What is your opinion about a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion?Unfortunately, Terry was too cheap to include a SASE so he'll never get to see my responses.
I support a woman's right to choose.
I oppose a woman's right to choose and believe we need additional restrictions to limit abortions.
[State Education Commissioner] Driscoll said it is possible for a student to get the same quality of education from homeschooling as from a public school.Yeah, it's possible- if we dumb down our curriculum by about four years. But, who'd do that?
‘‘It is possible, but it takes a pretty special group of parents. And they are out there,'' he said. ‘‘It is an enormous burden to take on, as opposed to a system that has licensed people and all the services. But it is absolutely possible.
It would not be surprising if the education establishment tried to ban homeschooling or otherwise prevent parents from having that choice. The tactic would be to complain about "accountability," which union bosses fight when it is proposed for public schools, but insist upon when parents exercise choice.
Meanwhile, there are 4 million children in public schools that are not meeting state standards, according to the Fordham Foundation.
The education monopoly is cracking, if not crumbling. Efforts to improve the public schools are making headway, but children who are slipping behind cannot wait and hope the efforts will succeed. Parents should have the option to bail out and ensure their child is educated -- even if it has to be a do-it-yourself project.
According to home schooling authority, Mitchell Stevens...Never heard of him. He also doesn't appear to "get" homeschooling, either.
Mr. Stevens, a sociology professor at New York's Hamilton College, says the primary appeal of home schooling is its flexibility. "One of the biggest advantages of home schooling is that it enables parents to tailor an education program around a student's particular talents," he says. "So if a child is an extraordinary musician or has a big passion for a particular scientific or mathematical endeavor, you can create an academic program that really enables that child to nurture those particular talents. It grants families a degree of flexibility over their instruction that makes the pursuit of an extraordinarily high level of accomplishment a real possibility."Yes, but that's such a tiny slice of homeschooling's benefits.
They are coming by bus, car, plane and trainfrom Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids and Lansing, from California, Texas, Virginia and dozens of other states.Somehow I doubt that Martin Luther King dreamed about affirmative action.
...All support the University of Michigan's affirmative action admission policies and all are bound for Washington, D.C., on Monday to join what some are saying could be the biggest civil rights rally since the 1960s.
Although in the short run there may be dollar savings resulting from consolidation, in the long run noteworthy and long-standing cost savings result when schools are smaller, including higher achievement, less violence, fewer discipline problems, and higher attendance and graduation rates. After examining both curriculum quality and cost-effectiveness, researcher Kathleen Cotton stated, “The perceived limitations in the program that small high schools can deliver and their presumed high cost regularly have been cited as justifications for our steady march toward giantism. The research convincingly stamps both of these views as misconceptions.” Smaller schools produce positive results. America should take notice of the impact smaller schools are making.Of course, they don't get any smaller than homeschools.
The 10-member board oversees the Department of Education, teacher licensing and the standards of student performance. It also approves homeschooling curricula and independent schools.Maybe in her new-found position, she can do something about that last bit.
Pawtucket currently has 30 children being home-schooled out of a total public school enrollment of about 10,000, according to School Supt. Hans W. Dellith.
Dellith said he has some reservations concerning home-schooling.
"The downside I see is the lack of socialization, the lack of interaction, the lack of other points of view which a student would get on the same subjects in a group setting," he said.
This State document proves that an average of 86% of Texas students got the first 29, or easiest, questions right. That prompted us to take a look at the next six easiest questions on the test that the plaintiffs refer to as “buffer zone” questions. A student who gave the right answer to 36 questions would have achieved the math performance standard that the TEA uses to define its first level of college readiness.So, nearly all of the 10th graders got the first 29 questions correct and 36 correct signified that they were at the "first level of college readiness." This is a multiple choice test with four possible answers. Random guesses should generate the 7 additional correct answers. Maybe the TX miracle is true and every 10th grader in TX is ready for college. But, what are they asking on those 29 "easy" questions? Here's one:
At a candy store, chocolate costs $0.35 per ounce. Hector bought 8.25 ounces, Jeanette bought 8.7 ounces, James bought 8.05 ounces and Shanika bought 8.42 ounces. Which list shows these weights in order from least to greatest?10th grade level work? Admittedly, EdNews.org may have picked the absolutely easiest question as a straw man. I have no way of proving that they didn't. But, it makes you wonder if this test is legit or is designed to merely make the teacher's union (which wrote the test) look good.
