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

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

#61

Post by Loughla »

Amezarak wrote: post #34
Loughla wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

Because they have some kind of accreditation body that monitors and approves the schools with established standards and approved/documented practices, whereas homeschool does not?

And ACT/SAT has become optional since covid for most institutions.

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

#62

Post by chmod600 »

If you home school, you don't get the money back. Public school is something like $12k/yr. That's a lot of money that you're essentially opting out of.

For parents who do so for political or culture war reasons, that must seem profoundly unfair. To be driven out of the public schools means to be denied resources.

Public schools using public money should be especially sensitive and as neutral as possible on political or culture war issues. That's increasingly difficult, but without that, public school doesn't have a good future.

Normally schools are thought of as Democrat-controlled, but that's not true everywhere. So rather than just saying that everything is OK the way it is, think about how it will be when your political opponents are in control.

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

#63

Post by BurningFrog »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #46
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.

Yes it is. People forget this because they live in a bubble. It’s like remote work, nice for the laptop class, but not possible for the person growing your food and manufacturing your tesla.

There are plenty of people doing low paid jobs like phone support from home.

Just like high earners like LeBron James are not allowed to WFH and have long commutes.

It just depends on the nature of the work.

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

#64

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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 anyone who has been seriously bullied would definitely agree - being bullied as a child can severely fuck up the rest of your life. Sure, many/most eventually move on, but like you, 30 years later I've got the therapy bills to show for it.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty feeling envious about my nieces' upbringing. They went to private school that ran from 1-8 grade, so they essentially skipped the middle school experience that was detrimental to so many. Honestly, I believe middle school as I experienced it (a whole bunch of elementary "feeder" schools that fed into one giant middle school for 7-8 grade) is the dumbest invention in the history of humanity. It sticks together kids, at wildly different stages of development, in an unfamiliar environment where everyone is trying to find their place in the social hierarchy - Lord of the Flies should have been set in middle school. Much better IMO to just have kids stay together 1-8th grade, and by then most folks are at least well into puberty by the time they get to high school. Not saying of course bullying doesn't happen in high school, but I think by then more kids are able to find their "tribe", so if they are bullied they have friends to fall back on (again, I'm of course painting with broad strokes).

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

#65

Post by weeznerps »

I was homeschooled in the 90s/early 00s in the conservative Christian wing of the movement. Personally, I think it was a great experience (despite the conservative, religious aspect which I later rejected) and made me a more unique person. I would not have done well socially in school as a child anyway. My brother though, raised in the same environment, resents our upbringing. I also meet many homeschoolers raised in conservative Christian households who disliked the experience.

Overall, it's a very high variance method of education. For every Judit Polgar, you have a woman told her highest calling must be to reproduce and be subservient to her husband (I know these people personally).

If you have the resources and have intellectually precocious children, especially if they are a bit odd, they will likely enjoy it and benefit from it. If you have kids that really want to play sports at a high level or are socially very successful, they might later resent the opportunities they missed and the shared experiences they lack. Obviously, this is reductive, but I think something like this is true.

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

#66

Post by keiferski »

chmod600 wrote: post #62

If you home school, you don't get the money back. Public school is something like $12k/yr. That's a lot of money that you're essentially opting out of. For parents who do so for political or culture war reasons, that must seem profoundly unfair. To be driven out of the public schools means to be denied resources. Public schools using public money should be especially sensitive and as neutral as possible on political…

I believe that some states have programs that give you the money if you home-school. There seem to be some restrictions, though:

https://idealschool.education/full-day-program/utah-voucher-...

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

#67

Post by keiferski »

pixl97 wrote: post #60
keiferski wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the only relevant question here is how home schooling compares to public schools when it comes to “horror stories.” And there certainly aren’t a lack of public school horror stories…

There are plenty of 'public school' horror stories because these things are public and can be audited in a great number of cases. You don't get to hear the homeschooling horrors when they happen because they are private. Maybe you'll be a therapist and years later get to talk to one of these people how they are effectively crippled for the rest of their life. Or you'll be like me that grew up in a place that had a bu…

Sure, I don't think anyone denies that there are some home schooling horror stories. But it really doesn't seem like most public schools do a great job either, so the question is if this broken system damages more people than one dominated by home schooling.

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

#68

Post by weeznerps »

zaphar wrote: post #14
boeingUH60 wrote: post #5

Good luck to these people, hope it turns out well. Personally, I can't imagine home-schooling kids. I neither have the time nor patience to do that, which is why I appreciate teachers. Besides, I believe school is also a place for kids to socialize with and learn from their peers. I'm very introverted, but I think I would have ended up horribly social-wise if I was home-schooled.

I think possibly the worst place to learn and practice social skills is from other kids who are just as in the dark as you are. In my experience a home schooled child is significantly more likely to be good at social skills than a public schooled child. They are also adept at navigating adult conversation and social situations much sooner.

>They are also adept at navigating adult conversation and social situations much sooner.

And they are often worse at navigating interactions with children who are not homeschooled (at least I was). Specificity is king.

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

#69

Post by hotnfresh »

monero-xmr wrote: post #41

I would much prefer “backpack funding” aka vouchers. The blue-state city I live in spends almost $25k per student per year and apart from a few magnet schools they are atrociously bad. Like the high school my kids would have to attend if I wasn’t wealthy had a student murdered outside of it a few years ago. If you gave parents even 1/3 of that money the state would save a fortune and parents would be so much better o…

Naïve per-student-spending calculations can misleading. Some students cost a lot more than others. My state spends hundreds of thousands per student in some cases—but that's schools in juvenile detention facilities. Nonetheless, that goes in the stats. Kids in self-contained classrooms ("special ed" kids who can't function in the normal classroom) can be several times as expensive to educate as the median kid. Kids in ordinary classrooms who get a dedicated assistant, they've got all the usual spending plus the fully-loaded cost of the assistant, so that's easily over $50k total. Kid in a gifted program? Add low-five figures to the cost. Fancy selective-admission public schools, which some states have? Typically higher spending per student than other schools, which drags up the average.

They also have bussing costs, which (e.g.) private schools don't, which further complicates comparisons. That's not a small amount of money.

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

#70

Post by Amezarak »

Loughla wrote: post #61
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.

Because they have some kind of accreditation body that monitors and approves the schools with established standards and approved/documented practices, whereas homeschool does not? And ACT/SAT has become optional since covid for most institutions.

> Because they have some kind of accreditation body that monitors and approves the schools with established standards and approved/documented practices, whereas homeschool does not?

There are "accredited" homeschool programs, and the "accreditation" means probably about as much as it does for "accredited" private schools, many of whom don't even bother.

Elsewhere in the comments I mentioned the Baltimore public school system, where clearly whatever "accreditation" it has is completely and utterly worthless.

Heck, even my ABET accredited university, although overall of high quality, had a few teachers that taught me nothing at all and who had no checks on their failure to teach.

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