We Stand For Home Schooling

Your support needed to make strong stand for homeschooling

June 5, 2003 – Please join many homeschoolers and their allies who are publicly taking a stand for homeschooling. Why is this necessary? Because homeschooling freedoms are being threatened by the increase in both corporately-owned cyber charter schools and the creation of school district-sponsored programs directed at homeschoolers. Both are designed to bring homeschoolers under the control of public schools.

There are over 1000 signatures in just two days from a purely grassroots effort with no organization! Obviously this has hit a hot button. Here’s an alert that was sent to an Ohio homeschool statewide group.

Please pass this around to those who could possibly be interested.

Charlene

I think that this is an attempt to put a crack into the homeschooling movement. You in Ohio and we in Michigan have extremely liberal laws when it comes to homeschooling. If you begin to pit homeschooler against homeschooler, I'm not sure that it won't come back to bite you in the butt.
My nephew is having a great success with the K-12 program which IS a charter in Ohio. Many people have the confidence to educate their children. My nephew and niece-in-law are 24 and were not sure that they could educate their son. K-12 was the answer.
People homeschool for different reasons. I personally am looking at homeschool to keep my daughter out of the element in the district schools. Other people do it for no government control, but if we begin fighting amongst ourselves, we may all lose.
I'm getting into the asbestos suit right now.

Ditto. We homeschool and accept no public money. Nor do I think we ever would. However there are some low income families who would like to take advantage of these type of programs.

I favor education choice. I want to be able to choose to school at home. I don't want to take away choices from families that want to school at home with government support. I find it ironic that so many homeschooling organizations are fighting to tell other families that they must homeschool "the right way" or not at all.

I completely agree about the disservice of this kind of "homeschool our way or else" proclamation. I've seen this proclamation discussed at length on a homeschool mailing list. I find it very troubling that some homeschoolers feel a need to be so divisive. I see it happen with private homeschoolers v. charter homeschoolers and even with unschoolers vs. curriculum users. In both cases people often feel the need to say that only their way is "real" homeschooling. I see frankly this kind of nannyism as a sign of insecurity. It's ironic that some of those who worry that charters are a "slippery" slope which will lead to government encroaching on private homeschooling feel the same need to control others' homeschool choices, rather than celebrating that we *do* have choices and the ability to choose what works best for our families year by year.

My personal point of view is that the charter homeschool is empowering. I am using my tax dollars -- the closest we'll ever get to vouchers in CA, I suspect -- to buy what I consider a high quality curriculum, K12. Using the charter also makes it easier for novice homeschoolers to take the plunge and withdraw from neighborhood schools. I personally know of several people who, after trying homeschooling through the charter, went on to homeschool privately. The charter opened doors and helped these people "think outside the box" of traditional schooling.

If the government directly threatens private homeschooling here in CA I would be among the first to declare myself a private homeschool and take a stand against this. Parents should have the right to direct their children's education as they see fit. (Fortunately the state homeschooling climate seems to shifting for the better under the new Superintendent of Education, who has removed language from the state's website telling parents that homeschooling without a credential is "outside the law.") I would also quit if I felt that the charter school teacher or requirements were too intrusive. To date I have yet to hear of a negative experience a CA parent has had with K12 and the California Virtual Academies (CAVA); to the contrary, I hear only that the teachers are very homeschool friendly and supportive.

Free choice includes my right to use my tax dollars to purchase a quality curriculum. To say that I am merely "masquerading" as a homeschooler is a juvenile insult. It is hard to take the hyperbolic language in this proclamation seriously. It is certainly not trying to win friends in a positive way. Why not build alliances by focusing on what unites, rather than what divides?

People homeschool for different reasons. I personally am looking at homeschool to keep my daughter out of the element in the district schools. Other people do it for no government control, but if we begin fighting amongst ourselves, we may all lose....netmilsmom

I'm in agreement with all three of you.

Our version of homeschooling is that we hired the best Christian teacher in the county to teach our two kids when they ran out of private school options in our small town. Within three weeks, we had seven other students joining our school in the third floor of our 1889 house.

That's what works for us.

It is not "traditional" homeschooling but, with a medical practice, I do not have the time to teach and my wife, who only two years ago was saying that public school was good enough for her, is, quite frankly, not cut out to teach homeschool.

Now, the kids are getting the best 6th and 7th Grade education in the county and my wife admits that public school would have been a disaster compared to what we have now.

The bottom line about our school is that like-minded parents and a like-minded teacher have control over our kid’s education.

We can afford to forgo any Government assistance but many families do not have such a luxury.

If you can trust parents to decide how to educate their children themselves, you can trust them to decide how much Government assistance and how many Government strings they are willing to accept.