A. 8.05 oz 8.25 oz 8.42 oz 8.7 oz.
B. 8.42 oz 8.05 oz 8.25 oz 8.7 oz
C 8.05 oz 8.7 oz 8.25 oz 8.42 oz
D. 8.7 oz 8.05 oz 8.25 oz 8.42 oz
SECTION 1. { + (1) A person commits the crime of terrorism if the person knowingly plans, participates in or carries out any act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt:So, all those kids who walked out of class a week ago would have been guilty of terrorism. Let's just go a little overboard, huh? This is great example of how Libertarians and Republicans don't see eye-to-eye. Fortunately, this bill has absolutely 0% chance of getting past OR's Democratic governor.
(a) The free and orderly assembly of the inhabitants of the State of Oregon;
(b) Commerce or the transportation systems of the State of Oregon; or
(c) The educational or governmental institutions of the State of Oregon or its inhabitants.
(2) A person commits the crime of terrorism if the person conspires to do any of the activities described in subsection (1) of this section.
"Calling for the censorship of advertisements is a flagrant violation of the freedoms of our great nation, and is further indication of the vile hatred of America that exists within the Palestinian community," Dorfman said.I don't think this qualifies as censorship, which is a government act. The newspaper, for all intents and purposes, is an independent "business" which can certainly choose to run or not run advertisements depending on their readership's interests.
The report shows children in private nursery schools are best prepared for kindergarten, followed by those who attend formal pre-kindergarten programs, child care centers and Head Start, the federal government's preschool program for children in poverty.Anyone else notice a missing category? Where are the kids who stayed home with a parent?
As Thomas McLaughlin tells it, the trouble began when his eighth-grade science teacher overheard him refusing to deny to another boy that he was gay. It got worse that afternoon, when his guidance counselor called his mother at work to tell her he was homosexual.The ACLU is pursuing this.
"The assistant principal called me out of seventh period, asked if my parents knew I was gay, and when I said no, she said I had till 3:40 to tell them or the school would," said Thomas, a 14-year old student at Jacksonville Junior High School in Arkansas.
There wouldn't be a new building or a full week of classes. Instead, principals from Seekonk, Somerset-Berkley, Swansea, and Dighton-Rehoboth would each pick five sophomores to attend nine-week sessions at each of the participating schools every other Friday. Each school would focus on a different discipline. For the rest of the week, students would go to regular classes at their own schools.Let's see- they'll be attending one day every other week for nine weeks. In other words, the whole program will last five days. That's not even a good start on a unit study.
There are approximately 2 million home schoolers in the United States, a figure that has increased 15 percent in the last 20 years, according to the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Ore.I think they meant it has been growing at an average of 15% per year over the last 20 years. The article then veers into a discussion of the upcoming WB program, "The O'Keefes."
"When they go on field trips, [strangers] compliment the children on their appearance and behavior. That leads to an increased self-esteem," she says.Behavior, yes. Uniforms? You can't buy self-esteem- not even for $75.
(c) The State Board of Education may undertake measures to ensure that home school students receive a quality education.That is one dangerous sentence. It would basically give the educrats carte blanche to regulate homeschooling.
One of the reasons why homeschooling has really been successful in America is that homeschooled children are turning out to be quality young people. People often ask homeschoolers what it is that we do that results in such good kids. One big truth often overlooked is that we are not sending our kids mixed signals. We don't tell them that education is important, but then show them by our actions that it is more important for everybody to be at the same level than to allow them to excel. We don't close the school because a small percentage could not make it. We don't bog the kids down with wasted time, waiting for everybody in the class to be done before they move on. We also don't leave them behind. If one of my kids doesn't understand something, we don't move on until they do. What would be the point? In short, we are looking for and producing quality education.Well worth a click.
In the event of a home emergency, natural disaster, storm, power loss, fire or home intrusion children are taught to grab Herbie Hydrant from their bedside table to help find their way to safety. Once lifted from the battery-charging base, Herbie Hydrant's flashlight shines, an alarm bellows and strobe lights flash. The flashlight can help children find their way to safety and the alarm and strobes can aid rescuers in locating a child who may be trapped. Additionally, a digital timer starts once the unit has been lifted from the base. This timer can be used to practice home escape routes and provides critical timing information for emergency professionals. There is even a storage compartment where pertinent personal/medical about the child can be kept for quick reference by rescuers.
