Sandy Hook Commission Calls For Government Crackdown On Homeschools

Taxcutter says:
ISTA is very much a union, but now they have to collect their own dues.

 

This is the most truthful statement in this entire thread and possibly on the entire board. Get rid of unions and it's a start toward getting rid of bad teachers.

- - - Updated - - -

But...but...but...isn't googling and posting a link the same thing as research?

 

http://www.parentingscience.com/homeschooling-outcomes.html

http://www.usnews.com/education/hig...12/06/01/home-schooled-teens-ripe-for-college

They already addressed statistical variances in the first study and homeschoolers still outperformed public students substantially. Even in the case of unstructured home schooling (the had three separate categories) the unstructured students statistically tied the public school students. Keep in mind that is essentially letting the kid determine when and how much homework to do which is admittedly a stupid idea........and they still performed barely worse than public schools.

The downside to homeschooling is that the parents must put effort into it which they obviously do by and large considering their overall graduation and GPA and test scores. And this isn't going to work for single moms working two jobs for obvious reasons. However, if the parent(s) have some free time and some gumption then they would be crazy NOT to homeschool their kid.

Public schools SUCK. Period. If you have the means to send your kid to a private school or homeschool them then you are being negligent in your parenting if you send your kid to a typical public school.

 

Sorry but they already have looked at homeschooled students and their performance in college and they significantly outperform their public school peers. There is no way you can argue that public school students perform as well as homeschooled students just as they do not perform as well as private school students. Public schools today are run by the teachers mafia who are more interested in stifling alternatives as they continue to resist school vouchers. Public schools do not care about kids they care about their political influence and their union dues first and foremost. In their eyes, to hell with the kids as long as they get paid to babysit them.

 

Thanks for the link. But it does not address the "free pass" claim and it does not address the "right-winger" claim.

As far as your second paragraph above, how many cases of abuse are there relative to the total number of home schooled children?

There are public school systems that do perform well and educate students, regardless of socio-economic status. Just as there are parents who do perform well and educate their children at home.

 

Interesting. Are you referring to intuitive/instinctive (for lack of a better terms) learning when referring to testing students for what they "actually know" as opposed to what they are expected to know via board approved educational practices? In other words, testing that might discover a child's ability to calculate numbers accurately although they lack an ability to read or comprehend words on a page?
And thanks.

 

You're correct, it is a joke, but an unintended one I'm sure.

 

no I didn't notice it funny you used a trash website that I won't give my traffic too.......I wonder why? Oh yeah, they are one of the shepherds....

 

Then you are misinterpreting the reason. This is not an argument aginst homeshooling or home schooled kids. There has always been a concern with home schooled kids and mental illness. The reasons are partly based on education, but also based on medical safety for the parent, the child, and the community.

that being said, what is being proposed is making sure that the parents are fist informed on what to do and what not to do. Second, it is an additional resource for parents who have kids with mental illness and not have to pay for any services. these are parents who are pretty much cash strapped. If they were not cash strapped, that child would be in private school, not home schooled.

 

Well, for starters, you provided a study that was bought and paid for by a group that advocates home schooling. It is not an independent study. Second, the study only looked at home schooled children whose parents offered structured learning. That does not always happen in home schooling. Thus , the results may be skewed. Finally, there really is no independent study. Studies over the past 15 years or so have been sponsored either by advocates for home schooling or against home schooling. It is still an open question.

there is no doubt that for some, home school can benefit a child who may feel intimidated by people different than them. However, the problem with home schooling may be more on the social level, which ahs not been studied at all.

 

U.S. education in general is goor whether a child is in public school, private school, or home schooled.

Not enough math, not enough science, not enough reading, and not enough analytical thinking at an early age. Everything is give almost verbatim before any test is given.

 

As I mentioned already they factored that in. They used three categories, structured ,unstructured (the one where I said it was essentially the kids doing their thing) and public schooled. The structured kids, which is how most homeschooling is done, faired much better but the surprising thing was that the unstructured kids only did slightly worse than the public school educated kids. Public schools are by and large a failure because their first priority it NOT about the kids as indicated by their constant resistance to education reform.

 

The problem that they have is the statistical sampling. The students they chose from public school ranged far more than students in shome schooleing. If you only look at AP students vs home schooling, you see a set of numbers. However, it you throw in all public students with all of their social problems, you get skewed results from the p value. And that is why there is no independent study here.

Because of the type of sampling from the two groups, that is why these studies are not very evaluative scientifically.

 

30 is the minimum sample you need to run a statistical model. They had 37 I believe. The only part that wasn't reliable was the "unstructured" category because there were only 5 or 6 of them. There is also the second nationawide study which factors in college performance and looked at thousands of students. They lumped together all homeschoolers and even then with the lower unstructured homeschoolers being included they still outperformed the public school students by a substantial margin.

