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What percentage of homeschoolers do you see not educating to a minimum standard?


ElizabethB
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  1. 1. What percentage of homeschoolers in your area are not educating to a minimum standard?



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If you've seen the families who I think the OP is referencing, it's pretty clear: 

 

There are some former homeschooler groups who advocate about this issue. They "graduated" from homeschool without anything close to a normal high school education or way to support themselves. 

 

A lot of girls get co-opted into helping mom take care of many siblings. So they are taught to watch babies, do laundry, clean.... and not much more. Maybe 4th or 5th grade education. Their destiny is to be moms and wives anyway. What more would they need to know? 

 

Boys and girls who are co-opted into "following Daddy's vision." This isn't like farm families. It's nothing normal. 

 

Boys, however, usually get the better deal in these families. 

 

There are also families I've seen where it is not ideological. It may be a mother who is extremely overwhelmed, probably also coping with mental illness, and there is just no education going on. I'm not talking about thoughtful unschooling. I'm talking about none. 

 

I voted "other" because I don't have any way of guesstimating how many families are educating to a standard I would consider "minimum."  I live in a rural area, so I know a number of families who fit the categories listed above.  We have a lot of Plain People or families who were Plain and left, but can't imagine sending their children to public school.  We have a lot of families who were involved with Bill Gothard's programs.  

 

We also live near the Organic Valley headquarters, so we see many alternative, unschoolish families who homestead and such.  In either category, I can't tell by the casual contact I have with them whether their children are minimally educated or not.  I suspect that some are, some aren't. 

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The only Homeschoolers I know of not meeting standards are ones who pulled out older kids and thought they could set them in front of program and leave them alone. I actually see more problems in general with our private schoolers  paying huge amounts of money to do nothing but go through various christian workbook types of programs.

 

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Wow to the bolded as that seems harsh.  What happens if the student tests below the 33rd percentile?  Are they no longer able to homeschool?  What does the state of NY do with the public school students who test below the 33rd percentile?  Are they required to repeat the grade? Or maybe they are told that the public school failed them and that they should homeschool (just kidding, sort of).

 

We have something like this in Ohio, but the percentile is different (25%). I think if you score under the percentile average you have to either pursue some sort of remediation (see below) or get a portfolio review saying that child performed in accordance with their ability.  

 

Remediation: 

 

(A) If the annual academic assessment indicates that the child is not demonstrating reasonable proficiency, the superintendent shall notify the parent(s) in writing that an appropriate plan of remediation shall be submitted by the parent(s) to the superintendent within thirty days after receipt of such notification.

(B) During remediation the parent(s) shall submit a quarterly report to the superintendent which includes:

(1) A written narrative evaluating the child’s progress, including an explanation if the child has made less than satisfactory progress in any subject; and

(2) An explanation if less than the intended curriculum planned for the quarter was covered.

© Remediation may be eliminated at any time during the year upon determination by the superintendent that the child is demonstrating reasonable proficiency. At the time of such determination, the superintendent shall notify the parent(s) in writing that remediation is no longer needed.

(D) If the child does not demonstrate reasonable progress during remediation, the superintendent may, subsequent to a due process hearing, under paragraph (D) of rule 3301-04-03 of the Administrative Code, if requested by the parent, revoke the child’s excuse from attendance and notify the parent(s) in writing to enroll the child within thirty calendar days in a school that is in compliance with Chapter 3301-35 of the Administrative Code. The superintendent shall also notify the parent(s) in writing that the parent(s) have the right to appeal the superintendent’s decision to the juvenile judge of the county, within ten calendar days, in accordance with section 3331.08 of the Revised code.

Edited by cintinative
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We have something like this in Ohio, but the percentile is different (25%). I think if you score under the percentile average you have to either pursue some sort of remediation or get a portfolio review saying that child performed in accordance with their ability.  

 

Remediation: (A) If the annual academic assessment indicates that the child is not demonstrating reasonable proficiency, the superintendent shall notify the parent(s) in writing that an appropriate plan of remediation shall be submitted by the parent(s) to the superintendent within thirty days after receipt of such notification.

Yes, in Ohio you have an alternative path if your child tests below the 25%, so that 25% testing criteria doesn't have any teeth in Ohio.. 

 

Based on Freesia's response, it looks like the state of NY also has an alternative path to its 33% testing criteria as well.

