I read in our paper that the state of California ruled that homechooling is illegal unless the parents have credentials to do so that it is not a constitutional right. It is being appealed and will heard again. Many parents /politicians are upset- rightly so. I personally dont homeschool but have in the past. Just curious of your thoughts/feelings on this. I believe families should have the right to homeschool if they want/need to.

Anne

I believe that what California is attempting violates our rights as citizens.

All I can think is if they are forcing parents into boxes there, where do they stop in removing rights and forcing people to live within rigid guidelines that they set?

That's crazy, here in washington they are totally liberal with homeschooling laws. Does it have to do with some politician trying to score points within a certain group ?

In Nebraska, a state senator introduced a bill that would have required homeschooled students to take the same standarized tests as public school students "to make sure their parents are teaching them what they should be." Yikes. Forced standarized testing is a reason why some parents opt to teach their children and not let public schools "teach to the test."

I was happy it did not pass. On the flip side, DH is a public school teacher but HATES standarized testing. 

Homeschooling should be allowed with guidelines and goals of what should be taught, not strict rules, so that by college age the student does have an equal or greater footing with others that will be taking college entrance exams. This Calif. case was ruled upon in error, almost as if the judge just wanted it to go away, so threw out a ruling with little regard to its consequences. It isn't over yet, there are too many homeschoolers now that will fight that aggressively and I'm sure it will be overturned. Edey

I do agree with you elovestea. I work with a girl that was homeschooled and is now trying to get into college. She has to go through all classes that she's done and find out where they are compatible to classes at high school/college level. I feel bad for her but I will say this- she is very bright and polite.

So perhaps some  standardized testing for them should be there for college purposes.

I know in my area many families do the state testing to "gage" where their kids are. Our school also offers testing as well for kids that  are going to return to public school after being out for a year or more.

Anne

 Vermont, we have a choice of portfolio, standard testing or an evaluation by a teacher . The first two years for grade K to 6 , we have to show the state what we will use and information to cover. If no problems, then we just fill out papers saying that we will homeschool  until grade 7.. Then when they get to Middle school-7th grade to 12th grade, you have to submit info on courses and material to be approved. They really dont give you a hard time here. I will say that a lot of families just homeschool and do not go to the state for permission. They feel that it is their G'd given right and resposibility to teach their own children. I will add that we work with the State Board of Education not the local school board in your town.  Babs

 I think this will be over turned. We have home schooled our 5 since birth.  I dn't have to worry about college since they go to the one in town.  We plan to let our children take the GED and if they do well enough will go to college and get a diploma.  I am qualified to teach in Arkansas, so it's not a big deal. 

My husband and I don't have kids and were talking about this a few weeks ago.  It's utterly ridiculous.  Why doesn't the government just take your kids away as soon as you have them and raise them itself?  Oh, wait, Communist governments have been known to do that.  Never popular, even among communists.

Why does it seem that only homeschooled kids win the national spelling bee, year after year?  I seem to recall that they usually take the geography bees as well.  Maybe it's because they focus on one thing to the exclusion of other subjects, but is that a bad thing?  Look at all the time I wasted in school learning to graph algebra equations.  What good is that to anyone?  Sure, solving for X in a simple equation can come in handy in real life sometimes, but why do I care to see a visual representation of all possible answers of a two-variable equation?  It was an even bigger waste of time when you consider I ended up a history major.  And yes, my love of history manifested very early on.  So if a kid likes spelling, English or foreign languages is probably where he will be happiest.  Geography kids might do best in sociology or political science.  What's wrong with playing to a kid's interests early on and just teaching them the basics of everything else?  Is my life truly enriched because I could once balance a chemical equation?  I sure can't do that anymore.  But I remember a lot of what I learned in high school history class.   

