Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 1001 posts

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#111

Post by jimbob45 »

eszed wrote: post #82
Amezarak wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else do you think a transcript should work? What makes you think a random private school transcript has anything else backing it up? Presumably the students are also applying with ACT/SAT scores in hand, which do have an established meaning.

>Presumably the students are also applying with ACT/SAT scores in hand, which do have an established meaning. Except... >More Than 80% Of Four-Year Colleges Won’t Require Standardized Tests For Fall 2023 Admissions >An additional 85 schools will be test-blind or score-free, meaning that applicants’ standardized exam results are not considered even if they are submitted. Included in that number is the entire Californi…

"Test-optional" and "test-blind" are vastly different. If I can get a leg up on the competition by taking the test, then it's basically required even if it's technically optional.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#112

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

tivert wrote: post #15

> Many of America’s new home-schooled children have entered a world where no government official will ever check on what, or how well, they are being taught. Isn't escaping from those officials the whole point? Either because they're failing at their job or doing things that are disagreeable to some subset of the population?

> Isn't escaping from those officials the whole point? Either because they're failing at their job or doing things that are disagreeable to some subset of the population?

It sounds ideal.

But we might want at least some oversight and regulation to, for example, make sure kids aren't being homeschooled on how to build rockets and kill some group of people.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#113

Post by psychlops »

Amezarak wrote: post #23
CharlesW wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many home-schooling success stories, and also many home-schooling horror stories. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/law-school-pr...

Similarly, there are many public school horror stories. For example, despite spending $21k/student, making it the third-highest funded school system in the country, 23 Baltimore schools failed to produce a single student with basic math proficiency.[1] One of my friends went to a school where she was beaten every day and the teachers had totally given up and most of them did not teach. Unfortunately, we need much mor…

I doubt if homeschooling would work in Baltimore either.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#114

Post by akira2501 »

303uru wrote: post #17
brightball wrote: post #7

When I moved into my current house about 10 years ago, the family next door home schooled. I'd never known any home schoolers before and definitely had some notions about how terrible it must be until I learned about it. This family was part of a home school group with other families. The kids went to different houses every day and had an instructor focus on 1 subject for half of the day, mixed in with free time, dep…

Sure, that's one model. The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature. Similarly, there is household in my neighborhood that home schools. The kids (all 8 of them) never leave the house. They have a 8ft. fence and 1 acre yard where I assume they get some outside time. No one visits. Only dad is allowed to talk to anyone and when he does it's extraordinarily weird.

> The underlying problem is the completely unregulated nature.

I didn't need your permission to give birth to my children, why do I need your permission when deciding how I educate them?

> Only dad is allowed to talk to anyone and when he does it's extraordinarily weird.

If you feel these children are legitimately being abused in some way, I'm guessing there are plenty of state resources to address that challenge.

Do you actually feel there's abuse happening? Or, is it that you just find them unusual?

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#115

Post by dxhdr »

outside1234 wrote: post #36

The problem with home schooling is that it is a solution for the rich and leaves all of the poor kids behind.

Rich families already do this by sending their kids to private schools. Have you seen how expensive and competitive these schools are, even starting as early as Kindergarten?

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#116

Post by ejb999 »

Loughla wrote: post #28
tivert wrote: post #15

> Many of America’s new home-schooled children have entered a world where no government official will ever check on what, or how well, they are being taught. Isn't escaping from those officials the whole point? Either because they're failing at their job or doing things that are disagreeable to some subset of the population?

The college I most recently consulted with had to take a homeschool "transcript" that can literally be a signed paper from the parent handwritten with nothing to back it up. It's astounding. I don't know if that's just because that particular state doesn't have very strict rules around homeschooling, or if that's standard; I just haven't done the research.

how is this worse than some schools not even requiring students to be able to read, write and do some mathematics in order to graduate with a HS diploma?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/oregon-suspends-graduation...

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#117

Post by goalonetwo »

nickthegreek wrote: post #100

John Oliver did a great segment on the issues with home schooling in the modern age a few weeks ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsZP9o7SlI

Ah yes, John Oliver.

Probably one of the most biased formats you can find. Mixing comedy with pseudo-facts and personal opinions to push an agenda/narrative.

I wish we could only see what he produces as comedy but way too often people love to share his clips/narrative as a semi-reliable source of information.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#118

Post by brentm »

I wonder how this all turns out. I know some people will do a great job at educating their kids but I have a feeling that on the average most of these kids will have been better off not home schooled. I think it takes a pretty special type of kid to do the work when the only pressure comes from your mom and dad.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#119

Post by wizerdrobe »

keiferski wrote: post #37
burcs wrote: post #27

We're homeschooling our kids. I was pretty against it at first, but seeing our education system degrade to the state it is today, and being honest about my schooling experience definitely opened me up to it. I think the biggest argument for schooling is the socialization aspect of it. I don't know about the rest of you but I was bullied pretty relentlessly throughout grade school and it completely changed my personal…

I think I have basically the same opinion. It's not so much that I believe homeschooling is amazing in-itself, but rather that the public education system has so clearly deteriorated that it seems borderline criminal to subject your kids to it. The question for me, personally, is private school vs. homeschooling. If you can avoid many of the downsides of public education via choosing the right private school (and bei…

We didn’t go full home-school, but my wife and I intentionally left our city to go raise our kids out in a rural area so they could grow up in and around nature and with a nice, small school district that smokes anything we had back in the city. Better test scores, smaller classes, minimal major discipline issues.

Prior to moving, our only “good” option for realistic schooling was putting our children in a local Catholic school with high fees. Given our state is in the midst of legal battles with activist groups fighting to overturn a recent school-choice voucher program, seemed moving was the safe choice.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone but a public-sector teacher being finally held to account would fight against giving parents options to place their kids in a school they see fit.

Re: Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

#120

Post by akira2501 »

burcs wrote: post #27

We're homeschooling our kids. I was pretty against it at first, but seeing our education system degrade to the state it is today, and being honest about my schooling experience definitely opened me up to it. I think the biggest argument for schooling is the socialization aspect of it. I don't know about the rest of you but I was bullied pretty relentlessly throughout grade school and it completely changed my personal…

> That's not the socialization that I want for my kids.

On the other hand, I'd definitely want my children to be familiar with it. Bullying is not something isolated to schools. I've seen it in nearly every social and political situation that exists at nearly every age group. In my estimation people are getting worse at identifying it and collectively we're getting worse at punishing it.

Post reply on HN