Homeschooling

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Redworm

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Now I'm not asking for opinions on the practice itself (though I'm sure that'll come up and I'd enjoy discussing that as well) but rather opinions on the legality of homeschooling and how public educators try to stop it.

I have a friend living in Souix Falls, SD. She's a single mother of two, a five year old and an infant. She was grossly disappointed with her local public school system, not just because of the woeful lack of quality in education (as shown by the graded standards that are publicly available) but because the school administration has repeatedly gone behind her back in punishing her child.

An example: my friend was feeling ill one morning and thus was late in getting her daughter to school. She sent a note with her daughter indicating to the teacher to "Please excuse **** for being late because mommy was sick." Despite this, the teacher demanded that she serve detention. My friend was having none of this so when she arrived to pick her child up from school that afternoon she was a bit upset that they had put her in detention. She pointed out that her daughter should not be forced to stay after school (which would terribly inconvenience my friend as she does have a life) because her mother was ill. She thought all was fine until the next afternoon when my friend's daughter told her that the teacher and principal had made her spend her lunch hour in the principal's office to serve her detention.

This was the straw that broke the camel's back and my friend decided that she should be in charge of how her daughter is raised and educated, not a school system that willfully goes behind the backs of the parents. She got all her paperwork filled out, notarized, and submitted at the beginning of this week. The truancy laws in South Dakota are a bit illogical (had the little girl been six instead of five when she enrolled then my friend wouldn't have had so many of the following problems) and thus on Tuesday the school sent a social worker to her home to check up on the child and yesterday even sent a police officer with a warrant for her arrest! They even wanted to penalize her additionally for two days the young girl took off in September for Jewish holidays.

All this because schools seem to think that their public funding justifies subverting the right of the parents to raise their children as they see fit. Does this seem right to anyone? :confused:
 
It seems like a lot of missing details, rather than a general conspiracy.

Home schooling is common, and no one is getting arrested for it.
 
The officer had a warrant for my friend's arrest and could've taken the child into custody. She had to pay a $250 bond to keep from being locked up and subsequently having her children placed in state custody.

Because she missed two days of school. Although she missed two days for that Jewish holiday but they pressed the issue this time because she insisted she was going to homeschool her daughter.
 
Federal funds for that student will now (sadly) no longer go into the coffers of that school district.
How DARE your friend mess with their monies, eh? ;)
One or two of the teachers might actually give a darn about the child's welfare. As a whole, it's all about the money. (My ex-wife works for the school district here in Las Vegas/Clark Co. so I've heard some interesting stories here as well.)

Money is the Almighty.

Education?

What's that?
 
Redworm said:
The officer had a warrant for my friend's arrest and could've taken the child into custody. She had to pay a $250 bond to keep from being locked up and subsequently having her children placed in state custody.

Because she missed two days of school.
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By no means am I doubting your honesty, Redworm. But I agree with Handy - there seem to be many details that would make this more believable.

If the quoted statement above is true, and it is in fact that simple (i.e., 2 missed days of school = warrant for arrest), take the story to the media... they'd have a field day with this.

My hunch is that there are many more variables involved.
 
I gotta agree with the others that there's more to the story. The school system's behavior is too radical for there have to just have been one tardiness involved. Maybe Mom gets "sick" a lot. Maybe the kid misbehaves.
 
By no means am I doubting your honesty, Redworm. But I agree with Handy - there seem to be many details that would make this more believable.

If the quoted statement above is true, and it is in fact that simple (i.e., 2 missed days of school = warrant for arrest), take the story to the media... they'd have a field day with this.

My hunch is that there are many more variables involved.
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I'm pressing for more details on the actual warrant for her arrest as well as the $250 bond she had to pay. With the exception of a sick day the only time this girl missed school last semester was two days for a Jewish holiday. In reading through the Home School Legal Defense Association's website ( http://www.hslda.org/ ) it seems that similar problems are not rare.

I gotta agree with the others that there's more to the story. The school system's behavior is too radical for there have to just have been one tardiness involved. Maybe Mom gets "sick" a lot. Maybe the kid misbehaves.
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The problems with the truancy officers only came up when she explained to the school at the end of the previous semester that she intended to home school. They sent a social worker on the very first day back from winter vacation, a truancy officer on the second day.


Even without this example I still wonder what y'all think about the legality of home schooling and the pressures that local and state governments put on parents to send them to public schools.
 
Here in Calif, the DOE is determined to get homeschooling outlawed. In fact their published opinion is that ALL homeschooling is illegal.

There was a case a few yrs ago where a bunch of parents got together and created a registered "homeschool" yet the DOE still asserted that this was illegal.

Homeschooling is legal IF you do all the right steps to the dance. Miss one and it's illegal and willful truancy. The easiest method of ensuring complance is to get registered with an accredited "homeschool" company which authorizes "distance learning" yet requires standardized testing and grading. They charge a small fee for computerized grading & results.

If more homeschool programs did this there'd be a lot less bother about the whole thing.

As for the instant example: Something is wrong. Either the story has missing parts, been subverted, or the school district has gone beyond their statutory authority. Maybe all 3.
 
So she was punished for keeping the kid out on Jewish holidays? It occurs to me that if she is Jewish she may be subject to discrimination getting set up in a home school, as most of the home school organizations I have read/heard about have been affiliated with one or another protestant organization, a few were nondenominational Christian and even fewer were purely secular. But none of the ones I have heard of were Jewish per se. Perhaps she needs to talk to an attorney, one specializing in minority rights issues?