Edited by snowbeltmom
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I chose 'Other'

 

In Alaska, home-schooling can be anything from complete and totally free of any oversight at all to being enrolled in a public or charter school and receiving a State allotment.

 

Many hs-ers I know take advantage of one of the oversight option because of the allotment and with those programs there are rules and regulations which vary from minimum to strict depending on the program you choose. Since many, many hs-ers here choose one of these options, I know that they are meeting the minimum standards determined by their Board of Directors or School Board.

 

Of course, we have independent schoolers and un-schoolers who may not meet any standard what-so-ever but I've never run into them. So, who knows?

I've only met 2 homeschooling families who seemed to be totally negligent in regards to their children's education and both were enrolled in a Charter. One I know few specific details about. The other made it clear to me that regulation was for show.

 

They did enough to turn in work samples but what is a few work samples for a years worth of work? They failed testing but that was blamed on LDs. It is true one of them had LDs, which was the reason they were taken out of school but that didn't mean the mom knew how to help the child. Half the time they were too busy to school. They actually ended up reported to the state for abuse but not from the school. There was no way for their oversight teacher to know what was going on in the home. It was neighbors and extended family who stepped in. I actually taught the 14 year old to read. This makes me wonder how kids who are really separated from the rest of society, all of their family, friends, and neighbors think like their parents, can possibly escape. Charter and district schools have tons of students, small amounts of oversight (easily blinded by parents), and no authority. If the family is so bad the state becomes involved then it means disruption, foster homes, school changes, and often falling through the cracks at public schools.

 

I don't think it is easy to solve by simply adding regulation. I wish it were as I would advocate for it strongly then. Right now I feel the best I can do is advocate for better funding for state child welfare offices and help every individual child I can.

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I've been in homeschooling circles for two decades, and I can honestly say I was concerned only twice:

 

2. A friend of mine whose 16-month-old son died suddenly. For about two years she grieved with her other children, and hardly any academics were accomplished. But again, she picked up the slack and got moving eventually, and the older kids got caught up.

One of the things I am most grateful for after losing our son is that I was homeschooling.  We actually got something done.  It wasn't as much as I'd like, and we took longer to finish some things, but that's okay.  I can't imagine having had to deal with the school's deadlines and homework and all of that while we were all just trying to keep it together and put one foot in front of the other.  We needed a gentle spring and a relaxing summer and are happily back on our normal track this school year.  Keeping busy also keeps me, as well as the children, from wallowing in self-pity, although I also reserve the right to have harder days, as grieving is not a linear process.

 

I voted 1%.  I don't know many families, if any, of the "grocery shopping is enough math for upper grade girls" sort.  I know a few unschoolish families, and I'm that way with my littler ones myself, but they seem to be the "let's go to the library and get some books on whatever topic we're currently interested in after we build a garden and explore painting" type, and that's awesome.  Not really the "let's call it unschooling while you play video games all day" sort.  I've only maybe seen one or two of those sorts of families.  Of course, it's harder to do nothing in our state, but at the same time, it depends on your evaluator, and there are many who are laid-back.

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This is a good example why minimum must be defined. When I graduated from high school TWO years were required.

 

 

I voted five percent but that might be high. One family had very young children and the way she schooled was intentional but would be inadequate by TWTM standards. Another was inadequate but the oldest son did make it into college with scholarships so despite what Mom said they did, their schooling may have been better than how it appeared.

 

My good friend taught with PACEs. All three of her kids struggled a little with math (She did not feel confident teaching math, so this is not a surprise) but all three managed to get into Renton Tech or Bellevue College and graduate with at least a 2 year degree there. One is a teacher in the Renton school district now. One does nursing work and is going for a phlebtomy license (i know that is spelled wrong). And the third is a personal trainer for parkour and doing decently. None are living at home; all support themselves.

Edited by vonfirmath
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I'm not surprised at all that colleges want to see proof of accomplishment (ACT/SAT/AP/DE success, etc) moreso than they require it from ps students (and it's not as if most don't look at those from ps).

 

 

If you think about it, the requirement  of college admissions tests for publicly schooled students are a tacit admission that colleges do not trust the system. If they did, a grade would be enough.

 

And, might I add, hubby teaches at a prestigious private college and is appalled at the lack of mathematical ability his students come in with. So I guess even those public schoolers with amazing applications are having a hard time actually applying the math the claim to have learned without fear.

