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One more reason homeschoolers cover more ground than public school students


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I have two kids -- one in public school, the other in homeschool. The public school is supposed to have about 180 school days per year. However, it is going to devote six full days to PARCC testing this spring. That is on top of all the other testing she has done and will do.  Her school lost one day last week due to snow. It has had about a half-dozen two-hour delays so far this year due to snow. One day last fall the school told us to pick up our kids at 11:30 am because of a bike race in the nearby neighborhood. All in all, I estimate that we lose at least 5 percent of school days due to testing, weather-related closures and delays, and other closures.

 

By comparison, my homeschooled kid attends "school" six days per week, 50 weeks per year. That's 300 days. We don't have snow delays; we don't take standardized tests; and we don't shut down school because of bike races.

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That's really not quite fair, at least not in my homeschool. While we may "School" more days, I kind of suspect the days that we're homeschooling at the auto repair shop while we get maintenance done, or in the hospital waiting room while my husband is having medical tests that required me to drive him home are not terribly effective days. We probably still get more "Real" school days in each year, but it's certainly not the case here that every single homeschool day is 100% educational.

 

 

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That's really not quite fair, at least not in my homeschool. While we may "School" more days, I kind of suspect the days that we're homeschooling at the auto repair shop while we get maintenance done, or in the hospital waiting room while my husband is having medical tests that required me to drive him home are not terribly effective days. We probably still get more "Real" school days in each year, but it's certainly not the case here that every single homeschool day is 100% educational.

 

This. We school year-round, five days a week, but sometimes we take days off for events or a week off because I have my own finals. I think we're probably more efficient, but it would be pretty pathetic if we weren't, having only two students.

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I have to count to 180 every "year". I don't count days when we don't do actual schoolwork, so I'm in the OP's camp. The state waived a couple of snow day make-ups last year for the local system, and I know they are trying a new standardized test this year in addition to whatever the regular ones are.

 

We also do some school through the summer that I don't count. We don't do 300 days a year, but we definitely do 180, plus summer work.

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I am assuming that your post is just a vent. I don't think its worth comparing time though since it's the quality of time spend rather than quantity that matters. Even how your two children spend their study time if you were still homeschooling both would be different.

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I am assuming that your post is just a vent. I don't think its worth comparing time though since it's the quality of time spend rather than quantity that matters. Even how your two children spend their study time if you were still homeschooling both would be different.

 

Obviously, quality matters a lot. But is is equally obvious that quantity matters too. Given that, I just think it is worth keeping in mind that homeschool students are able to attend "school" more consistently than their public school counterparts.

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I think anyone that spent any significant time at home sick from P.S. when they didn't feel bad will realize that homeschoolers can get more done.  I had to stay home for over a week at a time for chicken pox (didn't feel bad at all), pink eye (only one eye) and something else.  Each time I did a week's worth of work by the lunch the first day, and I'd cruise through school for the next 6 weeks because I'd read ahead in the textbooks out of boredom.  

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I have two kids -- one in public school, the other in homeschool. The public school is supposed to have about 180 school days per year. However, it is going to devote six full days to PARCC testing this spring. That is on top of all the other testing she has done and will do.  Her school lost one day last week due to snow. It has had about a half-dozen two-hour delays so far this year due to snow. One day last fall the school told us to pick up our kids at 11:30 am because of a bike race in the nearby neighborhood. All in all, I estimate that we lose at least 5 percent of school days due to testing, weather-related closures and delays, and other closures.

 

By comparison, my homeschooled kid attends "school" six days per week, 50 weeks per year. That's 300 days. We don't have snow delays; we don't take standardized tests; and we don't shut down school because of bike races.

You didn't even mention how many days are spent preparing for the PARCC - that stuff really irks me - one or two days on the  test format should be plenty otherwise you are "teaching to the test"

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DD is a Distance Learner and uses traditional textbooks. I believe it would be impossible for a classroom teacher, using the same textbooks, to teach the subjects as thoroughly. There just isn't enough time for them to do that, in a brick & mortar school.

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When I taught school, it was one of my frustrations that we had so few regular, uninterrupted weeks. There was always something.

 

As a homeschooler I have the exact same frustration. Two doctor appointments last week (one out of town), two more doctor appointments this week plus we lost a full day having to drive to a nearby city to get something fixed that needed repaired ASAP. There is ALWAYS something, and I don't know that homeschool vs. traditional school really matters so much... 

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As a homeschooler I have the exact same frustration. Two doctor appointments last week (one out of town), two more doctor appointments this week plus we lost a full day having to drive to a nearby city to get something fixed that needed repaired ASAP. There is ALWAYS something, and I don't know that homeschool vs. traditional school really matters so much...

I agree. In fact there are many days that I feel guilty because the situation that is canceling our school or pulling it way back would not affect th going to traditional school. Things like my sickness or a siblings sickness.

 

I actually get frustrated that many homeschool materials are based on 180 days. We dont ever get them done :/. We do the RRRs daily always and year round to make up for the sick days or other off days. But things like history and science get bumped fairly often.

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The public school here sends me stuff about testing every year, since all students have to test in certain grades. I can do it for free at my local school if I choose, but it'd be something like a portion of every day for like two weeks. (My time, not to mention dragging all the other kids along, is worth the $25 I pay to CLP to test them online -- 3 hours, over one or two afternoons, and done.).

 

This year, my local school has already had at least one closed and one or two delayed days. Last year, the seniors had to attend Saturday classes because they'd missed so many days for snow.

 

I gave my kids a snow day Tuesday because it was the first really good day of snow we'd had yet. I did not give them Monday off, although DH worked from home both days because the roads were bad. I appreciate the flexibility we have. We do normally log over the required 180 days, but some of those days are only partial days, or martial arts class only days, or whatever.