Mr. Gardner and four other Milwaukee school board members up for re-election next month comprise a pro-reform group, with a one-vote majority. They support school choice and want changes in a lucrative fringe benefits contract for 6,400 public school teachers. The contract has a current unfunded liability of $136 million a year.If they can "invest" $2M and get a return of $136M per year, I'd say they have plenty of motivation to pull out all the stops in targeting Mr. Gardner. I wish him luck. (Thanks to Skip Oliva for the story.)
Hardly any attention is given to the possibility that falling government revenue, however much it derives from market imponderables, is convenient and useful to political forces that want nothing more than an impoverished and vastly reduced governmental structure at all levels.I'm no fan of deficit spending but starving a bloated government would be the silver lining. Here's the best quote from the column.
Radical voices on the right have boasted that the federal government will be reduced by half within 25 years. That means many programs of social value will be eliminated, initiatives will be unborn, and the complex web of the American collective will unravel.Interesting word choice- "collective." I thought the Soviet Union collapsed a while ago. I didn't realize that we had moved it over here. My bad. The rest of the column is no better.
• A 24-year-old teacher at Marcos de Niza High in Tempe was arrested Tuesday after rumors of a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student were reported to police.Why are there ANY children still in these schools? What are the parents thinking?
• A 26-year-old Higley High teacher is awaiting the results of a paternity test after he was rumored to have fathered the child of a 16-year-old former student.
• A 27-year-old Gilbert Highland Junior High teacher was dismissed in February for having a romantic relationship with a 12-year-old student.
• A 27-year-old teacher from Cherokee Elementary in Scottsdale was indicted in January on 30 felony counts including child molestation. The principal resigned after a school district investigation found that he failed to discipline the teacher.
• On Friday, David Edgar Welsh of Scottsdale, a former Mesa teacher, and Ronald Henry Harris of Chandler, a former Glendale teacher, were given 19-year prison sentences for sex crimes against children.
Belhaven president Dr. Roger Parrott, himself a home-schooling parent, says he understands the significance of home school education and that it is a great foundation for college-level work. He says the school offers special scholarships for home-schooled students.One to keep in mind.
"We find that [home-schooled students] come with high ACT [scores] and, because they are home-schooled, we add some [financial] incentive to that ... to help them," Parrott says. "We also know that ... if they come, they're going to persist and graduate because parents are going to be involved in their education. Part of the challenge of all of education is lack of parental involvement -- and we don't want that to end just when they come to college."
Spring is in the air -- that is if you think of spring as continuous rainfall, with intermittent breaks of heavy mist. Oh well, this is just one of the many reasons we love Washington State. The other is their tolerant acceptance of home educators. While our 3 oldest have been out landscaping, gardening and training the horses in this gloriously damp weather, the 2 youngest have been housebound taking their annual standardized tests, which are mandatory according to the State of Washington.So, instead of educating their kids in the manner they feel best, they have to keep them chained to the kitchen table "prepping" for the state-mandated test.
In all cases, annual evaluations are done by Florida-certified teachers. Results are reported to the School Board, stating whether or not a student performed adequately for his grade level.This is a good thing? He then basically goes on to invite legislators to mandate that homeschoolers take the state accountability tests.
Florida law sensibly grants the option of using such tests. Until academic standards for the FCAT objectively exceed those of the SAT and ITBS, why would anyone with a legal choice use the still-evolving and grading-problem-plagued FCAT?This is really poor. The writer has completely bought into the argument that homeschoolers are accountable to the state. He's just arguing about the details. Pitiful. I hope another homeschooling parent sets the record (and this guy) straight.
...Florida homeschoolers are already thoroughly accountable by law, and whether or not they take the FCAT is a thoroughly bogus issue.
Mr. Paige yesterday endorsed the new American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), whose mission is to certify subject experts, experienced professionals and military veterans as public school teachers, even if they don't have degrees in education.So far, a couple of states have accepted this alternative as equivalent to an education school certification.
The hawks of Bush II are not afraid of disorder in the pursuit of American dominance. They have no interest in any coalition — except their own. They see the international "we" as an impediment to joy — and to destiny. The Bush doctrine is animated by "the big I." That self-regarding doctrine, concocted by Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle back when W. was still merely a presidential gleam in Karl Rove's eye, preaches preventive pre-emptive preternatural pre-eminence.Prease, er, please!