 

I'm curious if the students are surprised to find that out. Is it due to grade inflation in high school, then?

 

It's like someone saw Singapore but didn't actually understand it and wrote a curriculum with superficial similarities that doesn't actually make sense. 

 

 

Is it Glencoe? That's what our local school uses and I had the exact same thought while I perused DS's friend's textbook.

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 Is it Glencoe? That's what our local school uses and I had the exact same thought while I perused DS's friend's textbook.

 

Nope, it's EngageNY. We live in CA but that's what the school my youngest attends use. I didn't think super-highly of their pre-Common Core math program (Prentice Hall) but that was better than this awful EngageNY.

 

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I would find it very difficult to make an estimate.  There are minimum standards for all registered home educators where I am, so those people are by definition doing an adequate job, otherwise they wouldn't have gotten approved.  There are a number of families who choose not to register, instead home schooling or unschooling 'under the radar'. While, of course, being unregistered doesn't necessarily mean the kids aren't learning adequately (in fact I know that there are some unregistered students doing amazing stuff), it's possible that a small number of those are experiencing some degree of educational neglect.

But if I were a betting person, I'd be willing to bet a shedload of money that there are far more children not learning enough in schools than there are at home.

Edited by IsabelC
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Not to derail this thread, but it is as if you have walked into the schools here and recorded their reading lessons.  Everything you posted here is exactly the problems I have had with DD8.  The guessing with pictures and guessing something that starts and ends with the same letter are exactly the problems we have.  That's specifically what they were teaching her to do and I spent so much of last year trying to undo that. 

 

 

Unfortunately, I have spent the last 24 years doing trying to undo that with my remedial students.  I started a thread about reading in the public schools here:

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/661986-reading-and-spelling-used-in-public-schools-k-3/

 

If she is still guessing, nonsense words and word lists!  Also, you can tell if she is totally remediated from the guessing when the MWIA scores are within 5% of each other for speed, and by the end of 3rd grade, you should have 100% accuracy on both lists.

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I voted other because 0 is not an option.

I have known MANY homeschooling families. Even the ones that I thought were not doing much actually were doing good work when i had a good look. They hadn't been talking to me about those things, but they were doing them quietly. 

I have heard many tales of subpar education, but I haven't encountered it myself. 

Unless I'm one of the crappy homeschoolers and just don't know it. 

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I chose 1% even though it is probably a little less.  My idea of what minimum educational standards are is pretty basic (read, write, arithmetic).  I have only met a few that really do not do anything, some under the guise of unschooling which unfortunately gives true unschoolers a bad reputation.  Now the families I have met have been through a variety of co-op situations but I can just imagine that there are some families out there that avoid homeschool groups too.  For the most part the homeschoolers I have met, no matter what method they use, all work to help their children learn.  It may not always be the traditional education but they have the skills and the ability to function as an adult.

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I'd say 1% were NOT doing their job by upper elementary. On the other hand, I've seen some very quirky families....who would have been that way whether they were homeschooling or not. One family who were hugely shy in elementary, kids would barely speak to others but by middle school were much improved and entering art/story competitions, etc. One family where the mom said she was homeschooling so her kids would come out republicans....ended up going back to work f/t and putting them in a magnet school. One family who spends every Friday doing a nature hike a la Charlotte Mason, with a high schooler, but that same kid is in the writing class I am teaching at co-op and I see him working his tail off with a smile; he's going to do just fine. I have had a friend whose son spent a year reading LOTR and designing legolas costume, bow, arrows, etc. and competed at state level in gymnastics. After that year she decided to subcontract him out to the public school and he decided it was easier to work for somebody other than mom and actually pulled it together and did well. He's now studying college courses on the side while doing mechanical work.

 

My older 3 kids fully expressed that language arts/math imbalance. We did state testing with our charter school and the kids tested highly proficient in LA and basic in math for several years. Both of my kids who went to community college had to do a single remedial class (ds said it was mostly about terminology, which I am SURE I taught him but he hadn't retained) in math. Both of them tested into English 1....ds with a 98% score at 16 when I fired him from homeschooling because he wasn't cooperating with his teacher. He graduated magna cum laude from state U last spring so no permanent harm done. Even my dd who was tested for LD and who definitely struggles with writing tested into English 1 and has made extensive use of the community college's writing tutors and spent a lot of time @ office hours with her teachers. I am so proud of her for how hard she's worked.

