has learned to run several kinds of businesses, and is more emotionally mature than anyone his age he meets. They talk CD's and clothes, he talks world affairs, business matters, and politics. And of course, cars. :)
And we are great friends, in a way I see not many other mothers are with their sons.
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