The 1,500 students at the four-year liberal arts college in southwest Missouri each work 15 hours a week and pay only room and board.
...Davis said the free education is enticing to parents, but so is the school's emphasis on character, Christianity and getting ready for the working world.
"The values here represent the best of what made America great," Davis said. "We are talking about hard work, faith and opportunity."
In 60 poor, rural South Carolina schools, I recently counted more than 10,000 computers in 2,000 classrooms. Only twice did I see an elementary student in a classroom using a computer. I did see students using them in ''computer labs,'' but almost invariably to learn low-level keyboarding skills. Students seldom used modern, interactive instructional software. I did see teachers get e-mail during their breaks and a library aide watching afternoon soap operas on a big-screen TV.The author has some recommendations as to how to "encourage" schools to use the technology, including this:
Offer subsidies to home-schooling parents to lease or buy software for their children's instruction.Gee, thanks a lot. I think I'll pass.
The loss of revenue may eventually get the attention of the public school managers who now ignore technology.
"If we can't even know how many kids are being home-schooled, it's impossible to carry out a study on how they're doing on average," said Stanford University political scientist Rob Reich.Reich has, in other writings (here and here), stated that he recognizes that the government schools have done an awful job of educating kids. Where's their accountability? He claims not to be anti-homeschooling but I have seen nothing to indicate that he is anything other than an enemy of educational freedom. I have no idea how the reporter chose him to interview. He is not an expert on homeschooling.
...States could require home-schooled children to take annual standardized tests like the FCAT, an idea Reich supports. If a child repeatedly fails to make academic progress, Reich suggested the state should step in and force children to attend public schools.
“I have had three children go through the public school system and would not have it any other way. They became well-rounded individuals and learned the proper social skills to survive in today’s helter skelter society.”Proper social skills? I had no idea the government-schools were so good and wholesome. I think I'll enroll my kids on Monday.
audblog audio post Pretty cool but I don't think I'm willing to pay $3/month for the privilege.
"I think he was kidding, but, of course, that doesn't excuse his behavior," said [Principal] Knowlton. "But I don't get the sense he brought the knife to school with any malicious intent...I fail to see the irony.
"The schools are safe," [Supt.] Scherza said. "... But I think this highlights, ironically, something we've been pushing for a while, which is the importance of getting a policeman in the schools."
[C]hange Rhode Island's law on safe storage of guns, making it a felony to allow anyone under 21 access to a gun, loaded or unloaded.It would be a felony to basically allow anyone under 21 to touch a gun, even if unloaded and equipped with a trigger lock! This is just plain absurd. I learned to shoot in the Boy Scouts at age 13 and owned a semi-automatic rifle by my 14th birthday. I still have the rifle and will pass it to my oldest son when he is ready. (BTW, I think the rifle is probably officially an illegal assault weapon; it holds 18 .22 LR in the pipe.) I never thought I would be a gun nut, but the anti-gun forces have moved so far to the left, that I'm now right (in more ways than one).
"Let's make it nice and simple," [Police Chief] Silva said. "If you have a weapon in your home, and there is a possibility of someone under 21 encountering that gun, you better secure it."
Libertarian - You believe that the main use for government is for some people to lord it over others at their expense. You maintain that the government should be as small as possible, and that civil liberties, "victimless crimes", and gun ownership should be basic rights. You probably are OK with capitalism. Your historical role model is Thomas Jefferson.Well, I don't believe that a "use for government is for some people to lord it over others at their expense." That is what happens in the current system but I'm pretty sure it wasn't designed that way.
Which political sterotype are you?
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As long as homeschooled children meet the same criteria as full-time students in the district school they would otherwise attend, it seems fair to allow them access to extracurricular programs. If there is a minimum academic achievement requirement, that should also apply to homeschoolers.That academic achievment requirement could be tricky. How do homeschoolers meet a minimum GPA requirement? Not all of us even assign grades.
Critics say the schools involved are acting shamefully by dodging the spirit if not the letter of the law. Because America’s armed forces are all volunteer, supporters of the law say the military must have valid contact information for prospective recruits.Yeah- it's just terrible that these schools are notifying parents of their rights under the law. What is this country coming to? Fox then quotes a right-wing talk-show host (I guess he's an expert?).
