Cynical Reasons for the Recent Attacks on Homeschooling
The optimist in me wants to disbelieve even the chance this is true. The pragmatist in me thinks it could very well be true. But in the end, the cynical side comes out on top, believing that the recent attacks against homeschooling, or to be more precise, the attempts to rein in homeschooling and make it more accountable to the grossly failing public school system isn’t at all about control or power or any of that.
With standardized testing being all the rage (in part–but not wholly–because of No Child Left Behind), I think the reason is to help bump up the test scores for schools/districts/states.
Now before you laugh it off, consider it…public schools by and large are not doing well at all on the tests. If they can gain support to be able to make homeschoolers more “accountable” to public schools, those public schools could then force these tests on them. The results would then be added the the school/district/state’s totals. Get enough homeschoolers in there, their results would raise the averages. And things would look so much better.
So maybe it’s stretching it a bit. Then again, with all the NEA has done in our public schools, does it really seem that far-fetched?
The optimist in me wants to disbelieve even the chance this is true. The pragmatist in me thinks it could very well be true. But in the end, the cynical side comes out on top, believing that the recent attacks against homeschooling, or to be more precise, the attempts to rein in homeschooling and make…
As a former Guidance Counselor in Indiana. I can say that Standardized Testing did primarily come from No Child Left Behind Legislation. States have chosen to use the tests in place of better teaching methods, building schools and hiring more teachers. Private schools and home schools are making public schools look bad. If I was a parent I would look for a school that has regional accreditation over state accreditation. Regional usually has higher standards for its schools.
Have to disagree with one part, cuz: private and home schools are not making public schools look bad. They've done that themselves–we just make the contrast, and we're certainly not going to do poorly to make public schools look better…