The proportion of American families home schooling at least 1 child grew from 5.4% to 11%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can always tell if a family are Trump supporters: they homeschool!

I have homeschooled my kids for 6 years and I hate trump.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can always tell if a family are Trump supporters: they homeschool!

I have homeschooled my kids for 6 years and I hate trump.

PP is ignorant or just trying to be inflammatory. Homeschooling holds a lot a appeal across the political spectrum.

There are quite a few tie dye and pathouli wearing lgbtq hippy dippy (insert stereotype of what a democrat or progressive is) that homeschool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know about CA buy many states have very lax tules about homeschooling. I just got a new student last week who was “homeschooled.” He is in 2nd grade and after assessing him, he knows 3 letters names and 2 sounds. He can’t recognize his name in print. He can rote count up to about 15 and doesn’t have consistent one-to-one correspondence when counting objects. He’s below the BOY kindergarten expectations. Homeschooling can just mean that the kids aren’t enrolled in a school.

I know plenty of "public schooled" 4th graders who can't correctly spell Kindergarten sight words and don't know the difference between a noun and a verb. According to fcps standards, those 4th gaders would be on grade level! Just because homeschoolers may choose to focus on skills and abilities in a different order than some public school curriculums, doesn't mean the homeshooled child isn't learning. Finland doesn't even start academic learning until age 7! More than likely the skills that the homeschooled child learned from being homeschooled will pay off much greater in time than whatever benefit comes from forcing 4 and 5 years olds to learn to read and perform symbolic math in K.

“Played and watched stuff on their tablets” does not equal “may choose to focus on skills and abilities in a different order than the public school curriculum,” but good try.

P.S. We’re not in Finland.

I know we're not in Finland. Finland ranks 1st and 2nd in math and reading scores. The US ranks 33rd. Maybe there's something to be learned from them anyway.

[Anonymous]

I effectively homeschool my child in math and increasingly take over English too. My experience with elementary grades public school is that curriculum is poorly organized, moves at a very slow pace, and most teachers are mathphobes that don’t have the skill or interest to put together an exciting and challenging math class. I’m also waking up to the fact that language instruction is quite terrible too, particularly in writing.

What I found out in public vs diy homeschooling is that at least in math, my child can go at about 3x the rate of learning, covering about three grades in one year. It slows down a bit afterwards, but in some sense public school feels like such a waste of time. I’m looking at a charter school next year that screens students and place them in appropriate grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I effectively homeschool my child in math and increasingly take over English too. My experience with elementary grades public school is that curriculum is poorly organized, moves at a very slow pace, and most teachers are mathphobes that don’t have the skill or interest to put together an exciting and challenging math class. I’m also waking up to the fact that language instruction is quite terrible too, particularly in writing.

What I found out in public vs diy homeschooling is that at least in math, my child can go at about 3x the rate of learning, covering about three grades in one year. It slows down a bit afterwards, but in some sense public school feels like such a waste of time. I’m looking at a charter school next year that screens students and place them in appropriate grade.

Sur. Because youre teaching one kid at a time and not 20.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I effectively homeschool my child in math and increasingly take over English too. My experience with elementary grades public school is that curriculum is poorly organized, moves at a very slow pace, and most teachers are mathphobes that don’t have the skill or interest to put together an exciting and challenging math class. I’m also waking up to the fact that language instruction is quite terrible too, particularly in writing.

What I found out in public vs diy homeschooling is that at least in math, my child can go at about 3x the rate of learning, covering about three grades in one year. It slows down a bit afterwards, but in some sense public school feels like such a waste of time. I’m looking at a charter school next year that screens students and place them in appropriate grade.

Sur. Because youre teaching one kid at a time and not 20.

Not a knock on teachers, just an acknowledgement that she can do it better for her own child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I effectively homeschool my child in math and increasingly take over English too. My experience with elementary grades public school is that curriculum is poorly organized, moves at a very slow pace, and most teachers are mathphobes that don’t have the skill or interest to put together an exciting and challenging math class. I’m also waking up to the fact that language instruction is quite terrible too, particularly in writing.

What I found out in public vs diy homeschooling is that at least in math, my child can go at about 3x the rate of learning, covering about three grades in one year. It slows down a bit afterwards, but in some sense public school feels like such a waste of time. I’m looking at a charter school next year that screens students and place them in appropriate grade.

Sur. Because youre teaching one kid at a time and not 20.

Not a knock on teachers, just an acknowledgement that she can do it better for her own child.

NP.

