Archive for the 'Homeschooling' Category

Dewey Need This School?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 17, 2008 in Curriculum, Homeschooling and School News. 11 Comments

Washington PostFrom the Washington Post comes an uncharacteristically credulous piece about a soon-to-be launched private school built around a radically student-centered model. Harvard-educated lawyer Alan Shusterman’s 6-12 grade school will charge $25,000 a year in tuition, but the schedules and lessons will be different. “The model is inspired by the success of home-schoolers,” says Shusterman.

“Students will set their class schedules, enabling them to learn at their pace and in their styles. Teachers will act as advisers, not taskmasters,” reports the Post’s Jay Mathews. Yup, more “guide on the side” stuff.

As for homework, “the one-size-fits-all [model] mandated in today’s schools is largely counterproductive,” Shusterman says in a slide presentation he uses to sell his idea. School for Tomorrow will have a home reading requirement and “encourage and support individualized, student-initiated homework.”

Mainstream education can learn a thing or two from successful homeschoolers. But if this kind of radically student-centered model is what you’re after, why pay $25,000 for what you can get at home for free?

Surprise Update.  Alan Shusterman responds in the comments section.  He turns out to be quite well-versed on Core Knowledge–and his school will have a core curriculum after all.

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Vote Early, Vote Often

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 1, 2008 in Homeschooling. 0 Comments

Parade Magazine has an online poll asking “Should parents need teaching credentials to home-school their kids?”  Given the energetic representation of homeschoolers online, it’s no surprise that “No” is winning.  The 90% to 10% margin is still surprising.

The poll accompanies an article about the California appeals court ruling that that “parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children.” The court will rehear the case this month.  The article also features an eyebrow-raising quote from the redoubtable Rick Kahlenberg. 

“If upheld, the California ruling will send shock waves nationwide,” says Richard Kahlenberg, the author of a number of books on education. He says the case “pits those who believe parental rights are paramount against those who place a premium on well-educated citizens.”

Homeschoolers don’t place a premium on well-educated citizens?  It’s all about parental rights?  Surely this is a nuance-averse interpretation of whatever Rick actually said. 

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Subway Snubs Homeschoolers

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 28, 2008 in Homeschooling. 1 Comment

You won’t find a word about it in the papers, but Google ”Subway and homeschool” and you’ll see dozens and dozens of blog entries from HSers peeved that the sandwich chain has excluded their kids from a national essay contest.  The “Every Sandwich Tells a Story” writing contest offers $5,000 in athletic equipment to the winner’s school.  But it’s a disclaimer on the contest’s web page that wrankles. 

Contest is open only to legal US residents, over the age of 18 with children in either elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted.

A letter from the Home School Legal Defense Association calls for Subway to reverse itself. 

We understand that the competition is focused on traditional public and private schools because the grand prize of $5,000 of athletic equipment is designed to be used by a traditional school and not an individual family. A potential homeschool winner, however, could simply donate the grand prize to a public or private school of their choice or to a homeschool sports league.

Subway has reportedly responded to the pressure, but stopped short of changing the rules.  A letter from the chain posted on the HSLDA site apologies “to anyone who feels excluded by our current essay contest. Our intention was to provide an opportunity for traditional schools, many of which we know have trouble affording athletic equipment, to win equipment. Our intent was certainly not to exclude homeschooled children from the opportunity to win prizes and benefit from better access to fitness equipment.”

The letter promises Subway will “soon create an additional contest in which homeschooled students will be encouraged to participate.” 

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Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 26, 2008 in Core Knowledge, Curriculum, Educational Policy, Homeschooling and Teaching. 0 Comments

Our weekly roundup of the week’s most important news, information and blog posts about curriculum, teaching, education policy and other items of interest to the Core Knowledge community.

Core Knowledge

Learning Essentials
By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, Education Week 
Core Knowledge prizes content across the disciplines, bucking a trend toward a narrower, skills-based approach to learning.

Best of the Blogs

 Revisiting AERA, Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground and Public Education at Matthew K. Tabor
Just what the title says. The definitive post.

 Redefining intelligence at Joanne Jacobs
Yale psychologists are trying to develop new tests of intelligence that measure “practical, creative, and analytical skills.” One goal is to identify more black and Hispanic children as “gifted.”

Could a Parrot Pass the New York State ELA Exam? at Eduwonkette
What’s worse, the question students are asked to write about? Or the anchor paper?