Hewitt said such districts should be punished for violating the intent of the law.Ridiculous! It was a bad law to begin with. I applaud the schools' attempts to protect their students' privacy.
"I hope the federal government comes along and does exactly what it said it would do, which is cut off their federal funds," he said.
Fifteen-year-old Christopher Little learned a lesson on the First Amendment Monday when he went to school wearing an anti-war T-shirt that said, ``Who Would Jesus Bomb?''Good deal.
The Marshfield High School 10th-grader was questioned by school officials about the shirt, but they ultimately did a little research and decided that he could wear it.
...Schools Superintendent Thomas Kelley cited two court cases in ruling that Little could keep wearing the shirt.
Kelley said, ``We're comfortable with him expressing his free speech. The real question is whether it is disruptive to the educational process. In this case, the boy had worn it half the day and nothing had occurred.''
"Freedom scholarship or whatever, it's still a voucher," said Larry Shaw, executive director of the United Educators Association. "People are going to pull their kids, put them in private schools that are not qualified to teach them, and then we will get them back three years later."Good, good. All the assumptions are right out there in the open: Unqualified to teach; back in three years.
In exchange for the money, private schools would be required to administer state assessments and to disregard race, national origin or ethnicity when accepting students. Schools with more applicants than classroom space should select students through random drawings, the bill suggests.Those state exams will likely be the deal-breaker. They're curriculum based so a private school would either have to adopt the state's curriculum or see its students perform poorly on the test. Either way, not a very attractive offer.
Personalize education -- adopt something like the medical model, where we try to tailor a child's education to his or her skills, interests and needs. We need to create new small, innovative schools that focus on helping youngsters become competent, responsible adults who will be lifelong learners...
More time to learn. Preschool programs, full-day kindergarten, extended school days, extended school year, and summer programs. Provide kids with the additional time to catch up. In Fairfax's Excel schools, when the school achieves its target, everyone in the school gets a bonus [up to $2,000 just before the holidays in December].The Ugly
In order to enroll their child in kindergarten, parents should be required to take a semester-long course on parenting a successful student. A second course would be required before the child enters middle school and another as they enter high school. Teachers should get one semester paid leave every five years, during which they would go back to being students and prepare for future teaching experiences.Two of the above were written by edu-crats. Bet you can't guess which ones. :-)
The catalog of courses that Kingsborough [College] sends to teachers - obtained by The Post - offers a variety of light, therapeutic and recreational courses, including "Beginning Tennis," "Exploring Leisure" and "Introductory Horticulture."I'm sure they are.
United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said she will fight to retain sabbaticals in the next round of labor negotiations.
"Sabbaticals are a good retention tool to keep teachers teaching," Weingarten said.
Puente said he has not missed out on any experiences because he was home schooled.
"I heard nightmares about the drama of people making fun of each other and boyfriends and girlfriends breaking up," he said about friends who attended public school.
Puente said home schooling helped him build a strong relationship with his parents that most students don't have the opportunity to develop.
The curriculum’s failure was undeniable: not one of my students knew his or her times tables, and few had mastered even the most basic operations; knowledge of multiplication and division was abysmal. Perhaps you think I shouldn’t have rejected a course of learning without giving it a full year (my school had only recently hired me as a 23-year-old Teach for America corps member). But what would you do, if you discovered that none of your fourth graders could correctly tell you the answer to four times eight?We're teaching old math. Math-U-See is a great program with plenty of practice on the fundamentals.
The curriculum derives from a pedagogical philosophy that goes by several names—“Constructivist Math,” “New-New Math,” and, to its detractors, “Fuzzy Math.” I’ll stick with “Fuzzy Math,” since the critics are right. Nothing about Fuzzy Math makes much sense from a teaching standpoint.
One weakness is its emphasis on “cooperative learning.” Fuzzy Math belongs to a family of recent pedagogical innovations that imagine that kids possess innate wisdom and can teach each other while a self-effacing “facilitator” (the adult formerly known as a teacher) flutters over them. If the architects of Everyday Mathematics had their way, I would have placed my children in various groups, for the most part unsupervised, so that they could work on one elaborate activity after another, learning on their own.
