When Educational Bureaucracy Wins, Our Children Lose

Well, this may be bad for people who have already planned family trips to Europe or cruises to Cabo. Yet, according to those who believe we need a much longer school year in order to compete with China and India (or Eritrea, too, for all I know), this may be a godsend to many students. It will provide time for tutoring, enrichment, more drills, etc. Heck, these kids may be far more advanced than others by the time the next school year begins in the fall!

So, charter schools are "proven alternatives" now, huh? I guess that depends on your definition of "proven." (I personally believe they are at least as proven as Al Gore's take on global warming.) But, before you stand in line to enroll your kid in a charter school, I think you need to do a bit of research on them. Here are a couple interesting links I found in a quick search:

http://www.edwize.org/multiple-choice-a-high-stakes-study-of-charter-school-performance

http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf

I know of some outstanding charter schools in my state(that provide a similar education to the AP programs in almost all of our urban high schools), but I am also familiar with rogue charters that "teach" with smoke and mirrors ("Look, ma! I did a semester's worth of work in two weeks and got an A!") and put kids far behind their peers in traditional schools. (Again, do research on the charter school phenomenon.)

Homeschools? I don't even know where to begin. Unless you had a good general education and remember almost everything from elementary school; unless you are able to stay home all of the time, focusing all of your attention on your child; or unless you have multiple degrees in math, science, history, and English if your kid is in high school, don't even try it. Half of the kids I've known who have been homeschooled have been screwed out of their education by the time they graduate "high school."

Another perspective is it's a good thing. If these students get it learned that education is actually more important than free time that could help them throughout life. In many parent's view it's just state babysitting anyway so why not keep them in day care a little longer?

Summer vacation was invented to help early American farmers who needed help from their children and others to tend and harvest a variety of crops including hay which was a very human labor intensive task. Today that purpose is obsolete or nearly so. Farmers have machines to do nearly all the work. Now getting time off school could be done on an individual basis by employer contract.

Today the problem is what trouble the not too bright city kids get into with 3 months of free time. Often parents are too cheap to provide regular jobs beyond very part-time chores and so is every other business. So they get involved with gangs or non-gang underculture and do things not in anyone's best interest. That summer excitement carries over into the school year and we in effect have dropouts attending school until they drop out permenantly.

On home school I have seen some good, bad, and ugly examples. The good was a couple in Eugene included a smart wife who had skipped a grade and she taught her firstborn to become valedictorian at Hillsdale College. The bad was parents who let their kids play instead of attending home church meetings and their kids grew up with no interest in church. The ugly is a neighbor with 11 kids who will go hide in his computer room while the kids fight among themselves or let the older kids manage the younger ones while both parents do other things.

One thought I had was to put the empty school rooms to use by hiring kids at a minimum wage to produce software. Even if it wasn't professional quality, some of it might eventually pay for the activity and kids would definitely learn something not taught in school. But where can one go to get money for something like that?

Churches might hire some kids to go out and preach the gospel but most pastors these days would need stun guns to wake them up to such an idea. That's one reason I advocate teaching the Bible in public school which is legal http://biblek12.org

Aside from all the other obvious issues, the make-up days are only 4.5 hours long?? (See the picture of the school sign) How short must the 34 other days have been to not qualify? The fact that the experience and common sense of the educators and administrators to not question the exceptionally short hours of those original days at the beginning of that school year frightens me. And where was the district office who should have approved the schedule? and the school board?

Jonathan,

How many homeschoolers do you actually know? Your comments actually show that you probably know few, if even any at all (other than the ones you've seen on TV, or in passing). Anyone who actually KNOWS (meaning, has spent some actual, real time with- not just saw from afar, and judged because you dislike homeschooling) more than a few homeschoolers, knows that there is no ONE way that is the "norm". Some stay home for most of the day, some are always out doing things, and most do a combination of at-home and out-of-home activities. There are SO MANY different ways to homeschool (and so many kinds of teaching methods, sources of curriculum, opportunites), that (quite honestly) you'd have to be pretty lazy or stupid to NOT succeed at homeschooling (that, or fall victim to TOO much choice- where it paralizes you). Basically, if you can parent, you can homeschool- because it requires the same set of skills, and the same sense of concern and care for your children- which most parents have. And, those that don't, are the same ones who will stink at parenting, so the children will not be any better off in school (or, they may be, but again, that is because of the parent's own personal skills- not the actual action of homeschooling). I don't disagree that there have been homeschoolers that I've not been too impressed with, but that is usually because I don't like their style of parenting. I would likely still feel the same way about them, if their children were in school. In other words, the failure is not with the homeschooling, but the particular parent or set of parents. And, that is something that will exist- and goes beyond- whether those children were to go to school or not.

Kirk,

Have you ever actually spent time with your homeschooling neighbors? Is it possible that you see what limited amount that you do- and see it as "lazy" parenting- and are not understanding what they are doing? With 11 children, I can see that it might sometimes seem like chaos to you. How can you really know if the father "hides" in the computer room? Does he have a job that requires him to be at the computer, and he's trying his best to do both? Also, some parents believe in older children learning responsibilty by helping with the younger children (not replacing parental care and oversight, though- just learning, and helping their family). Maybe some of the children have special needs, and are loud? Maybe it sometimes seems crazy because having 11 children IS a lot of craziness, sometimes! I have only a few, and it's sometimes crazy, so I can only imagine. I have a neighbor who has a daughter who has some sort of emotional issue, and she often screams like she is being hurt. I know that this girl has this issue, so I know not to be alarmed. But, I can only imagine that I might judge her, if I didn't know.