I've been meaning to share this here. There's a Facebook group now that openly discusses CC (without the censorship of nearly everywhere else but here). It's called "Let Us Reason For Real". www.facebook.com/groups/LetUsReasonForReal

For those here questioning CC, there's a Facebook group where lots of ex-CCers tell their stories. I posted it on another post about CC here, but I'll stop after this so as not to be annoying. I just think the FB group has such good info. Stuff you won't hear anywhere else, because negative reviews from people who have really been in deep in CC are so locked down usually. Here's the group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2135913039963411/

It's not just the curriculum that I could critique, but I truly believe issues with the business add to the burnout. I'm part of a group on Facebook that often talks about this stuff. There are very happy CCers in there and some ex CCers who feel like they left a cult. It runs the gamut, but it's good info. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2135913039963411/

I think you are right that perhaps CC seeks to be the Common Core of homeschooling. This saddens me because most of the homeschoolers I know or knew before CC wanted to avoid that one-size-fits-all approach. Perhaps we need new designations: "Old School Homeschool" and - to use an acronym we used in the info tech industry - "COTS Homeschool". (Commercial, Off The Shelf) That's it. CC is a commercial, off the shelf way to homeschool. Except... So many - several who have commented here - don't want COTS homeschool. They want community, and CC is the only game in town. And once you've invested so much $$ in all the books and curriculum, you have no choice but to go with the COTS solution, which inadvertantly furthers and spreads that homeschool "common core" approach. And, as much as CC tries to control the "product" it's almost never implemented uniformly. Just look at the different stories on here of people who have tutors or directors who go against CC's stated policies. Directors with kids in PS (while CC dictates that all directors must have all their kids enrolled in CC), Challenge tutors with little kids (while CC dictates that any Challenge tutor must have at least one kid within one year of Challenge). Try as they might to strong arm directors into submission, I don't think their business model, where nearly every worker is supposedly an "independent contractor", allows the corporation the teeth to force that uniformity. So they're not even doing homeschool common core well! Just like public school common core...

I love the turn this post is now taking: encouraging and empowering homeschooling moms to create community where you are! It can be so simple. We had a small co-op that was academic - we met together and just did parts of our homeschooling together. The only fee were a few supplies for the art/craft time and insurance for the co-op that the house church asked us to get. I love the idea of a purely social co-op as well. We can do this. This is why we decided to homeschool. For freedom. Still, with one in high school I'm also looking forward to the college days. Ha. He is, too.

This is also my main concern with CC - other than the stories of spiritual and emotional abuse at the hands of CC "reps" (managers) - that it is changing in the face of homeschooling for the worse in so many areas. The desperation for community is so real and in many places now CC is the only choice. It has truly become, as Leigh Bortins said a couple of years ago in an article in Pilot online magazine: "The Walmart of education". (http://www.thepilot.com/business/at-classical-conversations-business-is-an-education/article_6520761e-321d-11e5-92ed-f7e9366ea8dd.html) And I even like Walmart. I just don't want it to be my only choice. It feels like CC is becoming a Christian homeschool community corporate monopoly.

That last paragraph on page 55 certainly echos a new-ish phenomenon/repeated phrase I keep reading from women in online CC and homeschool forums: "We wouldn't be able to homeschool without CC," "CC provides the accountability and mentorship I absolutely have to have to have to be able to homeschool at all." I'm hearing this so often now and it's almost word for word. Creepy. But I'm stuck on pg. 22 with the pretty stellar test score numbers of Challenge grads (except for 4-year college attendance - 72% is nothing to brag about IMO). I was impressed until I read the fine print: all scores were self-reported from a survey and there were... Twenty-four (24) respondents. LOL.

I agree with you and HSmomof2. I didn't think she's was saying you have to have a teaching degree to teach your own kids, but to teach other people's children effectively in a group setting requires some decent training. My CC trainer was considered one of the best in my state and yet I walked out of training with a LOT of knowledge about CC policies (enough that I knew I didn't want to sign a contract), how to draw my board with God in the center, and a few ideas for memory review games. That's. It. I was asked on my first day as a tutor by a new mom how God was at the center of CC's Foundations curriculum and all I had was, "Um. All knowledge comes from God." I also found out that the year after I tutored they started making tutors sign a non-disclosure agreement before they could even enter a tutoring room. I guess to get rid of pesky situations like me where I did tutor for my director but I didn't sign any of CC's gag orders so now they can't threaten me with being bound by an NDA that specifically mentions "discussions" about CC business. Just pull off any wool over your eyes, anyone reading this. Nearly an entire workforce of "independent contractors", an multi-level marketing hierarchy but the company claims to NOT be an MLM, completely monopolizing the Christian homeschooling scene in entire areas, and now actively recruiting unpaid volunteers for a for-profit corporation. Does *any* of that read "love for the Christian homeschooling community" more than "love for money" to you??