 

I am told that I am one of the more demanding homeschoolers most people know....I really don't think so in comparison to many on this board. I do have more artsy, humanities oriented kids and am not strong in science myself, so I seek out people who love science and beg them to teach my kids.

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I'm going to bury it in this thread...

I'm worried that I might be about to know one. There is not a doubt in my mind that it will be a terrible situation if this parent pulls their child from school. And they're in a zero-reporting state. I'm genuinely sick to my stomach at the thought of it. But the parent refuses to accept that there are any delays present and it sounds like the school is starting to push for an eval.

So I may have to take back my original answer.  I really hope I don't, though.

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Why won't hsers in different regions of this country, or in other countries, acknowledge this problem? Why do you always say it's not a big issue because you've never seen it? New Englanders are not going to see it. People in Portland, Oregon are not going to see it. That doesn't mean the girls in these groups in other areas are not suffering. And they are suffering because their parents are taking advantage of zero accountability homeschool laws.

I've lived all over the Bible Belt, and I have yet to see this. And yes, I've met ATI/Gothard families. They may not have been doing college prep work, but the girls I spoke to were intelligent, well-spoken, and proficient in math and life skills. They certainly equaled if not exceeded what was available at the abysmal public schools in the area. I did not agree with teaching creationism and that evolution was a lie, so I naturally found their science education lacking but otherwise they could graduate from public high school based on their knowledge level.

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I chose "other" because I'm not sure there is a way to really know. I am in a large group/coop and all the families seem to be doing their best to provide a good education. Most home schooled high schoolers I know are college bound and are taking advantage of online and on campus concurrent enrollment classes. The parents take schooling seriously for both boys AND girls. On the other hand, the types of ultra conservative parents who don't believe in girls attending college are also not likely to be participating in large support groups or coop classes. So if they are out there I haven't met them.

 

I can only remember one family who really didn't seem to be meeting even basic standards. They used the Bible for every subject and nothing else. We lost touch with them years ago but I've wondered how the kids are doing now.

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I'm not really what the minimum standard is but I voted based on state minimum standard. Based on that I would say not very many homeschoolers I know are meeting it. Most homeschoolers here don't teach common core so when they test their children they don't meet the standard. I looked up the statistics a while back and our local school was mostly above standard. I'm in California where a lot of people enroll in a homeschooling charter. I looked at the homeschooling charter test results and most children were below standard. Again though that would mostly be due to people not teaching using common core material. If you just mean children that are not being taught any material or educationally neglected then I haven't met anyone. We also have a lot of unschoolers around here but they do educate just in a different way. I'm sure their children would not test well on the state test though. All of these kids tend to go on to college without incident so I don't really feel like those test have much relevance on anything. 

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I think some homeschoolers can trap themselves. They get a false sense of security because homeschooling k-2 can be done really well with very little time or effort. It’s easy to “get ahead of the schools†and feel great about how well homeschooling works. 3rd -5th takes more effort, but you can still “keep up†if you only spend a few hours a ay schooling and don’t let math slide too much.

 

In 6-8th the undisciplined homeschoolers start to slip especially if they’re not internally driven with math and nobody pushes them. Their homeschool lifestylemulifgr be full of classes and activities so they don’t step up the academic work at this point. Now they’ve set themselves up so that they’re not high school ready.

 

Rather than avoid the embarrassment of testing for high school class placement, they just ride out the last four years of homeschooling. These are the kids who don’t do their homework in co-op classes. They’ve never stepped up the seat work beyond a few hours a day so they really can’t keep up. Often they drop the co-op class and make lame excuses (the teacher was boring, it was busy work, it was ‘too easy’ for me). These are the moms who like to talk about how great homeschooling is the loudest and talk about how bad the local schools are. (They’re not)

 

I haven’t seen a lot of these families, but enough that I think oversight is a good idea because these kids would have been better educated with a little more accountability. There is nothing wrong with them. Their mother just wasn’t organized enough to educate them properly. I’ve actually seen them “graduate early†and never complete an algebra class or do a science lab beyond middle school level.

 

In a town like mine where even the school kids with issues and delays are meeting a higher standard, it’s a shame. I just don’t think your homeschooler should be less educated than they would be in public school because doing homework is sometimes unpleasant or time consuming.

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