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I don't think that having more school days is the major reason that homeschoolers are able to cover more ground than traditional schoolers.  In fact, I'm finding that my son is spending far less time on school-related tasks than he did at his b&m school while actually doing far, far more.  I think the main difference is that my use of "class time" is extremely focused while the school's use of it (in most classes) was diffuse at best and they sent the bulk of the "real work" home (all writing assignments, for example).

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I don't think that having more school days is the major reason that homeschoolers are able to cover more ground than traditional schoolers.  In fact, I'm finding that my son is spending far less time on school-related tasks than he did at his b&m school while actually doing far, far more.  I think the main difference is that my use of "class time" is extremely focused while the school's use of it (in most classes) was diffuse at best and they sent the bulk of the "real work" home (all writing assignments, for example).

 

Yes, I agree 100 percent. In reviewing my son's math homework I can immediately see which problems he has missed. I make sure he understands exactly what he has done wrong. In a public school, by strong contrast, a lot of time was spent going over material that my son already had mastered and my son's problem areas weren't always addressed (i.e. because there were many other kids in his class).

 

Another example: My son has completed 14 chapters of Latin for a New Millennium in the past 8 months. He spends no more than 2 hours per week on it. That is less than 80 hours in total. It took my daughter (who is just as smart as my son) about 15 months to get that far in the same book. She sat in her public school's Latin class for about 4 hours per week. Excluding her summer break and ignoring any homework she had to do, that's probably close to 200 hours. On a chapter/hour basis, my son is progressing more than twice as fast as my daughter did.

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I bet if I totaled our school hours in a year they would be significantly LESS than our public school. We break our routine regularly for all sorts of things (trips, someone not feeling well, unique opportunity/field trip which consumes a good part of the day, etc). And even on regular days we only school about 5 hours. I think we do well because I'm highly selective about WHAT we do, and try to do the whole multum non multa thing.

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I have a double standard. :D

 

Number of days/hours counts and is crucial in a classroom setting because it is less efficient by nature. Not that it is wrong or anything but there are more kids to focus on and you have to meet the avg of the room. At home with less children and so much one on one time, I think that the quality of the time wins out and the number of days/hours just don't compare. I don't have to count days or hours for my state, but I will say that we don't get in 180 days of actual sit down schoolwork. If I count educational outings we might hit 175. I schedule 34 weeks at 5 days a week. A couple of those weeks end up with only 4 days because we don't need as much time as I thought we would. Our days aren't as long as the local public school, but probably equal in instructional hours.

 

I will say that each year adds a couple more days to the schedule, so by highschool I bet we will need a full 180 days.

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I agree. In fact there are many days that I feel guilty because the situation that is canceling our school or pulling it way back would not affect th going to traditional school. Things like my sickness or a siblings sickness.

 

I actually get frustrated that many homeschool materials are based on 180 days. We dont ever get them done :/. We do the RRRs daily always and year round to make up for the sick days or other off days. But things like history and science get bumped fairly often.

Lots of our materials are based on 180 days/36 weeks too, and we do manage to get them done, but only because we school year round. Given all of our interruptions during the year and trying to homeschool while working full-time, my kids have just had to accept that we're not going to get it all done during the typical academic year and that they will be expected to do some work over the summer to wrap up loose ends, keep up their piano skills, etc. Granted, we certainly don't have a full course load all summer and there are many days that we don't do any work at all due to more sleepovers, camping trips, playdates, impromptu pool outings with friends, vacations, etc. Just knowing that we have from September till September instead of September to May to finish our work eases some of the stress and pressure, and in the end I'm happy with what we're able to accomplish. 

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We probably still get more "Real" school days in each year, but it's certainly not the case here that every single homeschool day is 100% educational.

 

Yeah... but neither is every day in school-school. How many class periods were spent watching videos, or listening to our classmates stand up and give reports on the nations of Africa or mammals or climate zones, or goofing off and playing games because it was one of the last few days before a vacation and nobody cared, least of all the teachers? (And especially after grades were in! Why teach anything if the kids won't be tested on it because the grades have already been submitted a month ago?)

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I agree. In fact there are many days that I feel guilty because the situation that is canceling our school or pulling it way back would not affect th going to traditional school. Things like my sickness or a siblings sickness.

 

I actually get frustrated that many homeschool materials are based on 180 days. We dont ever get them done :/. We do the RRRs daily always and year round to make up for the sick days or other off days. But things like history and science get bumped fairly often.

 

They don't finish them in P.S. either.  I don't know where you live, and therefore know zero about your local schools.  But, I'd bet $20 that your kids cover more science and history than the kids in your designated public school just based on that you are concerned it is getting bumped, even if it is often.  

 

To prove that, ask a random sampling of adults to tell you One thing about America from 1800 - 1850.   Even putting their heads together they won't.  If you do get an answer, it will be something they learned as adult, probably a history buff. 

 

In my Texas history class, we spent 3 months on the Spanish conquistadors travelling through, 3 weeks on the Alamo (not the war, just the Alamo), and 3 days on the Civil War.  Was that because the conquistadors were 20X more important than the Civil War?  Nope.  It was at the beginning of the book.  

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I have a double standard. :D

 

Number of days/hours counts and is crucial in a classroom setting because it is less efficient by nature. Not that it is wrong or anything but there are more kids to focus on and you have to meet the avg of the room. At home with less children and so much one on one time, I think that the quality of the time wins out and the number of days/hours just don't compare. 

 

I think your 'double standard' is in fact perfectly reasonable: you can't compare number of teaching hours at school to number of home school hours because it's apples and oranges. With the different teacher:child ratios, the school student is almost always going to get a lot less one on one teaching, plus much of the class teaching won't be at exactly the right level for a given student. 

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