It would be a shame if they tried to convict her on the basis of the child not being enrolled in a formal home school if there isn't one in the area which meets her religious needs.
 
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Our School Superintendant/wife home schools their children, and I support him on his decision based on religious beliefs.

I would have to believe that there is more to this story.
 
home schoolin

Children don't belong to school districs or the almighty state.Truancy laws are B.S.If you want to teach your children to be movie theatre janitors thats your business.If you want to teach them to be phycisist thats great.Not to mention better than janitors,If you want to teach them to be self reliant adults thats the best a parent can ever do.The most a public school can do is teach children to be benevolent little tax payers,or in dropouts cases tax consumers.Either way the gov. gets more money and or power.[I must appologise I know quite a few sucessful dropouts]G.W. increased the fed. gov.s power over local schools with the No Chid Left Behind Act,[Wich supports my theorey that he is a socialist]so things for homeschoolers are just going to get worse.In my home state OR, the OEA [the states teachers union] has been pushing to register all home school teachers.Those parents/groups that wouldn't meet the OEAs requirements would not be able to teach there own children.Well this has become the Land of the Weak and Home of the Slave.
 
I personally have no use for homeschooling and think it's idiotic; however, if one jumps through the hoops, it's not illegal in most states.
 
I personally have no use for homeschooling and think it's idiotic; however, if one ju

Lessee now...homeschoolers average scores on standardized tests (ITBS, etc.) are 82nd percentile vs. public school average of 50th percentile (by definition), and at a very small fraction of the costs and time spent. And without all the "socialization" that takes place in the public schools.

Idiotic?
 
I'm an educator in a public school. I guess I am one of the few, but I have always believed that the parent should have the right to determine what is the appropriate school setting for their child. If that is public school, so be it. The same for private school and home schooling. The parent needs to choose (and then follow through with the choice). I have no problem with home schooling (please do it well; joining one of the groups that are popping up to assist home school parents is probably a very good idea).

Of course, I am also a strict constructionist and support the Second Amendment, so I'm a pretty odd duck in the education profession anyway....
 
I personally have no use for homeschooling and think it's idiotic;
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With modern communicaton technology and computer access to library functions the idea of busing children all over the county to multimilliondollar buildings at a waste of 95% of the money and 60% of the child's time sounds pretty dumb to me.

jrklaus, I have always admired teachers who knew their material and could really teach. Do you think there will ever be any reasonable way of getting more common acceptance for an alternative school system (using computer technology and telecommunications for home schoolers) where good teachers could be paid what they are worth to teach and all the administrators, lousy teachers and dead wood could be done away with?
 
MeekAndMild...

I'm uncertain. I fear what we may be headed toward is a complete collapse of the public school system. Most of the stakeholders are unwilling to compromise their positions in any meaningful ways to bring about reforms of the type you contemplate. I fear we may all be "homeschooling" sooner than we expect.

I hope I am wrong....
 
Most homeschoolers are honorable.

I may not speak on this subject since I have no kids, nor any immediate chances, so take what I say with this in mind.

Public schools do nothing more than produce PC sheeple.
The vengence of the appropriate school boards upon well-meaning/frustrated parents is red-tape h*ll.
It's all politics, government control and money.
Socialization is the key to obedience of the masses.
If a homeschooled student expresses learned opinions oppossed to general conventional wisdom (ie. guns aren't bad, criminals are), then the full weight of governmental social and school board psych's is brought in to dig up every supposed anti-social behaviour which may (or may not be) be detrimental to the child, according to them (and only them, the government knows best what's best for your child-sheepleism--and what ever you say to the contrary is harmful, damaging, anti-social, poor parenting and proof that you have no business imparting your values on your kids).

From what I understand, home school groups interact socially together and are smart, well-rounded self-thinkers.

When a third grader comes home from "school" and answers to "what did you learn today?" and responds that "Thomas Jefferson owned and raped slaves, that Benjamin Franklin experimented on animals, and that Christopher Columbus murdered hundreds of Indians", so "What else did these men do?" "I don't know, that's all she told us."
Try to read a "history text book" today and compare it to what you learned!
I'm not racist, but the overt anti-white man theme runs throughout the "updated" history books.

My hat's off to the dedicated parents willing to endure endless red-tape and constant eye-over-the-shoulder strains involved in teaching personal morals and beliefs to their children.
 
Here in the south I imagine that home schooling is more common than in most parts of the nation and I do not think that it should be illegal to school ones children.

I would like to see a few specifics on the numbers presented for standardised test of 82 and 50 for home and public before I could put much faith in them. Like, does this mean that the home schoolers were home schooled in all of the elementary school grades or just the last few months? Does in consider all public schools or simple a few "bad" inner city public schools?

I fear that a lot of home schoolers turn out like the ones I know who are "home schooling" their children, they started out pretty seriosly with the program but soon degenerated into simply keeping the kids in the house out of sight for a few hours each day--a considerable amount of this time with no adult supervision. But even so, if you compare the "standardised" high school equivalency test to some of the 70 or 80 year old grammer school (8th grade) test one can see how it would be not too difficult to score high with NO formal education.

In my own personal opinion, having traveled extensively around the world during my working years, the entire educational system in this country is in poor shape. Regardless of which country you go, Germany, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, to name a few and even the asian countries, almost any child of 10 or more years old can speek english and have a much better understanding of science and physics than do most of our high school grads. The only countries that might be inferior are some of those in south america and africa.

NEVER THE LESS, ITS STILL THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, :D JUST NOT THE BEST EDUCATED.:rolleyes:

BUT HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO GUNS??????:eek:
 
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