I think that homeschool is often better and not just because one-on-one is faster. Public school is just bad in so many ways in the elementary years. It’s not the teachers’ fault. Teacher training is bad. The curriculum is based on outdated theories of human development (like the idea that young children can’t understand basic history and math), ideas that have no basis in the science of learning, and attempts at reform that lost most everything good during the political process.

And I want to stress that the problem isn’t public school per se. I’m sure a lot of private schools have the same bad systems in place.

These are the conclusions I have come to as I did a bunch of research for homeschooling my kid (he needed to *not* be doing virtual school). It is hard to stick with it for me, especially when I have a lot of other things going on, so I am sure a lot of kids who are homeschooled get bad educations (in Virginia they do have to take standardized tests). But I promise you, even on the days I half-ass it, my son is getting better instruction than he would get at school just because im using a better curriculum.

[Anonymous]

I was not impressed by what I saw of elementary school for my oldest. It’s just this long road to nowhere with very little real content. If I could do it over, I would homeschool for the majority of elementary and then transition to school maybe around middle school, which is where he is now.

But I can’t do it any differently for my younger kids. I’m a high school teacher and we need my income. If I could afford it, I would homeschool the youngest and at least early elementary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am much more open to the idea of homeschooling, as well as micro schools, after the pandemic, but I know one particular person who homeschools and her kids do very little academic work (she regularly admits this and laughs about it). And her kids are older elementary and middle school grades. It seems there should be some basic metrics and standards.

It's possible that she thinks this is okay because this tracks with a lot of ideas about how schooling should be. In elementary in public elementary, the big thing right now is "learning how to think, not what to think." So that means very little content and some BS "skills" ideas like find the main idea, because hey, who needs to learn facts when you can google everything?

In most states there are basic metrics. In Virginia homeschooled kids have to get over I think the 24th percentile on a standardized test. (Which means that unless a homeschooler is cheating (very possible), all the kids who are scoring at or below the 24th percentile are in public school.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I effectively homeschool my child in math and increasingly take over English too. My experience with elementary grades public school is that curriculum is poorly organized, moves at a very slow pace, and most teachers are mathphobes that don’t have the skill or interest to put together an exciting and challenging math class. I’m also waking up to the fact that language instruction is quite terrible too, particularly in writing.

What I found out in public vs diy homeschooling is that at least in math, my child can go at about 3x the rate of learning, covering about three grades in one year. It slows down a bit afterwards, but in some sense public school feels like such a waste of time. I’m looking at a charter school next year that screens students and place them in appropriate grade.

Sur. Because youre teaching one kid at a time and not 20.

Not a knock on teachers, just an acknowledgement that she can do it better for her own child.

NP.

I think that homeschool is often better and not just because one-on-one is faster. Public school is just bad in so many ways in the elementary years. It’s not the teachers’ fault. Teacher training is bad. The curriculum is based on outdated theories of human development (like the idea that young children can’t understand basic history and math), ideas that have no basis in the science of learning, and attempts at reform that lost most everything good during the political process.

And I want to stress that the problem isn’t public school per se. I’m sure a lot of private schools have the same bad systems in place.

These are the conclusions I have come to as I did a bunch of research for homeschooling my kid (he needed to *not* be doing virtual school). It is hard to stick with it for me, especially when I have a lot of other things going on, so I am sure a lot of kids who are homeschooled get bad educations (in Virginia they do have to take standardized tests). But I promise you, even on the days I half-ass it, my son is getting better instruction than he would get at school just because im using a better curriculum.

It’s all of the above. One on one has been shown to be better, google “Two sigma problem”. I am also using a curriculum that is far far better than the Eurika math they use in school. I also have an advanced degree in hard sciences. For the morning before school and evenings when I come from work, there’s more learning than it happened in school the entire day.

It’s not the teachers fault, but it’s also not my child’s fault that the public education is terrible and unwilling to accommodate his educational needs.

[Anonymous]

And that’s really the bottom line. If you can do better than government school for your own child why wouldn’t you?

Many of us have the means to do better than the food the government serves in its schools for our own children, so we do.

This is similar.

[Anonymous]

What do they do when the kids get to HS? We can barely help DS with Calculus and DH has a graduate degree in Math

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do they do when the kids get to HS? We can barely help DS with Calculus and DH has a graduate degree in Math

Co ops, classes, dual enrollment, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do they do when the kids get to HS? We can barely help DS with Calculus and DH has a graduate degree in Math

Someone with a graduate degree in math shouldn’t have difficulties with the calculus taught in high school. It’s not that hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do they do when the kids get to HS? We can barely help DS with Calculus and DH has a graduate degree in Math

This is why god invented tutors, compassclasses.com, Fusion Academy, tutors, and in some school systems they have to allow your child to enroll for one or two classes.