Ron Paul Launches Homeschool Curriculum

[sanantone]

I think that is great that you would consider homeschooling in the future.

Minorities do often get less attention in the public schools. In the research I posted above, minority and white homeschooled students have equal reading standardized test scores (87%) while minority students in the public schools (49%) score 12 points behind white students in the public schools (61%). This research proves that this gap doesn't have to exist.

I think this has a lot to do with parental involvement, though. I can compare myself and my sister to our peers of the same race. We had similar income levels (we were actually poorer) and attended the same schools, but many of our peers did poorly in school while we did well. Our mother emphasized the importance of education and would expect nothing less than As from us. I can't say the same thing for our peers. If a parent is choosing to homeschool, then the chances are greater that the parent is raising his or her child to value education and is taking the time to stay on top of the student's progress. This is independent of race. Homeschooling, however, is not an option for many black parents. Most black children are born out of wedlock, so they are most often growing up in a single parent home.

When I went to an inner-city school with a large percentage of economically disadvantaged students, I often felt sorry for the teachers. At least half of the students did not care about learning at all, and the teachers couldn't make them care. They would talk while the teacher was lecturing disturbing the students who wanted to learn. The discipline was obviously lacking at home. It shouldn't be the teacher's job to teach someone else's children to have manners.

[mrs.b]

I think this has a lot to do with parental involvement, though...If a parent is choosing to homeschool, then the chances are greater that the parent is raising his or her child to value education and is taking the time to stay on top of the student's progress.

That is going to be the case by the general nature of homeschooling versus any other variety of schooling. In homeschooling, the parent is the sole decision-maker and deliverer of the curriculum; there are only two parties involved, the educator and the child. In either public or private school, there are dozens of parties involved: the educator (may be more than one), child, parents, administrator(s), peer group, and possibly more. When the parent(s) is the sole party responsible for teaching, testing, supporting, and all the rest, of course they will be more involved.

The level of involvement of public school parents in their child's education is certainly a problem and contributing factor in performance, but even if parents want to be involved, they are often stonewalled. It's as if the education platform is somehow proprietary and educators are breaking trade secrets by sharing, so they do not. Or maybe they do not because if more parents realized supplementing school education is only one step away from homeschooling anyway, there would not be enough students to fill their chairs and they'd lose their jobs. When my son was in school, we desparately wanted to be more involved - as a struggling learner, he desparately needed it - and asked regularly for information on what the teacher was teaching in the class so we could supplement at home; most other children could tell their parents what they were studying, but due to his issues, our son could only do that if he already understood the subject which would mean he didn't need our help. We were frequently ignored or given vague answers that might as well have been non-response. We were treated like helicopter parents for wanting to keep aware of and help our son with his struggle to learn. The only way we could be involved at all was to do it all ourselves.

For a FORMERLY struggling learner that tested almost two full grade levels below term, only three months of homeschooling has him almost entirely caught up, and the time investment on our parts is only slightly more than what we were already doing with homework and re-explaining areas we were able to identify as weak despite teachers' vague / no-response. That's a payoff that can't be denied in our opinions, not only when it comes to all of our stress levels, but in terms of his future prospects and quality of life years down the road.

The neat thing about homeschooling is that we also get to decide how much or how little exposure to new things our child will receive. We are also of the opinion that we will deliver all the information, so he can form his own opinions. As residents of another Southern state, the skewing or absence of certain varieties of information in public school curriculums is sad, in my opinion, but we can correct that by choosing our own curriculum and adding resources where we feel chosen curriculums are lacking. We'll check out Ron Paul's curriculum after Sept. 2 (not before! lol), and look forward to it. Maybe it'll be useful in whole, maybe in part, or maybe we will not use a bit of it. The lower grade levels are free according to the website, so it'll be easy for homeschool parents to evaluate the "fit" with their own child's and personal styles.