Beating My Drum: Education, Economics, and Entitlement at The Gonzo Diner
America is not only experiencing an economic crisis, it is experiencing an education crisis, and there are more connections between the two than many think.

Compromised Competitiveness at The BoBo Files
The replacements for America’s retiring work force are less knowledgeable and less educated, less skilled and demotivated, disinclined to learn and prone to shortcuts, weak in science and math, and possess poor reading proficiency.

Teacher Voice From Washington…And, Is The AFT Going All Sherman Over Michelle Rhee at Eduwonk
What’s happening inside the teacher’s union?

Teaching and Curriculum

No Crisis For Boys In Schools, Study Says
By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post
A new study on gender equity in education concludes that a “boys crisis” in U.S. schools is a myth and that both sexes have stayed the same or improved on standardized tests in the past decade.

Great education debate: Reforming the grade system
By Steve Friess, USA TODAY
A handful of schools nationwide have set off an emotional academic debate by giving minimum scores of 50 to students who fail.

Bill to protect PE, arts classes vetoed
By Matthew Benson, The Arizona Republic
Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoes a measure intended to protect gym classes and the teaching of music and the arts from K-12 budget cuts.

Georgia Throws Out State Test Results
By Laura Diamond, Alan Judd and Heather Vogell, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The state throws out the results of two social studies tests and education advocates question the validity of eighth-graders’ abysmal math scores. 

Sent home: The suspension gap
By James Walsh, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Black students are far more likely to be suspended from school than are their white classmates — and Minnesota’s disparity in suspensions is twice the national average. Why? What are the consequences? 

Education Policy

States Starting Slowly on NCLB Proficiency Goals to Face Crunch, Report Says
By Christina A. Samuels, Education Week
States that established modest goals for themselves in the early days of the No Child Left Behind Act may need to make nearly impossible improvements in student performance to reach the law’s target of 100 percent proficiency by the 2013-14 school year.

Fixing the Flaw in the ‘Growth Model’ And Helping Schools, States, and NCLB in the Process
By David P. Sokola, Howard M. Weinberg, Robert J. Andrzejewski, & Nancy A. Doorey, Education Week
Why not craft the reauthorized NCLB to foster innovation and improvement in the field of assessment, rather than to prevent it?

Homeschooling and Parenting

Home-schoolers, unite and take over
By Melanie Wilson Daniel, Athens Banner-Herald
Home-schoolers solidarity comes from awareness that they’re rebels, outlaws - and that there are those out there who’d like to make them criminals.

Brown, Schwarzenegger rally behind homeschoolers
by Chris Rizo, Legal Newsline
California Attorney General Jerry Brown is urging a state appeals court to reconsider a ruling that parents must hold teaching credentials to homeschool their children.

Et Alia

Education drives democracy
By Diane Cameron, The Albany Times Union
Jefferson and the other founders valued education not so that the United States would someday lead the world’s economy, but to ensure longevity for the form of government they were birthing.

Study probes RFID use in schools
By Dennis Carter, eSchool News
Radio-frequency tracking technology would be ideal for equipment but could violate privacy laws if applied to people, researchers say.

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Disrupting Class

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 6, 2008 in Education Practice, Homeschooling and Research and Reports. 0 Comments

More than two-thirds of Americans favor using public funds for online courses that enable sudents to take advanced coursework, or to help students in rural schools get access to a broader range of courses.  Sixty-nine percent of those surveyed said they would be willing to let their child take a high school course on line for credit.  The data comes from a new national poll from Education Next and the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University.

Curiously, support for online coursework dries up when it’s for homeschoolers. Only 26% favor using public funds to allows homeschooled kids to take online courses; 44% are opposed.  

Might as well get used to online education, because it’s about to explode argues a provocative article in Ed Next by Harvard business guru Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator’s Dilemma) and Michael B. Horn.  The two predict that by 2019 about 50 percent of courses in grades 9-12 will be delivered online in their grandly titled new book, “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.”  While that projection sounds high, even fanciful, Christiansen and Horn point out several assymetrical advantages to online coursework over traditional schooling, especially price and differentiation, that they say make disruption of traditional education models inevitable.

“While estimates vary depending on circumstance, many providers have costs that range from $200 to $600 per course, which is less expensive than the current schooling model,” the authors point out.  “Computer-based learning has another technological advantage that is crucial to its expansion: one can customize it to meet different students’ needs. Currently, according to reports, computer-based learning works best with the more motivated students; over time, it will become engaging and individualized to reach different types of learners.”

 

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