How might Google's tools improve the existing Blogger technology? One feature might work like this: Each time I search for something on Google, a list of URLs is generated. When I click on one of those URLs, the page I've selected is automatically blogged for me: storing for posterity the text and location of the document.This is an extremely scary proposition: a database with all of your web-searching habits permanently recorded on Google's servers somewhere. I'm sure Poindexter and his Total Information Awareness project would just love to get their hands on that. And, we couldn't stop them, either. In fact, we probably wouldn't even know they had gotten access. This would be a privacy nightmare. If Johnson is right, I think it's time I start moving to MT.
Our kids' school schedules are out of sync with their parents' work schedules. It is plain dumb that from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, we just let kids loose. Yes, many families make heroic efforts to deal with this problem. But many others -- especially in households that desperately need two incomes -- are put in a terrible dilemma. Filling the 3-to-6 gap is one of our most urgent social needs, a point made regularly by law enforcement officials.Which article in the Constitution covers after-school care? Oh yeah, the same one that gives the feds the right to jail our kids for 13 years.
Please allow me a moment to express my appreciation to some unsung heroes in our Pahrump Valley - our home-schooling families.
During the last several years of traveling to and residing in the valley I have had the good fortune of meeting with a number of local families that, upon talking to you I learn, are home-schooling (their chil-dren).
In each and every case, I have been impressed by children's character, their respect for other people (adults and children of all ages), and pleasant spirits. Your election to accept your God-given responsibility to educate your children, and do it fervently, is highly commendable.
The more research I do in this area, the more I look into studies of educational achievement and achievement of all kinds by home-schooled children, I become completely convinced that your children are indeed getting a superior education. So I thank you. Thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for your investment of your time, your money, yourselves in your children's education. Yes, you pay your property taxes like everyone else, and yet you still make the sacrifice of footing the bill to pay for your own children's education, whatever it takes. Every person in this valley concerned about the amount of property tax he or she pays, even if he or she never has had the good fortune to meet you, should be grateful for the responsibility you are accepting yourself and thus saving everyone else tax dollars.
Beyond that though, because of you and the growing number of others like you around the country and indeed around the world, people can also have considerable hope for the future of this valley, this country, and our world. I know I do. I pray the Lord continues to bless you and your families in your commitment.
Identify and Recruit Young Men into Teaching in High SchoolWhat? No affirmative action?
There is a perennial shortage of male applicants to schools of education. Initiatives to identify prospective teachers early in their academic careers have proven successful. Secondary school surveys, career counseling, and college preparatory courses can help boost enrollment.
"We all say things we'd like to take back," said Starr, R-Hillsboro. "I've devoted a good part of my life to trying to encourage improvement in public schools."
...Starr said he wrote the line in anger after getting a letter from a constituent who said children were being harmed by home schooling.
A questioner, citing estimates of 20 to 40 home-schooled students whose attendance at Butternut School could considerably increase the amount of state aid, raised a question about a compulsory attendance law that was also raised by another questioner at a presentation on the referendum question at the Chippewa Town Hall on Feb. 20.Subtle. Notice- We have "succeeded in arguing" that homeschooling is "real education." That "succeeded" speaks volumes. Likewise, the accountability questions. I'd love to vote for a politician who, just once, would come right out and say that homeschooling is legal, it's a parental right, and just get over it!
He said that when he went to school, the law required attendance until the age of 16. Sherman said the law still exists, but those home schooling their children have succeeded in arguing that being home schooled satisfies the requirement.
Asked whether there were any kind of standards for holding parents accountable, Sherman said every attempt to impose such accountability on parents home schooling their children and on private “choice” schools in Milwaukee gets defeated when it comes up in the legislature.
He said there is a new standard of accountability for public schools under President George W. Bush’s “Leave No Child Behind” program, but there is no accountability for parents home schooling their children or for the private schools.
Although I found many advantageous and attractive aspects to home schooling, in the end, I needed socialization.
If you are home-schooled, although there are several alternatives to making new friends, you miss out on a lot of extracurricular activities.
The fact that you have no true peers except your family makes me feel lonely! As a social butterfly, I guess I wasn't cut out to be home schooled!
Who is making sure children are schooled?
State Sen. Dan Rutherford may have been waiting for the wrong crowd to speak up over his proposal to have home-school parents register with public school officials.
The Chenoa senator said he was dropping his proposal for voluntary registration because of a lack of support among home-school groups. That lack of support isn't surprising. They don't want government intervention.