[sanantone]

Some schools are worse than others when it comes to special education. I used to tutor special education students at a school district, and I thought their program was great. What I did notice was the teacher's frustration over the lack of interest from some of the parents. Some of the parents wouldn't ever come in for a conference and didn't care when the teacher wanted to discuss an issue with them over the phone. Not showing up for parent-teacher conferences has become so much of an issue, states and cities have considered fining parents who don't attend and don't have an excuse.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/02/01/...-teachers/
Detroit Parents Jailed for not Attending Parent Teacher Conferences? - Detroit Urban Education | Examiner.com

At the same time, I don't think homeschooling automatically means more parental involvement. I think homeschooling parents are usually more involved, but just homeschooling in and of itself does not equal more involvement. I've known a few people who got way behind while being homeschooled. The parent finally decided that they no longer wanted to homeschool, and the student ended up being enrolled back into a public school a couple of grades behind. I once had a formerly homeschooled classmate in the 7th grade who was supposed to be in high school! Then, I also had a family friend who fell two grades behind because she kept skipping classes. Her mother decided to homeschool her, but didn't really try to teach her. The girl never graduated high school.

[namwen]

I agree that homeschooling definitely doesn't mean that kids will get a good education.

All of my kids received a great education at the public elementery school. My 10 year old daughter was taught all the way up to Pre-algebra. Our co-op teachers was surprised when she reviewed her work from last year. She said that she is fine to go right into Pre-algebra with the other 7-8th graders. She will be in 6th grade next year.

As far as teaching culture - yeah, we believe in exposing our kids to multiple cultures and situations. It strengthens their grasp on life in general. As a person with bi-racial kids in know a little bit about exposing to different cultures.

On the subject of exposing my kids to different governments - well, I agree with education so that means that knowledge would need to be gained. I say yes to learning about different governmental processes. One thing that is for sure is that I will be teaching my kids about the constitution that protects the rights of all people.

[Lindagerr]

Homeschooling is a wonderful thing for some children, but not for all. Public school is great for some children but not for all. The main importance lies with the child , the parents and the school district. All need to be involved and communicate.

I was lucky in NJ school districts can be small and mine had only about 500 students in K-8 my son who is learning disabled in many forms had many very caring teachers. All of the teachers in the school knew my son and knew me. My other son who is advanced was not served well in this system. When teachers have anywhere from 15-30 students in the class they can not teach each student in the best way, they have to teach to the middle of the road student and hopefully include enough variation that everyone can learn at least some of it. When a child is in special education classes the student to teacher ratio is much lower, usually 5:1 is a maximum (at least in my part of NJ) so the teacher has morew time to individualize learning to each students strengths. I was very involved with my sons IEP and even got weekly updates on his work. Parents of children with learning problems have to decide what is best for their child. I would have loved to home-school my younger son so I could keep him stimulated and interested in learning. I knew I would never be able to home-school my older son because I did not have the knowledge or the technology, plus I had less patients with my own son. I also felt it would not be fair to either child to home-school one and send the other off to public school.

I also agree that those statistics are skewed because the kind of parent that would home-school is an involved parent whereas the public school statistics have to cover a great many parents who don't give a $hit about school. At one point I was working one on one with a 7th grade student because if she was put in a regular class she refused to come to school. The day before the big state test when her mother came to pick her up I reminded her that her child should have a good breakfast the next morning to help her with the test. The Mother's response was "I don't do breakfast". That is what makes for school drop outs, lower standardized test grades and children's poor attitude.

I know some states do not teach a well rounded cultural program that is when a parent needs to add that information through discussion and activities with the family.

Sorry about the rant I just get frustrated when people generalize about schools and teachers, we are not all there just for the great pay and summers off.

[namwen]

I know some states do not teach a well rounded cultural program that is when a parent needs to add that information through discussion and activities with the family.

Well, let's not get crazy here...we can't possibly put the responsibility back on the parents for educating our kids.