This all makes me so sad. Surely this is not why we decided to homeschool. This is why I believe CC is truly harming the homeschool community at large. It's sucking up resources - creating a monopoly. Don't even get me started on the rigid legalism. How much better is this really than public school? We trade the government for one "right way" to homeschool with "Christian" slapped onto the description. Much of what I saw in my years at CC was anything but Christian.

I'm just wondering how this "CC Brand Ambassador" program holds up in the face of the Fair Labor and Standards Act (FLSA). Google "FLSA volunteer for-profit". In that search an article pops up warning about a for-profit company using volunteers that was published by the very law firm CC retained to write and send the threat letter I received from the law firm on behalf of CC. I have that lawyer's email address, and I want to ask her about this. Would that be crazy?

It was unfortunately so strictly enforced at our campus that our director was having to find someone to drive one of her 5 children - a Challenge 2 aged student - to a campus 30 minutes away because it was the only Challenge 2 in the area but met on the same day as our F/E community day. (Director could not be in two places at once.) Of course, the reps' suggestion was not that the rule could be eased up on but that our director should recruit someone from our community to start more Challenge programs. So... that's a alternative theory as to why this is a corporate rule - not just to maintain the integrity of the program but to build new campuses ($$$). And when a second child of hers was miserable in Challenge A because of learning issues, there was *no* leniency to seek another program more suited to her other child's needs. Honestly, the intractability of corporate managers on this issue, along with about two other issues, is what ultimately drove our entire (full - 48 students) community to leave CC (except for the support manager and her best friend). I guess this is still a ymmv situation but I don't expect it to be for long. The long arm of corporate rules will eventually reach all CC communities.

It's absolutely stated policy and has been for at least 7 years. Here is the quote from CC's website: "In order to show commitment to the mission “To know God and to make Him known†through a classical education and to provide continuity to the progress of each program, each Director should enroll all of their age-appropriate children in a local community (if there is one within a 25-minute drive). Classical Conversations’ programs are a fit for the Director’s entire family." https://offer.classicalconversations.com/directors-info-landing-page/

Have you looked at Claritas or Scholé. CC does seem to need some good, healthy competition.

Argh! It said this has not posted and I can't delete it.

Well, whaddya know? I found this: https://classical-conversations.helpscoutdocs.com/article/40-who-can-be-a-tutor-for-classical-conversations It may be a very recent thing, since the article was updated in September of this year. I know two years ago when I tutored no directors or tutors in our area were background checked. The article does not say it's mandatory just that you "must submit to a background check", but it certainly seems like a step in the right direction... It is weird though that, according to that article I linked above, a Challenge director must have at least one child at or above that Challenge level, and I know at least one Challenge director, new this year, who definitely does not have a Challenge-aged child, so it does make one wonder how much of their own "rules" they are following/enforcing.

I'm no expert but here's my suspicion. American Heritage Girls is a non-profit and no one is making money. CC is a private, for-profit, and every director is (supposed to be) making money in her own "independent business" which is the CC community. She's a licensee of CC, allowed to use the Classical Conversations name in exchange for a licensing fee. Soooo, it's money-making at every level. Also, the vast majority of workers for CC communities are paid as "independent contractors". My guess is that requiring background checks would make those workers look even less like true independent contractors (and, in my opinion, looking at the IRS guidelines, those workers already don't look like independent contractors but employees). Add a required background check to all the other controls, and... I just think they *might* be worried it will be a red flag against the independent contractor status. That's just me spitballing, though. I think it's a similar reason that Uber staunchly refuses to fingerprint check their drivers. I don't think it's the cost of the fingerprinting. I think it's that their business model of all drivers being "independent contractors" is already under fire (see multiple state-level lawsuits where workers claim they were classified as independent contractors when they were treated as employees) and they know requiring fingerprinting would even further blur that line of whether or not their workers are really ICs. Again, I'm spitballing about Uber's motives, but it seems like a logical conclusion to me.

With all due respect to your wife and my husband, I think I love you. J/K but it does gall me to realize that I knew immediately from your unflinching tone that you are a man. As for the background checks: I'm on my fourth heard (first-hand) story of child endangerment, sexual harassment, or outright physical abuse on a CC campus. You haven't heard about them, right? That's because in each one, I am told by the victims, the matter was hushed up at a managerial level by shunning, accusations of "gossip", and/or most disturbingly, the knowledge that to take such things to the appropriate authorities would likely imperil the director (who is usually the victim's friend) more than the CC corporation. Why background check when you can place all the liability on some poor schlub who may be unwittingly running what may not being acknowledged to be a franchise of the parent corporation?