But what about the voice of the children? Who is guaranteeing that they are being educated if they are not in school? Home-schooling parents need not be chastised or ridiculed, but educators should be up in arms if there is no guarantee that children are receiving an education.
If a child is enrolled in public school and misses a few days, parents are required to explain the absences. Doesn't anyone care when children never show up for public school?
Chris Hammond is a small-town guy from Wedowee Ala., and he always will be. No matter that Hammond has signed on to pitch the next two years of his career for the Yankees in the world's largest media market. He's a down-home guy with a thick southern drawl and a keen sense of the importance of family. In fact, his family is so important to him they they'll all be coming with him this year, everywhere he goes.I now have a new favorite pitcher. Way cool. (via Cathy Henderson)
His wife, Lynn, will be home-schooling oldest son Andy (6), and Jake (4), and daughter Alex (3) will be on every trip, too.
"It's the worst thing I've ever seen, and I've been in the district 35 years," [the Buffalo superintendent] said. "I mean we're looking at crazy things, like a four-day week, no kindergarten, no pre-kindergarten, no sports."It just goes to show how far the schools have drifted from their mission that cutting pre-K and sports are considered "crazy things." I'd start by eliminating pre-K but parents would never be willing to give up that "free" daycare. Guess I'll never be elected to the School Board, eh?
An unknown number of Nashville children are being missed by the educational system and falling beyond the reach of a possible safety net because the resources aren't available to track them, officials said.Danger! Danger! This type of paragraph often leads to "some people may claim to be homeschooling but may just be using it as a cover-up of abuse."
Schools provide ''a system of checks and balances to see that a child is properly fed, clothed and emotionally stable,'' said Metro Police Department spokesman Don Aaron. ''If a child is not in the school system, you lose one of the checks and balances.''And, we all know which kids aren't in the "system."
[S]chools are an important safety net, said Carla Aaron, Department of Children's Services spokeswoman...But the system fails when children don't go to school, said Catherine Knowles, director of the Metro Schools Homeless Education Program.OK, they're not talking about homeschoolers. But...
Regardless of the resources, advocates believe that it's incumbent upon the community to call the local school system and report when they see, or suspect, that a child is not being educated.Watch out TN homeschoolers.
Starr's statement in the letter won't cost him his job running the education panel, Senate leaders said. But school advocates and officials, who look to the Legislature for help in improving the state's public schools, said Starr's comment shows a clear disdain for the system. And they note that he has a disproportionate share of power in deciding its future.Gutsy politician. I like that.
"I wasn't really mad, but it just inspired me to change it. A lot of it was put there by people who lived there a long time ago, when that was common practice," he said. "There's also acid rain and sewage leaks."He's leading a 40-person effort to clean up the stream. Way to go!
"You don't want solutions to the world's problems to come from the same type of people. You end up with less diversity, creativity and innovation," said Yen, a University of Washington assistant professor of industrial engineering who spoke at Bellevue Community College on the dearth of women in science and technology.Actually, I wouldn't care if one person solved all of the world's problems, as long as they were solved.
Yen said women are more likely to think collaboratively than men, who she said tend to think competitively. That's increasingly seen as an asset in the corporate world and in the scientific community, she added.Women think "collaboratively?" I was not aware that they were telepathic. Hmmm. That would explain a lot.
Yen cited ingrained gender bias for the slower rates of progress than in other academic and professional areas.If you give 1-year-old boys Legos, there will likely be a lot fewer male scientists in the long run. Enough already.
"It starts right from the moment you put some Legos in front of a 1-year-old boy but not a 1-year-old girl," she said.
Mike Riley, superintendent of the Bellevue School District, said he has no argument with parents starting their own school — as long as it is backed up with the expertise of teachers and school administrators.Actually, I don't think these parents stand much chance of success. They have no building, no land, and tuition will be a pricey $17,700.
"Honestly, I think the competition is a good thing," said Riley. "It gives us the inspiration to do a better job."
Charles Starr heads the Senate Education Committee for a second session in a row. He is a critic of the education establishment and school reform movement and is best-known for his attempts to change the direction of Oregon’s schools, “because I am alarmed at our continuing failure to educate all children.”
Bruce Starr said he will work with his father on laws affecting home-schooling.
“I expect he and I have similar views on that legislation,” he said.
[S]ome students say the recruiters, strengthened by an obscure provision in a recent federal law, are using techniques that border on intrusive telemarketing and harassment.
