(deathly) afraid of the Homeschooling movement
your creating "the Standard", they can't achieve.
C.L. thought you'd like this post / thread. 
Posted on 08/25/2009 3:34:01 PM PDT by christianhomeschoolmommaof3
“Homeschooling is the sleeping giant of the American education system,” is the opening line of a recent article by Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews.
He’s right.
He’s also right when he says, “All surveys of home-schooled students so far indicate they have higher achievement rates on average than regular students,” and when he dismisses the claim that homeschoolers might not be properly socialized by saying, “Homeschoolers go outside often and get just as big a dose of pain and joy and ignorance and wisdom as regular school kids.”
Where Mathews goes wrong is his support for a recommendation by Robert Kunzman, an associate professor at the Indiana University School of Education whose new book Write These Laws On Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling, calls for all homeschoolers to be subjected to regular, compulsory, standardized state testing.
(Excerpt) Read more at hslda.org ...
PIng
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/08/three_smart_rules_for_home_sch.html
Link to the original article in the Washington Post.
“We put so much heat on the author of the bill that she pulled her support for her own bill. “
ROTFLMAO!!
So... if illiterate and innumerate is passing for a government school child, why bother to test homeschoolers? Evidently there are no standards for the government child. If there are no standards for the government child, there should be no standards for homeschoolers either!
Huh?
Also...If the government school child fails his standardized test should he be forced to homeschool?
Read comments at this link. I LOVE IT!
Keep up the good fight, homeschoolers!
I support home schooling. If I had kids I’d do it. But their should be testing, otherwise how do you judge the kids progress. Plus, don’t you think kids need to learn how to take tests. They’ll have to take them all of their life. Why do you oppose testing?
I oppose State Standardized Testing. I test my students at home on what I have taught them. We are studying World History right now with my 4th and 2nd grader. Fourth graders in public school are studying WV State History. I will not get there for several more years. Why should my children be evaluated on what the public school students are learning. Would it be fair for me to give the public school students a test on what we are learning in my homeschool?
The funniest part about it is that she withdrew her support on live radio on the Tom Roten morning show in Huntington WV. Someone from HSLDA was on there with her.
Great job.
If the government is not handing me a check to educate my kids, they have no right to demand anything from me.
They don’t own my kids and can go take a flying fig.
That being said, every homeschooling family I know (and I belong to four different groups) say the same thing I do. Homeschooling is not about home, it’s about school. None of us want our kids to grow up dumb.
That being said, my 11 year old is working on a very popular CD-Rom curriculum. (9th grade) She will be attending the local community college in two years. The 9 year old is half way through 7th grade. The state would be stupid to test the homeschoolers. It would show what an inadequate job they are doing.
>>Would it be fair for me to give the public school students a test on what we are learning in my homeschool?<<
It would be hillarious!
How about my girls in their second year of Latin?
Test a fourth grade public school kid on THAT!
“Why do you oppose testing?”
Standardized testing will allow the State to direct a fair of what you teach, when you teach it, and how you teach it. It would presumably require political indoctrination as well in order to answer certain questions correctly. It is a bad, bad, idea that only sounds good when looked at as an idealized plan where schools are run by educators, not bureaucrats.
There should be no mandatory state testing for any school....
Most of these tests really do not measure how much a child has learned...and most schools just teach in order to pass the mandated test
Homeschoolers or any schoolers should not have to take these.
This madated state testing is courtesy of your Bush/Ted Kennedy No Student Left Behind garbage....and people thought Bush was “conservative”...he was a big government liberal
“Socialization” in school is why we are homeschooling. I don't accept socialization of my kid by peers from dysfunctional families in a trashy culture. We socialize in sports, Scouts and Sunday School.
Do you use a separate Latin curriculum?
Standardized testing absolutely is not necessary. I know many homeschoolers who have never taken a standardized exam. That you find it necessary is may be due to your own culturalization of having been institutionalized for your own schooling. One of the things that most homeschooling parents need to learn is to let go of their own institutional schooling experiences, habits, and expectations.
My children never took a standardized test. The **first** standardized test that my two younger children took was the GRE for entrance to graduate school. They finished B.S. degrees in mathematics at the age of 18, and needed the GRE to gain admission to graduate school.
The oldest will soon take his first standardized test when he finishes his MBA ( accounting) and sits for the CPA exam. ( Certified Public Accountant).
I believe that gummint skewels should be abolished and taxpayers freed. I hope I am not a “big government liberal.”
Both my kids took lot's of tests.........
They are now both in college.....
It is not up to the state to judge the students’ progress. It is up to colleges and employers to judge that.
What curriculum do you use for Latin? What has been the benefit for your children? Our spelling curriculum covers some Latin and I am curious.
That is just too funny. We home schooled our daughter. She entered Stanford at 16.
Congrats on a job well done.
Vouchers!
” My children never took a standardized test. The **first** standardized test that my two younger children took was the GRE for entrance to graduate school. They finished B.S. degrees in mathematics at the age of 18, and needed the GRE to gain admission to graduate school.
The oldest will soon take his first standardized test when he finishes his MBA ( accounting) and sits for the CPA exam. ( Certified Public Accountant). “
You done did well, goodly ;-)
Actually it would show them why it is necessary to force the homeschool kids back into the government schools. They would interpret the results to show that the smart kids are being unfairly withheld from the government schools thus depressing the government schooling results and preventing public school kids from improving their own scores. Many "educators" work on the theory that having dumb kids study alongside smart kids and averaging their scores actually raises the educational level of the dumb kids.
