Utterly Meaningless

“4. If my state has a legal definition (or description) of homeschooling, do I qualify?”

“The correct answers are “no” for questions 1, 2, 3, and 5.”

Well at least you left some wiggle room on #4 for those of us who are conscientious objectors to state control of education. I’d have to answer “No” to that one, too, because I don’t register my children with the state of Washington (which is required to qualify for the “home-based instruction” exemption from compulsory state school attendance), nor to I have them tested or assessed by a “qualified” third party (also required).

So, leaving aside the fact that I intensely dislike the term anyway and long for a day when being a “real one” is moot (as in, of no legal significance or relevance, because the state has been booted out of the education racket), are my family “really homeschoolers,” or not?

are my family “really homeschoolers,” or not?

That’s why I wrote “more than one.” I can easily see some day where I choose not to submit to the State.

What I was trying to get at with question number 4 was that the requirements for home education and cyber charters are different. For instnace, HEs in PA have to annually submit a portfolio of their kids’ work. Not so for cyber charters. So whether or not you comply isn’t the question. It’s which regulations are you choosing to ignore.

Poor phraseology on my part. Mea culpa.

janaan...ot.com removed the post you linked and called you a homeschool snob whilst linking to your post.

Even after your necessary and helpful service announcement, she still doesn’t get it. As we say in th’ South, “bless ‘er li’l heart.”

I took her “snob” test and according to her exam, I am Homeschool snob. I answered question #1 with a resounding YES!; I do bash people who do not educate their children at home….they really should. If you don’t educate your children; why have them?

I find it particularly interesting that she chose to have no comments on her post, yet excoriates others for basically doing the same thing: janaan...g.html

Pot. Kettle.

Who’s she talking about? There’s certainly been no attempt to silence her here or at Chris’s.

I must say that her “homeschool=school at home” formula certainly makes my recent arguments for a new term rather prescient, no?

Apparently she believes we have some responsibility to post in her comments (that don’t seem to exist) before we are allowed to link to her.

How come Daryl gets all the credit for being a snob? I stared this.
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She disabled her comments recently. There were comments for her other posts, but when I clicked on them, the “admin has disabled comments” message appeared.

Chicken.

Now, Chris, you said in your post you’d let Daryl handle it in detail — you can’t complain if he rises to the occasion.

If I known this level of controversy was possible, I’d have been all over it 🙂

The question is, can he possibly ever top this level of spicy abrasiveness? It’s not every week he has house-moving stress coursing through his system, you know.

And Daryl, why isn’t Natalie on the blogroll? Some great stuff over there.

Well I’ve done my best to read Daryl’s posts/comments & the ones from Chris.

In her defense I will say that I understand her confusion (err that should be delusion…) PA’s homeschool laws are the worst & everytime I hear discussions about Homeschoolers & G-school sports I think that PA should be the exception to the rule of “No Freebies” for homeschoolers. They already have so many strings attached to really home-school they should have more benefits for their trouble.

** In reading through Jana’s blog she has a post that really shows the difference between home-education ( real freedom to let your kids learn) & Doing school at home her style (Public charter) in her 4/14 post(?)

She whines about can’t wait till school’s out for the summer…. the kids aren’t learning anything….. & she needs 200- 150 more hours of school to say the kids are done. If that doesn’t smack of public school I don’t know what does.

As a home educator— It’s a foreign concept for me to say that I need XXXX amount of hours till I can say we are done w/ school.

School defined in this house simply means education. Education can take place at anytime of day anywhere. To measure it in hours to say we are “done” would be like to count grains of sand on a beach w/ teaspoon & say when I fill so many government determined sized buckets of sand I’m done… No matter whether I’ve counted every grain of sand on that beach or not. Oh wait now the government tells me that only the white grains of sand count & the beige ones don’t. Gotta have accoutability ya know.

It’s all sand in our world & it all counts & it never ends. In our lifetime we will never count all the sand. Yes my state has a specific # of hours (180 days) that I am required to teach. I can honestly answer that yes we’ve learned something for at least 180 days of every year. But I can’t really tell you when those 180 days stopped & started. I can’t separate those days into minutes, hours, etc… the Little House books that we read at bedtime count just as much as watching PBS at noon or going to the grocery store.

And we count the science experiments that have gone on till midnight just like the ones that we do from 8am- 4pm & the math work books that are done in the dentist waiting room etc….etc…. It’s life- it’s all education.

It shudders my soul to even think that my kid wouldn’t be interested in learning anything…..
there is always something to learn. When she tires of one thing we move on to the next & so on & so on.

The big FREEDOM of true home-educating is to be able to “define” life as such.
I have that freedom —- she doesn’t.

I passed! 5 out of 5.

Too bad I’m considering private school after a very rough first year of homeschooling.

My trouble is that the private school wants all the testing and I can’t get it done anywhere by anyone since she’s homeschooled.