~shock~

[instant000]

I don't know that I would necessarily copy anyone's homeschool curriculum verbatim.

As far as education, I feel that a child needs SOLID reading, writing, speaking, and arithmetic skills. (Taught to the tune of a hickory stick! -- OK, the hickory stick was unavoidable humor.)

A command of the language, combined with a command of numbers can be leveraged for basically every line of work. Now with that foundation, I would like to add history, science, law, government, economics, business, cooking, music, art, etc. (Disclaimer: my home school would reflect the religious values of the parents in every single course)

One thing I would really like to add on would be a required course each year: career exploration. We have kids completing high school and college, who are not even AWARE of what career options (to include going into business for yourself) are out there, or how to work towards them. As a result, a kid is a senior in high school (or college), and has no idea of what his/her options are, suddenly decides what they want to be when they grow up, but never really researched the career field, and find that once they look under the hood, they do not like what they see.

Also, I really do not like the "I'm not good at math" (or whatever subject) excuses that are out there. I had a niece who came to visit this summer, complained that she wasn't "good at math" but after a month-and-a-half of tutoring here, she improved her ACT practice test scores by 8 points! (I can only hope that she keeps up her studies through the testing date in September If so, she should be comfortably in the 32+ range, and have a lot more scholarship opportunities.) In her case, I was able to identify knowledge gaps, whereby she could solve a problem if she followed a template, but she didn't actually understand the underlying math. I then focused on making her understand the fundamentals (stuff like Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally fundamentals). Once she had the fundamentals, then she could explain *why* she performed a step to solve a problem. I was able to get her to see that math wasn't particularly challenging, she just needed to get those building blocks in place.

I do like the idea of home schooling, and if I am ever blessed with children, I have already convinced my wife that home school is best, and even if we do not utilize home school, we will definitely supplement the public school curriculum so that our children can be sufficiently challenged and don't get bored with school because they feel that the pace is too slow. I know that the education system is stratified based on income levels as well as race (you can see lots of modern-day segregation between public schools and academies, especially if you go through the South, where I grew up in Mississippi).

OK, enough ranting for now. I'm not going to solve the country's education problems within a forum posting.

EDIT:
P.S.: I apologize for the run-on sentences and other errors. I used quick reply, and did not thoroughly proofread this post.

[Lindagerr]

@Namwen The responsibility to round out a childs education and teach them beliefs that are not allowed to be taught at school has always been the parents. Public school is not meant to fulfill all moral and philosophical areas of knowledge, We have to teach so that no one will be offended. Back in the dark ages when I was in school we read from the bible every morning, these days you are not even allowed to say you are having a Christmas party it is a Holiday party. Also don't say Merry Christmas or put it on a wall again only Happy Holidays. If I didn't teach my children what Christmas was really about who would?

[sanantone]

Besides having to use politically correct terms to refer to holidays, I think that's the way it should be. Religion should only be taught in schools from an academic standpoint exposing students to the basic tenets of all the world's major religions. My children will read the bible and form their own opinions. I really wouldn't care for them to learn some teacher's skewed interpretation based on the beliefs of his or her denomination. Public schools have to serve Christians, atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Jews, Wiccans, Satanists, etc. There are private schools and the option of homeschooling if you want your child's education to be based in a certain religion and/or sect.

[Lindagerr]

I agree with you Sanantone I just wish we could appreciate everyone's way of celebrating what they believe. The school where my children went was 99% white and 99.5% Christian. I think it would have been good for that 0.5% to share more about their way. Recently the school has started teaching a little about Chanukah and a little about Kwanzaa this is great at least a little diversity. When children have a better knowledge and understanding they are more accepting of others. Once a child becomes an adult they will be able to make a decision based on all the facts not just parents have told them is true. I have 3 children(now all adults) they all went through the Catholic church until they made their confirmation, after that I allowed them to make their own choices among what I had taught them. All three have different beliefs, I like the fact that can think for themselves.