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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

#91

Post by soco »

dingnuts wrote: post #79
pixl97 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> educations that I'd consider completely and totally deficient, and then pull those same people back into the organization as cheap/uneducated labor they could abuse. You just described public schools, Universities, and their relationship to the student loan racket. Deficient education followed by indentured servitude through loan repayment. False advertising by public school teachers of a ticket to the easy life th…

I suppose you are talking about the US school system of late, right? Because even there it used to be better, and there's also an entire world outside with many different systems (possibly with their own rackets, just like homeschooling).

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

#92

Post by burkaman »

tivert wrote: post #80
burkaman wrote: post #73

Is there a story here beyond the pandemic? The data really makes it look like homeschooling increased a significant but not mind-blowing amount at the beginning of the pandemic, when parents pulled their kids out of school either because they thought they were unsafe or were upset about mask mandates. Now the rate is gradually declining as some kids return to school and some parents decide it's working well so they'l…

> The data really makes it look like homeschooling increased a significant but not mind-blowing amount at the beginning of the pandemic, when parents pulled their kids out of school either because they thought they were unsafe or were upset about mask mandates. I think you're forgetting the biggest reason: it turns out zoom school was a disaster and the worst of both worlds.

Yes thank you, definitely should have mentioned that. My point is that there were a wide variety of pandemic-driven reasons that parents decided to homeschool. Even if all these reasons disappeared when the pandemic culturally ended, we wouldn't expect homeschooling rates to suddenly drop back down to the pre-pandemic level. Switching to homeschooling is a huge change, and so is switching back. I would expect the rates to gradually decline as fewer new students enter homeschool, existing students age out of it, and some students switch back to public or private school, and that's exactly what the data looks like.

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

#93

Post by HEmanZ »

303uru wrote: post #6
generalizations wrote: post #3

> a largely unregulated practice once confined to the ideological fringe Tell me your bias without telling me you're biased.

What about that is untrue?

Is there some misunderstanding in English that “biased” means “factually false”? I’ve seen a lot of people on the internet confuse them as the same thing.

Bias is supposed to mean something that is factual but presenting a one-sided opinion by e.g using a subset of facts and language meant to influence the readers opinion.

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

#94

Post by Ancapistani »

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 that any different from someone who attended a rural public high school?

Many of the school districts in my area have consolidated, and it's not even possible to verify attendance of students from the small schools that no longer exist.

To my knowledge, there is no "accreditation" that matters for public high schools - there are only thresholds for which state funding is available.

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

#95

Post by Ancapistani »

keiferski wrote: post #66
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-...

Our state does - we did not take it, because the money comes with enough strings to make it distasteful.

We homeschool to keep our kids out of government schools. Inviting that same government into our home for a bit of money would make no sense whatsoever.

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

#96

Post by Ancapistani »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #83

Feels like there is a big homeschooling article once every other week here and a whole slew of parents saying, "We homeschool and its great and our kids love it" and then a bunch of adults saying, "I was homeschooled and it was not great, and I did not love it" Regular schooling isn't ideal. But homeschooling is a pretty major reaction to that, and it shouldn't be done without serious consideration for the non-zero c…

> But homeschooling is a pretty major reaction to that, and it shouldn't be done without serious consideration for the non-zero chance that your kids will resent you for that decision.

As a parent of two daughters who are homeschooled - unschooled, actually - I 100% agree.

As with everything, our approach is intentional and we're open with our kids about it. If they wanted to go to a school - public, private, or religious - we would make that happen.

Our eldest is currently taking three hours per day at the local public high school. She's 15, wants to own a equine stud farm, and is taking every agriculture class she can find. After this year she will have exhausted their offerings in that subject, so she'll likely start at the local community college in the fall.

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

#97

Post by Ancapistani »

pjc50 wrote: post #57
throwaway1777 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, there's definitely poor people doing it as well. Not necessarily as well.

We've looking into this, as deeply as we can as "outsiders". We homeschool, but are firmly "middle class" from a national perspective and easily in the top 1% income in our county.

Regardless of income, the key factor seems to be the rationale. If parents want to homeschool because they're involved with their kids' lives and want them to succeed, they'll do well relative to the available public school options.

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

#99

Post by generalizations »

voxic11 wrote: post #59
generalizations wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing whatsoever - they are technically correct (the best kind of correct). And yet it is also a descriptor that is likely to prime the reader with a negative connotation. There's a reason that witness oaths require not only "nothing but the truth", but first of all "the whole truth".

I read it as acknowledging a preconception the reader is likely to have and therefor building rapport with the reader, not necessarily a sign of bias by the author.

That just sounds like bias with extra steps. Which subset of readers is the author choosing to build rapport with? Which subset are they choosing not to build rapport with? Why one, and not the other? And anyway, why build rapport at all - this isn't an opinion piece.
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