The Duggars and CollegePlus

[jenniferhc]

mrs.b,

I have never used CollegePlus myself, but I know several families who do. And while I only have two children, these families have four or more. That they choose to hire CP to coach their older teens through homeschooling college while they spend the bulk of their own time teaching their younger children is well within their rights and hardly something they (or CP) should be criticized for. We homeschoolers have to plan and evaluate our curriculum, design our schedules, teach our children, make sure we are operating within whatever homeschool accountability laws affect us, drive our children to a myriad of activities like field trips, co-op days, and sports events, and still get all that regular "life" stuff done on the side. I think many moms decide that having that coach is worth it, in the same way you pay someone to mow your lawn and I pay someone to change the oil on our van. We all choose what we will do for ourselves and what we will pay someone else to do, and many times, we are paying for something that we could do for ourselves, but have determined our time is better spent elsewhere.

I think what some people aren't understanding here is that for many homeschoolers, they are combining high school and college. This means generally the students are in the 14-18yo range and (depending on their state laws) they can't necessarily cram through a bunch of InstantCert flashcards for four weeks, take a test, and call it done. They still have to meet any number of requirements, such as a set number of school days or hours of classroom learning. They may have to meet yearly with a certified teacher to demonstrate their child's learning/accomplishments. In these cases, the moms are still working with their children from some kind of more traditional curriculum, and then leaving the the exams-for-college credit part of it mostly up to the CP coach.

My point is, I suppose, that this isn't really about the information being freely available at all. It's about paying for a service, and unless you yourself are a homeschooling mom (or dad) and have taken on all the work and responsibility involved in such an endeavor, you probably aren't really in a position to judge whether or not these parents are either wasting their money out of laziness or wasting their money because they are apparently too ignorant to know they can go it alone. (That second assumption is rather silly, IMHO. Homeschooling parents have already thumbed their noses at the "let someone else do it" method of education in general. Do you really think they can't find out info on CLEPs on their own?)You may think they are wasting their money, but it's not up to you to decide.

Unless the naysayers here are volunteering to step up and become free CP-like coaches who will work directly with the teens to design their degree plans, who will call/email these students regularly to keep in touch and keep them on track, and who will operate as outside mentors and guides as sort of relief pitchers for the very weary moms who've been on the mound for years, then I'm not sure I even understand the point to this entire thread. Of course they can get the information for free. That's not the only thing they are looking for, and that's definitely not the only thing they are paying for.