Demographically homeschoolers are no longer religious fundamentalists anymore. They include a wide cross section of different parents who simply do not trust public schools. If I was in a state like Massachusetts I would have no issue with sending my kids to public school but if I am in Chicago, Milwaukee or any number of other cities I would be a horrible parent if I sent my kids to those schools.

I hate statistics but if I recall p values below .05 are ideal as they are within the 95% confidence level. This study shows that the p values are .01 in their categories and was done by the University of Thomas, wherever that is.

http://i.bnet.com/blogs/homeschool.pdf

I agree though that there is a surprising lack of literature on this subject. I found one other study by someone named Joseph Murphy "Homeschooling in America" unfortunately you have to buy the book and I just don't care enough about this subject to blow my money on it.

 

If the above highlighted portion (and similar quotes by others) were to be credible, then states with no teacher unions should be doing better at educating children. And that just isn't so. For example, Georgia has no unions per se ranks near the bottom when it comes to the influence of unions or teacher associations. One would have to assume, therefore, the kids in Georgia would outperform those in other states (or at least rank right up there with them) and that just isn't the case. Therefore, the argument (or simple assertion) that getting rid of unions would improve public education simply doesn't hold water.

For anyone who's interested, here's a brief video based on a Fordham study of the relative strengths of teacher unions/associations across the country. For those who would like to review the report, here it is.

 

Take even a cursory look at who is advocating for home schools, both the loudest and longest, and you'll find those on the right, particularly the Christian right, leading the pack. If that doesn't work for you, look a bit deeper as to who (individuals or groups) who are contributing $$$ to the efforts, and, almost without exception, they trace back to right wingers.

IMO, any more than zero is too many. And those are only the ones we know about because abuse can come in many forms. Public schools, in particular, can act as the first lines of defense to combat it.

Sure. So?

 

Pretty much, Left or Right, if you have the money and want your offspring to have a genuinely decent education across the board you would be wise to send the youngster (or youngsters) to a credible private school -- at least during their junior and high school years. But barring the financial means or access to a decent private institution in the area then the next best solution tends to be home schooling.

The problem there is -- as has already been addressed by other posters -- is that nowadays the math and science portion of the curriculum is no joke and whoever is doing the teaching of it had damn well better know the stuff. So . . . there are difficulties.

 

How many homeschooled kids are shooting up schools or have be part of any shooting?
It seems to me that most kids involved in trouble are left wing school educated kids.

 

See here letter here:
http://teapartyupdate.com/what-one-mother-did-to-destroy-common-core-image/
Bach od Science in Electronics engineering (mother) cant figure out sons absurd homework. 9 states have opted out so far.

 

Taxcutter says:
It is axiomatic that unions go to the mat for their worst actors and throw the best under the bus.

 

Taxcutter says:
IIRC the old USSR sent people to the gulag because of alleged "mental illness." Our might paraphrase the old saying about Greek tragedy as "...those whom the Communists would kill they first declare mentally ill" Is the American nomenklatura all that different from the Soviet nomenklatura?

 

You give the third grader 10 addition 10 subtraction 10 multiplication and 10 division problems and "measure" how many they got right and rank them. At each quarter you do it again and "measure" their improvement.

Sure worked when I was in school.

 

And who are the folks staunchly advocating for public schools and in some cases, only public schools? Those on the Left?

The US spends a great deal of money per student and the US still lags behind in test scoring compared to other countries.
http://www.theatlantic.com/educatio...e-world-expensive-unequal-bad-at-math/281983/

We spend a great deal of money on Education in the US. A large issue with public schools in the US is with the "educratification". The amount of school administrators and school staff (non-teachers) has exploded in the US. Instead of money being spent on hiring more teachers and classroom curriculums, money is spent on these salaries.

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/03/ad...educrats-now-outnumber-teachers-in-25-states/

So, if children are struggling and being ignored, or kids' math teachers truly suck and cannot teach algebra and calculus, there are not many options.

How many cases are there across the US where a teacher or administrator sexual or physically abused a student? One is too many. I am not a fan of NCLB, but it even requires a national study of sexual abuse at schools. This is an interesting read: http://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Seclusion and Restraints Final Report.pdf

Public schools as a first defense works in some cases, and in others, it is placing the young chick in the fox's den.

I am glad you recognize that there are public schools and home schooling parents who do perform well. This is key because a parent should always have the right to pull their kid from public school and home school.

 

They have political power and I would venture to guess that like here in Alabama one of the strongest political forces in the state and since their boss is government and yes they can organize a walkout.

 

The kids at the local high graduate with a 6th grade reading level. Ever have a 19 year old ask you what "humble" means?

Given the poor state of US public school, the idea of schools dictating how parents teach their kids is a joke.