I enjoyed homeschooling a lot when I was in elementary school. It was nice being at home.

When I got older - about seventh grade - I started disliking it. I didn't have a social life, no real friends to speak of, and I was lonely. We lived in a rural area, so we didn't have the cool homeschooling groups that are available in the city.

By the time I hit ninth grade, I was thoroughly sick of it. I hated it. My parents - after three years - took note, and they enrolled me in a private school for the rest of the time.

I think homeschooling is an excellent concept. It is a great way to educate. I'm certian now that I was much better off at home than in the public school system.

However, the loneliness was great at times, and I didn't know how to relate to people my own age when I did start going to private school. I still struggle with feeling out of place and with confidence when it comes to people my own age. I always feel just a bit uncomfortable. I'm sure I'll grow out of it as I get older.

However, that's not to say that homeschooling is bad! Not at all! I just think that parents need to make certian that the child is getting the interaction they need with someone else besides just the parents. That's very important.

Our state watchdog organization has been very involved with this issue and has a web page devoted to it.

>>These programs present to the public, and governing bodies, a more familiar, supervised and regulated form of “homeschooling.” The eventual result could be a lobbying of the legislature by public education to amend or abolish the Home-based Instruction law, and to re-absorb the homeschooling community into public education under the auspices of alternative education.<<

Washington state has a very generous homeschooling law curently and there has been several attemtps where legislatures have tried to take away rights and privleges we have both purposefully and accidentally (they didnt realize how certain wording in a law relating to public schooled students would effect homeschooled students.) The greatest fear is that if "Alternative Education Programs" become the norm for homeschooling then legislature might rewrite the laws and make independent homeschooling impossible. This would be a big deal in a state such as ours, In other states however APE programs could actually work in reverse and open up strict states to other homeschooling options.

Its kind of a tightwire.

I have a conflict here. I am for school choice. I am not saying that all parents who choose cyber schools can not homeschool or unschool, but how can we say we are for school choice when we want to deny some people, who could not do organic homeschooling, their choice.

I understand the fear is that our freedoms would erode, but why can't we have it both ways. The more people out of the government schools the better.

If the greedy jackels want their money, they will have to pay attention to the free market.

There will have to be changes made, because people are taking their kids OUT for a reason. IF they clean up the public schools and everyone gets choice, then isn't that ideal compared to the monolopy we have now? BTW I unschool :}

Thank you for your thoughtful comments regarding your homeschool experience. Your thoughts on the need for social interaction with other children are especially noteworthy.

As a homeschool dad to a just-turned-eight-year-old, I worry about this, too. I'm not after "socialization" because that is a two-edged sword. Frankly, I don't want my son to internalize the behavior and thought-process of the typical eight-year-old.

The other side to this is that I don't want to raise a hermit, a misfit, a loner. We try to do that by encouraging (and, yes, sometimes insisting on) "extracurricular" activities...Scouting, Junior Golf and Tennis, Tae Kwan Do, outings with kids from families we like and trust.

Our goal is not to pick our son's friends, but to put him in situations where the pool of possible friends is of as high a standard as possible. So far, it's worked fairly well. We've hooked up with a homeschool group headed by a family we admire, and whose son is just old enough to be an excellent youth role model for our son.

The upshot of this is that we're involved in so many activities. We do our part as adults in volunteering with these organizations. Our homeschooled son has more opportunities for healthy interaction with other kids than the typical public-schooled student (if one takes time in class out of the equation). My nephew is a public school kid, and I love him very much. For him, his life is school and home. Nothing else. I think it's a pity, but that's my sister/BIL's issue, and I wouldn't begin to advise them.

That got a little long-winded, but thanks again for your thoughts.

I completely agree about the disservice of this kind of "homeschool our way or else" proclamation.

I'm with you, Princess. For all their excellent qualities and passioned defense of homeschooling families, I get a little put out with HSLDA sometimes. Especially their advice to avoid any kind of interaction with public schools.

Some states permit homeschooling families to take advantage of public school facilities and organizations, but not to "buy into" the whole public school course of study.

I'm told this is especially popular in Florida, where homeschooling teens often take Driver's Ed, Music, Lab Sciences, and Foreign Languages in the public school, but homeschool for other courses. I don't know if we'd do that, but I like it that there is an option for those that want to do so.

One of our reasons for choosing homeschooling was that we didn't want to subordinate our educational goals to someone else's agenda. Why would homeschooling families want to shove their agendas on other people?

In essence, we homeschooling families have told the government and all its beaurocracies to "mind your own business." I think it's time for a few of us to heed our own words.

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