Whoa! Ok, for people searching his name is spelled "Noble" Gibbens. He seems to be the main admin in CC's Facebook group - the group which CC believers often loudly proclaim is *not* "run by CC" though their marketing director is the main admin and Robert Bortins himself (CEO of CC) is also an admin. If anyone still has stars in her eyes about whether this is a big business company is a mom and pop ministry I hope these facts help open their eyes. I didn't even know of Noble except through friends. I was kicked off that FB group years ago, well before I received the threat letter I got from Classical Conversations's lawyers in mid-2016. Here's the weird thing: I never interacted with Noble. I don't even think he was an admin in that Classical Conversations Facebook group when I got blocked from it. But when I went to check this info about him being in Amway on his Facebook page, I was blocked! I only know for sure I am blocked because I can see Noble's page from my husband's Facebook account. How insane is that? Does this "Christian" company have a list sitting around somewhere of people to preemptively block?!

I wonder what it cost. "No change to structure" does not necessarily equal no cost. The part of that quote that I'm most hung up on is that they plan to better "train" their ICs. according to so many articles "training" an IC is inconsistent with the IC status. I think that's why they changed the "tutor training" name to "orientation". But if the MO investigation really was resolved with no change, there is nothing to be done. CC goes on as before. Changing the face of homeschooling worldwide while its supporters rejoice. I cannot rejoice. Homeschooling for me is about liberty. I see no liberty in CC. But it is not mine to decide. All I can do is try to help the women who have been hurt in CC communities - the dozens who have told me their stories. If you are in need of a support group where you can tell your story openly, I have started one on Facebook. Please private message me to be invited.

I agree. I would have been very suspicious about that aspect of Landry. But at least as ac parent I'd have seen that business model and been like, "whoa!" <brakes squealing> With CC I was three years in not knowing the "business model" and tutored with extremely limited access to knowledge about it. That's largely on me. I should have been more "asky", but this is the thing with Christian homeschooling groups. More often than not,the assumption is that they are above board. The whole thing where CC threatened to sue me really inspired me. I'm taking the LSAT in September and will be hopefully applying to law schools for next fall. The area of most interest to me is affinity fraud.

From that link:"You are not an independent contractor if you perform services that can be controlled by an employer (what will be done and how it will be done). This applies even if you are given freedom of action. What matters is that the employer has the legal right to control the details of how the services are performed." So... yeah. When I tutored we were told we could not even print out memory facts for display in the classroom. We had to hand write the facts. I'm hearing this year there is a rule that tutors can't use any technology (e.g. play any of the memory songs from a phone or CD player) in the classroom. So... yeah.

Wow! Thank you for that answer!

Not sure why my comment posted twice. I guess I accidentally hit it twice, but I can't delete, so I'm editing it to this.

Before I answer, a disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer or a tax expert. Just a mom. I'm answering with info from what I have read online or experienced or heard from a direct source. What I say is true to the best of my knowledge, but I am obviously fallible and may make mistakes in my reasoning. All I know about Landry is that many believe at least a part of the reason they had to shut their doors was because of IRS fees from misclassifying tutors. Carol Topp (Homeschool CPA) mentioned this in her podcast and article about consequences of misclassifying workers. She says: "I do not know the details of their unfortunate situation, but it seems that there was an IRS requirement for Landry Academy to reclassify their teachers as employees, rather than independent contractors." Source:http://homeschoolcpa.com/what-are-the-consequences-of-misclassifying-a-worker/ As for how much a CC director makes it varies a lot I think. I know my former director, with a full campus, pulled in between $10K and $12K in gross *profit*. With a full Foundations campus (48) and 12, sometimes 20, Essentials students, the net income of the business (the director's business - just that one community) would be around $22,000. Of course the director wild have to pay tutors from this amount. These are just my quick calculations. My director sometimes had 8 Foundations and 2 Essentials tutors. If you look at the article above, just back FICA taxes on 10 tutors over 3 years could be significant. That's just IRS. State income tax would be separate. My point is: yeah, even if they don't make much, the back-taxes could be kinda awful. Carol Topp has another article about one co-op in Ohio being found to be misclassifying teachers. The cost was significant: http://homeschoolcpa.com/update-on-teachers-as-independent-contractors Thank you both for replying. It sounds like no one on here so far knows if any investigation into misclassification of tutors in MO is happening.

I am having THE hardest time finding anything about this online, so I'm asking here. Does anyone have information about whether or not Classical Conversations directors in Missouri are being investigated (by the state labor board) for misclassifying their tutors as independent contractors when they should have been employees? I have only heard this about CC directors in MO. I do not know if it's true - but given the Landry crisis, I'm very concerned. Does anyone have real info on this?