I’m most pleased that she turned into a happy well adjusted woman.
It's the camel's nose in the tent. Who's standards will be used? Are we going to "judge the kids progress" against, well, what exactly? Who will make this measuring stick?
One of the reasons to home school is freedom. If we invite some NEA or government board into our living rooms to "Judge the kids progress" are we free? What if we want to teach a 100% religious curriculum? How would someone else's ideas of what is good compare?
You see what you're asking? It's like the proverbial knee-jerk "there oughta be a law."
“If the government school child fails his standardized test should he be forced to homeschool?”
This is happening in a way. Recommendations to homeschool have been made to parents of “problem” children in my county.
Problem children defined as those who repeatedly fail the EOG tests or those who cause too much trouble in the classroom.
I know this to be the case because I advise new homeschool parents.
Homeschooling parents know because they are right there on the spot to help children with questions as they arise. Also, I as a homeschooler had little tests, as needed, to check progress. A formal standardized test wasn't necessary.
Plus, don’t you think kids need to learn how to take tests.
My kids started college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. They had no problem with test taking in college. Taking a test is really a rather straightforward activity. ( Especially if the student knows the material being tested.)
They’ll have to take them all of their life.
If homeschoolers feel strongly about standardized testing then take them to a private Sylvan Center. The government has no reason to be testing.
Remember, please, that passing for government children is illiterate and innumerate. In other words government as no standards for its own children. If complete illiteracy and innumeracy will get a child passed from grade to grade, then that should be the same standard for homeschoolers. If illiterate and innumerate is the standard for government children why on earth should homeschoolers be forced to test?
Why do you oppose testing?
Because homeschoolers would then be forced to teach to the test. Government would be setting the curriculum. Before long children would be tested on putting condoms on bananas.
By the way, homeschooling moms have a joke that we find hilarious:
If a government schooled child fails his standardized test should he be forced to homeschool?
"Socialization" is school is making childrens' role models other children. Homeschooling socialization has adults as the role models. In public education and thus in the society we have accepted that childhood is the utopian ideal and that we should strive to be children all our lives. Many public school children ultimately succeed in that goal. Government school education and television are the infantilizers of society.
I've seen a few among the teens in my church. The government school strongly encourages the parents to homeschool the problem child and ( as a benefit) the child is not counted in the drop out stats of the school.
I used Latina Christiana and Henle.
This is the crux of it, right here. Students in state schools are tested to ensure the taxpayers that their dollars are actually doing something. Since no taxpayer dollars are spent on home schooled children the state has no standing to do any interference.
It's amazing tho, how many people lack this basic understanding. Most people view all children as somehow belonging to the state. They'll say, But how does the state know they are being educated? And I say, my children are not the children of the state.
“If illiterate and innumerate is passing for a government school child then then homeschoolers should be held to the **SAME** standards that government schools have for their kids.”
I think the public school kids would be able to answer this test question than home school kid:
Sheashawn scored 1G from a deal with Jamal. After the deal both celebrated with lap dances and crack ho’s. Sheashawn and Jamal each had and equal number of lap dances but Jamal had twice as many crack ho’s. If lap dances cost $30 and crack ho’s cost $50, how many crack ho’s did Jamal have?
Good description.
It also happened with my godson. He was in 10th grade when the school told his mother they thought he ought to homeschool or get his GED. This young man had straight A’s from K-9th grade. When entering 10th grade it was determined that he was only able to read on a 5th grade level, so they recommended he bwithdraw and homeschool.
How does anyone make all A’s when they can’t read?
First, let me make clear I am not now, nor have I ever been a home schooler. If we had it to do over again, we would never subject our girls to a penal institution referred to as a public school. It would have saved me a lot of hours explaining my position to school administrators and why they were going to do it my way. It would have gotten my daughters a better education in the bargain.
Why oppose testing? No one is opposed to testing (that I know of). What home schoolers are opposed to (and rightly so IMHO) is testing written and administered by people with a definite interest in failing homeschoolers, the NEA. Ask yourself, who else are the politicians going to look to to write and give the tests. Especially Democrat politicians?
Letting the NEA have any input on the testing of homeschoolers is as crazy as letting anti-gunners have a say in who can carry firearms or Luddites have a say in what standards our automobiles must pass.
Yes. Thank you.
Teaching to Test is an impediment and hinderance.
It must go.
I do not support vouchers. If the state gives me money then the state can have their say. No money no say is the way I like it!
That is our ultimate goal as well! So far so good!
Your name speaks volumes.
we use Latina Christiana
I admire you and what you have accomplished. Best wishes!
The only thing I really hate about living in Pennsylvania is the homeschooling law. The local school district has too much control over it. You have to report to the super of schools, get approved, and jump a lot of hoops. Keep a running log of the activities and lessons, submit it to the sos every year. You have to provide a list of “objectives.” You have to prepare a portfolio with work samples every year. For some grades you have to submit evidence of medical or dental exams, eye tests, hearing tests, vaccinations. For some grades you have to have the child take a standardized test. You have to notarize a document saying you’re a high school graduate and not a felon or a sexual predator or living with one. And every year you have to take the child to an interview with an evaluator, a professional teacher, who will look over the log and question the child and decide whether or not to sign an affirmation that you seem to know what you’re doing. THEN you have to take the whole bundle, log, evaluator paperwork, work samples, medical data, test results, to the local school, and after they have examined it all, they send a letter of approval...you hope.
Just describing it makes me furious. I feel hate speech rising. :(
C.L. thought you'd like this post / thread.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.