Or it could just come down to the fact that a one-on-one teacher can do better than a 1 to 30 teacher, regardless of credentials.  Some homeschool parents I know of take field trips everywhere and expose their kids to a lot more than your public school (or even private school) kid is exposed to.  We have a friend who does medieval re-enacting with us and she's managed the last couple of years to get her gifted daughter out of school for a week and bring her to our big reenactment.  She spends the week taking kids' classes and doing activities with her mom, like drawing and painting.  She goes back to school afterwards and blows everyone out of the water by talking about her medieval name and how she researched it for historical accuracy, she has her own arms and can describe the heraldic elements in them, and she shows them the weaving and spinning and cord-braiding she learned to do.

My husband was cooking dinner over a fire at an 18th century reenactment once and got the following questions: Is that a real chicken?  Is that a real fire?

There's public education for you.  People can't even regonize the smell of a cooking chicken, nor tell when a fire is real.  Apparently some people don't even know that you CAN cook food over a fire.  That's the sort of intelligence you breed when kids don't learn anything but how to fill in bubbles with a #2 pencil.  Like life is made up of multiple-choice answers that you have a 25% chance of getting right at random. 

Kids who are exclusively homeschooled can always take the SAT and ACT to get scores that colleges can understand.  But some colleges like homeschool students.  There's one in California that I read about that has almost no structure to it.  You are basically doing independent study the entire time, with a teacher there just to help guide you in your research.  They take in a lot of homeschool kids because homeschool kids are already used to that kind of educational freedom, have already been encouraged to learn things for themselves.  Some people complain that they don't learn to work in the structure of the corporate world, but I say, why do they need to?  They have the discipline and free-thinking and creative abilities to be in business for themselves.  They're the sort of people who go on to invent wonderful new things.  Einstein did his best thinking out of college.  I seem to recall that Bill Gates didn't fair very well in college either.  Sometimes structure is more of a hinderance than a help. 

Remember, in a public school, kids are taught only what the slower half of the kids can learn.  The brighter kids are bored while the kids who are the slowest to learn something are left behind.  Homeschooling corrects for both.  You can go as far and as fast as your kid can, or you can slow down and do whatever is needed to get over the tough stuff.  My ex-roommate had learing problems with math that her teachers didn't care to help her with, and it got to the point that she just shut down in math class and failed.  Her mother took her out of school and said they didn't crack a math book for 6 months.  They worked on only what was easiest for her until she was doing really well, then her mom reintroduced math and slowly worked her up.  But for a while she was doing things like English and history at a higher grade level (than her age would call for), but doing math at a lower grade level.  She eventually had the problem corrected enough she could put her back in a private school at the proper grade level for her age.  But what would have happened if her mother hadn't intervened?  Her mother who didn't have a teacher's certificate (did have a college degree), yet who fixed a problem teachers didn't/couldn't. 

Keriamon:

Some people complain that they don't learn to work in the structure of the corporate world,

I agree with what you said in your post, but have some comments:

 Working in the corporate world is a game that must be played if you want to get to the top. It's a game that says you must dress in a manner acceptable to those are already at the top, you must suck up to those at the top if you want promotions, and you must look the other way, if something looks wrong. Your haircut, your suit, your shoes, all of which is your "business uniform", it must conform to what the old codgers at the top say you must look like. Work the hours they say you should work, socialize with who they expect you to spend time with, and maybe someday you too, will be CEO. You won't learn this game anymore in high school than you would in homeschool unless you were exposed to it in some way.

A successful homeschooler also has to have a diligent parent, or in the case of someone I knew, grandparent, to keep the student going on with their lessons. In the case of the grandparent that I knew of, she just did not stay on top of the work getting done, believed the granddaughter when she said the work was finished, and other than nagging, didn't do much to get her granddaughter thru her lessons. The granddaughter went in and out of public school at whim; when she got lonely she'd want to go back to public school. When she had a tiff with another student she'd want to stay home and homeschool, and she usually got her way. It wasn't a good way to do it; the grandmother needed to be stronger and decide one way or the other for sure. Edey