<p>The idea is mandating all teachers to be certified, whether in public or private schools or while homeschooling. I'm not sure how CA teacher certification works. In some states, all prospective teachers need to do is take a pretty basic test. That shouldn't cause all that much fall-out; hopefully, all teachers who have been teaching without being certified (including parents) would be able to pass such a test. If teacher certification actually involves getting a degree of some sort, then that's a different matter that would keep many children from being homeschooled and many longtime teachers in private schools from remaining in the classroom.</p>
<p>Moderator's Note: I have merged two threads on the same topic. It may cause some short-term disruption to the flow. Apologies for that. Carry on. :)</p>
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"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare," the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue.
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I do not home school, but that sentence looks just wrong to me. If it is not wrong and out of context, than it is plain scary.</p>
<p>That's right...shove some more kids into our public schools. Because they're not crowded enough already. That's just what we need. /sarcasm</p>
<p>We home school our kids. I really appreciate the level of discourse here on cc concerning this news in California. I read an online article about it yesterday which was followed by over 900 reader responses. I read some of them and had to stop because it was making my blood boil.</p>
<p>Everyone either knows a family who home schools and whose kids seem below average educationally, or they know someone who knows a family like that. But how many families do we know with kids like this who are in the public schools? Lots, I'm guessing.</p>
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But it's also true that many, many kids are at risk in their own homes from abusive, negligent, drug-addicted, or just plain crazy relatives and their significant others.</p>
<p>This issue plays out a lot with very young children, where most are "homeschooled" with relative care.
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<p>As you say, many of those are very young children. They are not school age yet. This has nothing to do with home schooling. This is a child abuse issue, not a home schooling issue. </p>
<p>In most cases, parents who are lazy and drug addled don't want to have their kids around all day and aren't going to put them in the care of relatives. Public school is free and they'll even pick the kids up. Yes, there are exceptions. </p>
<p>Many public schooled children are also at risk from crazy relatives during the hours they are at home or in after-school care. Are we going to insist that kids stay at school 24/7 because some of them are at risk in their own homes? Of course not.</p>
<p>One study has shown that the socialization skills of home schooled children exceeds that of public schooled children. I can try to find the link if you'd like to see it. </p>
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My sister "home schooled" my nephew starting in what would have been his 2nd trip through 8th grade. That was essentially the end of his education.
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<p>2nd trip through 8th grade? It sounds to me as if this boy was failing despite the efforts of the public school system. His mom shouldn't have tackled the job if she wasn't willing to do more than what the school had done to help this boy. I don't mean this to sound like a recrimination against you at all, but that's what families are for. We have to tell our crazy sisters to knock it off. :-) The reason I say it is no recrimination is that my sister did some things with her kids that I probably should have spoken up about.</p>
<p>My kids have been homeschooled from the get-go, and up until 2000 (when we moved) they were homeschooled in California. It is an odd arrangement there, but I recall many homeschooling families that felt very strongly they had an ideal situation. I never quite agreed with that. It was too wobbly from a legal point of view. Still, each year we filled out our private school affadavit and sent it in. </p>
<p>It does feel more secure now that we're in a state with specific legislation regarding homeschooling. The requirements are simple and not oppressive. My kids are beyond the compulsory attendance laws now anyway, so it's not an issue for us anymore, but I do prefer to be in a state where the right to homeschool is clearly and explicitly written into the law.</p>
<p>"Most states require the home schooled child to take and pass the same final tests that the traditional student takes." </p>
<p>Can you please provide some documentation to prove this? </p>
<p>In my experience, there is little obligatory oversight of a homeschool in many states. There is much more oversight in a public school. Through the years, I've had kids homeschooled and enrolled in public, private and boarding schools. Homeschool is not necessarily a better or worse education than traditional school; it is different. So there is the possibility of much abuse and of much opportunity. </p>
<p>Oh, and to those who try to claim that hs is better by citing stats that show that homeschooled kids do better than ps kids, irrespective of their parents education: I do not believe those stats are adjusted for income and race.</p>
<p>My parents homeschooled me up to 9th grade. My (full-time) mom doesn't have any teaching certificates. She only has two masters and a Ph.D. If that restrict were there a few years ago, then my mom wouldn't be "qualified" to homeschool me, while she could teach at a university. </p>
<p>Our homeschool is a charter (CA). We (students of the charter) are required to take the standardized exams that public school students take - Star9, Iowa, etc. - EVERY YEAR! Some of us also started taking SAT I/II since 5 or 6 grade. The only exams that we weren't able to take were APs, because we had to sign up for AP exams through local high schools. But every single school in the area, public and private, refused to let us take the exams on its campus. (I don't know the situation now)</p>