Andrea, if it helps at all, my first year was hell. I did *everything* wrong and almost gave up numerous times. Nearly every homeschooler I’ve spoken to reports generally the same thing: The first year is truly the toughest. Four years later, we can’t imagine life any other way. Maybe, like so many others, your next year will be better?

Hang in there…

Yeah, Andrea (nice name) the first year is one of the roughest…

Andrea, we’ve homeschooled for 8 yrs. or so now and you are welcome to email me. Some of our years have really sucked. There are ways to make homeschool not so stressful.
Speaking of stressful, the worst year we had was the year we did K12 through the Arkansas Virtual School (ARVS). Now I was quite aware that we were no long “homeschoolers” and were now part of public school system.
I guess I need to post our story on my blog.

Strange.

The kids are at home. They are being taught by their mother. They are using the curriculum we, their parents, have chosen for them. They are using computers supplied by the curriculum provider. Yes, they are using K12 through PAVCS.

We chose K12 as a curriculum before we knew we would be living in PA. Granted, it is more structured than some home educators might like. We report hours while others report days (since we are in PA we would be reporting one or the other), and we provide a portfolio on a monthly basis instead of a yearly basis (pretty minor differences).

When I play monopoly with the kids; we count that time as school. When I play soccer with the kids; it is school time. When I read from the Old Testament to them at night; we count that as school time. We are not required to teach any particular thing. We are not required to use all or any particular part of the curriclum. We are not limited as to what we can teach. Our kids have to take the same PA state required tests that all (legal) home schoolers in PA do (no difference).

I would have no qualms paying for the K12 curriculum. Since it is available through PAVCS with simplified regulation, why would I? I already pay nearly $8,000.00 to the local school district in local school taxes. If I were to purchase the K12 curriculum for my two (PA defined) school-aged children, it would cost an additional $2880.00 per year (paid on a monthly basis).

While I am not in any way in favor of government schools, or funding public education (mainly because the current system boldly violates the first and tenth ammendments to the US Constitution), as a resident of PA, I can’t imagine why we wouldn’t use this parent taught, in home, self directed, program that I had already chosen, and I am already being required to pay for.

I find it hard to believe that you have nothing better to do than to waste time giving this mother grief about calling her brand of home schooling “homeschooling.” You should definitely come up with another term for yourselves. If it is important to you that no one else use “your” term, please copyright it.

I call “Bullshit!”

Our kids have to take the same PA state required tests that all (legal) home schoolers in PA do (no difference).

The portfolio shall consist of a log, made contemporaneously with the instruction, which designates by title the reading materials used, samples of any writings. worksheets, workbooks or creative materials used or developed by the student and in grades three, five, and eight results of nationally normed standardized achievement tests in reading/language arts and mathematics or the results of Statewide tests administered in these grade levels.

So, the PSSA is optional for real homeschoolers. Not so for your kids. In fact, under NCLB the state is forbidden from requiring homeschoolers to take the PSSA. But that’s just picking nits. The problem is that we HAD our own word. It was “homeschooling.” And then as it became more popular and accepted some educrats and entrepreneurs who wanted to corral those freedom-loving wackos co-opted the term. This blog used to be known as “Homeschool & Other Education Stuff.” I changed the name because the cyber-charters and the newspapers kept using the term incorrectly.

So maybe we’re fighting a losing battle. But it’s the cyber-charter folks who started this war.

For a more reasoned answer to your questions, read Tim’s post and Mary Nix’s comments at Chris’s blog.

At least PAVCS itself isn’t confused about what you are:

What does it cost to attend the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School?
As a public charter school, there is no tuition required to attend PAVCS. The school loans students a computer system and provides all instructional materials for the program. However, students and families will be responsible for providing some consumable materials (such as printer ink and paper).

Who grades student work?
Teachers grade student work. On a day-to-day basis, parents and teachers review student work, and physical work is sent to teachers periodically for their expert review. Teachers assign semester and year-end grades.

What is a charter school?
A charter school is an independent public school of choice, freed from some of the rules but accountable for results.

Please understand that we’re not making these complaints out of a desire for ideological purity — I don’t care how you choose to educate your children. The problem is that education officials want to redefine “homeschooling” to mean parent-proctored public education at home rather than parent-directed education completely outside the public system, and your buying into that conception jeopardizes my freedom (or, as hybrids represent the first major offensive in a long campaign, my grandchildren’s).

Despite the anti-cyber feel around here, I will dare to say: Andrea, maybe you should consider a cyber school. Some parents that I know were saved from leaving homeschooling altogether because it does save time and stress especially for early homeschoolers. If you feel ideologically uncomfortable with public cyber schooling, there are several private options available. Please do not feel put off by those who may imply that you are some sort of a homeschool loser if you do not homeschool the old-fashioned way. Contact me for more info.

Victoria,

You misunderstand. I am not at all opposed to cyber education nor to charter schools. The more choice the better. I am only opposed to g-school cyber-parents who call what they’re doing homeschooling. It’s all about who chooses and who pays.