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Accepted at a top private but now prefer to homeschool
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Anonymous
| My DC was accepted at a "top" independent school for K, but we are now considering homeschooling. Yes, we have paid some tuition, but can live with it. No, the school term has not started yet. Has anyone else decided to homeschool their DC versus attend a great private school? |
Anonymous
| Read your contract. It's likely that you're on the hook for the entire tuition for the year, not just what you've paid so far. If you have the insurance, your DC has to attend a certain number of consecutive days before the insurance company will pay part of it. |
Anonymous
| WE thought of it, but dd is the most social kid, and we just had to let her get in there and make friends. |
Anonymous
| We broke a contract with a private school. We had the insurance. The insurance company (not the school) required our kid to attend for two weeks before they would let us out of the school contract. The school itself accepted our decision and probably wouldn't have insisted on the two weeks. |
Anonymous
| A friend who works in admin for a top (on my list, no idea where it would be on DCUrban Mom lingo) private says they would definitely sue for the full amount if a kid was no show. |
Anonymous
| Why would these schools make the family pay for the whole year? I am sure they can get a kid off the waiting list in a second. |
Anonymous
Because the school then gets 2 tuitions for the spot. |
Anonymous
| Put bluntly, the school's interests are not the same as parents' interests, They're interested in collecting tuition from everyone who was enrolled past the binding date. It makes budgeting easier, it avoids the (not necessarily easy) search for a replacement, it makes them more in control of their income stream so they can commit to expenses. That's why the liquidated damages provision is in the contract and why they take it seriously. |
Anonymous
Not at this point in the year as families will have committed to another school and will be on the hook for that tuition. |
Anonymous
| The way the contract works, if you leave the school has upside potential but no risk. They like it this way because it assures them of the income they planned on. BTW, the liquidated damages provision also covers the costs of suing you. |
Anonymous
|
Not something I would do even though (or, more accurately, because) I'm well-educated and have lots of teaching experience. Basically, I know how much work it is to put together a single course and I know how much more I know about the subject I specialize in than subjects I don't. I've also seen how many classroom insights are prompted by interaction among students rather than set up by the teacher. And as a parent, I don't want the limits of my knowledge to impose limits on my kid's knowledge. Finally, I want to have my own life (including my own intellectual life) and I want my kid to have some trusted adults in her life who aren't family members or friends. I think part of the education you get from schooling is sorting out authority figures (which ones are trustworthy and which aren't!) and encountering different points of view.
Autodidacts tend to have unpredictable gaps in their knowledge of and idiosyncratic judgments regarding the which texts and questions are important. In a few cases, that can lead to some interesting/challenging insights, but more often it seems to lead to overlooking the obvious (to more conventionally trained people) and needing to reinvent the wheel. The other direction I see homeschoolers gravitate toward is mediocre pre-packaged curricula. So your kid just ends up knowing less (rather than different) from other people. Ever had the teacher who seems like s/he is only a chapter ahead of the kids? Inevitably, you'll spend a lot of your time being that kind of teacher because you don't already know every subject at every level and you can only outsource so much. You haven't said why (and I'm not asking you to) you've made this decision, but if it's because you believe your child will get a better education at home, then remember that you'll be at your best as a teacher if you're supplementing rather than trying to do it all. I suspect that if you asked my DC, she'd say she learns as much at home as she does at school. School covers the basics and exposes her to a wide variety of questions, topics, sources, methods and from that exposure, she crafts her own agenda. Bottom line, I could imagine situations in which homeschooling is the best option from an academic perspective, but they are pretty dire situations. There are lots of good-quality schools in the area representing a wide variety of educational philosophies and providing a broad range of different learning environments. School isn't the be all and end all, but it's a really useful starting point (both for your DC and for you as his/her most important teacher). |
Anonymous
| PP, thank you for this very thoughtful and insightful argument against homeschooling. It's one of the best I've ever read, anywhere. |
Anonymous
| yes, i agree w/PP. i just never understood the point of homeschooling. IMO, I don't see it as anything other than isolation, deprived of a real education, & lack of development of social skills. I'm not trying to be snarky, but it really is how I see it. |
Anonymous
|
9:43, interesting points but homeschooled students aren't autodidacts, someone is guiding them. Also, what you describe can't possibly occur if a parent homeschools for a few years in the early years. Haven't you all seen the quotes from college admissions folks, saying that homeschool students can blow others out of the water? This was in the NYT several years ago.
School is not for everyone. Just because you don't want to homeschool doesn't mean it can't be a wonderful thing. Plus in an area like DC, students can take classes at the Levine School of Music, which has classes specifically for homeschooled students, etc. |
Anonymous
What if the person guiding them isn't really proficient at teaching? Not everyone can teach. |