<p>Home schooling definitely is not something for most families, but it suits our family needs well at the time. I am glad that my family had the freedom to choose and there were options to choose from.</p>
<p>I seriously considered homeschooling my oldest and was homeschooled for a few years myself, so I'm pretty pro-homeschooling. From everything I've seen all studies show that on average homeschooled students perform very well compared to those in regular schools. There are kids who fall through the cracks in both systems. I had a friend who was using an unschooling approach with her oldest Apserger-y son. While I understood where she's was coming from, I think ultimately she did a disservice to her son, though I can't say he would have been better off in public school. </p>
<p>At any rate from the piece I heard on NPR, they seemed to think that this decision would be interpreted relatively narrowly. That said, it sounds to me like CA needs a few homeschooling guidelines.</p>
<p>Even Arnold Schwartzenegger has come forth proclaiming the right to homeschool needs to be protected. Not surprisingly. </p>
<p>I had a number of friends in the upper crustry neighborhoods of Los Angeles, including his, that homeschooled their kids. I'm sure the Schwartzeneggers have friends and neighbors incensed about this court decision.</p>
<p>So I don't think it'll hold up as a universal ruling... no chance. And it shouldn't.</p>
<p>But perhaps California will finally put some needed guidelines in place? That would protect both the students being homeschooled and the right of parents to choose homeschooling for their children. I think most other states do have guidelines.</p>
<p>Home schooling has come under fire recently in the press when the actual problem was child neglect. In no case that I have seen like this recently was the child actually being home schooled. In fact, the lack of home schooling was part of the neglect.
I worked as a caseworker in New York for quite a few years monitoring child abuse and neglect. It would have been a quick and easy call to determine whether the child wasn't in school because he or she was home schooled, or because of the parents' disorganization and neglect.<br>
As for the protections afforded children by virtue of the attention of teachers at school, I have some first hand experience with that. Many times, with the parents' written permission, I scheduled conferences with children's teachers. I was most apt to do this when the child was going through a particularly high level of turmoil in their lives. In no case (let me repeat- no case) had the teacher any sense that the child was going through anything at all. I'm talking about scores of conferences. I was shocked, but eventually I came to understand that the teacher has 20-30 kids to manage, a curriculum to work through, announcements to make, etc., etc. By the middle school years, when children began having multiple teachers, I never even bothered to find out much about a kid by scheduling teachers' conferences.
Sometimes the school social worker had some information to provide, but their involvement was almost always due to poor school attendance.
As for hard cases making bad law, I can quote George McGovern (remember him?) in Friday's Wall Street Journal saying that we don't take away everyone's drivers license because people are killed in car accidents.
In the case of California, I think the state needs a new law that doesn't predate the home schooling movement.</p>
<p>In Illinois, home schooling is effectively governed by a court decision from the early 1950s. The judge determined that home schools should be treated as private schools. Private schools are unregulated by state education authorities.
As a result, there is no obligation in Illinois to make state or school district authorities know you are home schooling, nor are there any monitoring or testing requirements.
There was a study (which I can't quickly reference) which found that there is no difference in the educational performance of home schoolers by amount of state regulation. This should surprise no one, IMO. If you could regulate your way to a better education, it would have happened by now.</p>
<p>"The idea is mandating all teachers to be certified, whether in public or private schools or while homeschooling. I'm not sure how CA teacher certification works. In some states, all prospective teachers need to do is take a pretty basic test. That shouldn't cause all that much fall-out; hopefully, all teachers who have been teaching without being certified (including parents) would be able to pass such a test. If teacher certification actually involves getting a degree of some sort, then that's a different matter that would keep many children from being homeschooled and many longtime teachers in private schools from remaining in the classroom."</p>
<p>In Calif to be credentialed you need a bachelor's degree and then a fifth year in a credential program. The testing includes the CBEST, which is a basic knowledge test; the RICA, which is a test of how to teach kids to read; and a final test, mine was the MSAT but it is called something different now.
The state might let people do this with an emergency credential but that is still a bachelor's degree and the CBEST.
As a public school teacher, I don't think homeschooled kids need to have their parent be credentialed but there should be some basic oversight. Most homeschooled kids I have come in contact with have had an excellent education and it would be a shame to make everyone have to fit in the same exact mold.</p>
<p>It certainly can't be news that homeschooled children whose parents have a poor educational background outperform similarly situated public school children. The latter is a huge group, including parents who are involved and supportive and parents who have completely checked out. The former is a small group, consisting almost entirely of parents who are deeply involved (obviously), and who in most cases have to jump through multiple regulatory hoops to homeschool their kids. There may be a few exceptional cases of neglectful homeschoolers, but not many. So of course the homeschoolers should outperform their peer group as a whole. They would outperform their peer group if they went to public school, too.</p>