If you get all your information from television, you may be only distantly aware that home schooling is a viable
alternative to public schools, and that there are ideas in the works to make public schools more competitive
with each other and with private schools. Worse yet, if you watch too much television, perhaps you think
that home schooling is strictly for hillbillies or Branch Davidians. On the contrary, home schools are
more popular than ever, and compared to public schools, they produce better educated students at a
fraction of the cost per student.
The Editor of this web site, and Mrs. Editor, have
had personal experience with both public education and home schooling, some of which is described in a
subsection at the bottom of this page.
If you place any value on your children's education, moral standards, personal safety, polite behavior,
and eternal salvation, then you must get them out of the public school system. Private schools
are expensive, and home schooling is a lot of work, if you do it right, but the rewards are well
worth the ivestments.
When you're finished here, read about the teachers' labor
unions and the socialist ideas they support.
One California judge says parents have no legal right
to home school their children. [2/28/2008]
The latest:
California Court to Reconsider Homeschooling.
California's Second Appellate District Court of Appeals touched off a firestorm when it issued an opinion that
parents have no right to homeschool their own children — a firestorm so great that on March 25,
a full month after issuing its decision, the court agreed to rehear the case, with a decision expected in June.
According to the February 28 decision, neither the U.S. nor the California constitution gives parents without
teaching credentials the right to homeschool their children, and nothing in California law permits unregulated
homeschooling.
California Decision Has Roots in Age-Old Bias against
Homeschooling. Though California's constitution guarantees citizens freedom, independence, and
privacy, the state regularly invades those rights — albeit with the consent of the governed.
But don't tread on homeschoolers. That's what a California appellate court did with a February 28
ruling that parents have no federal or state constitutional right to homeschool their children and that they
risk criminal prosecution if they do. The uproar was immediate and widespread.
Court to reconsider home-school
ruling. A state appeals court will reconsider last month's controversial decision that said
parents who home-school their children must have a teaching credential. The 2nd District Court of
Appeal in Los Angeles granted a rehearing Tuesday [3/25/2008], essentially voiding the 3-0 decision until it
rules again. The decision will now allow home-schooling organizations that had blasted the decision to
weigh in. "Wow!" said Diane Flynn Keith of Redwood City, who edits Homefires, an online home-schooling
journal. "I think the judge recognized that he hadn't done his homework."
Threat to Homeschooling:
The cat is finally out of the bag. A California appellate court, ruling that parents have no constitutional
right to homeschool their children, pinned its decision on this ominous quotation from a 47-year-old case, "A
primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty
to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare." There you have it; a primary
purpose of government schools is to train schoolchildren "in loyalty to the state."
Home schooling unlawful, says California
court. A three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeal has determined parents in that state
have no legal right to home school. A Christian attorney in Sacramento says unless the ruling is reversed,
literally thousands of students in the Golden State will be subject to criminal sanctions.
Homeschoolers'
setback sends shock waves through state. A California appeals court ruling clamping down on
homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an
estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution. The
homeschooling movement never saw the case coming.
Court: Teaching
Credential Required To Home School. California parents without teaching
credentials cannot legally home school their children, according to a recent state appellate
court ruling. "Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,"
Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of
Appeal. Noncompliance could lead to criminal complaints against the parents, Croskey said.
The immediate impact of the ruling was not clear. Opponents said they will appeal.
Do Homeschoolers Need Teaching Credentials?
One way or another, this ruling will not stand. It's not just that the homeschoolers have lawyers and political savvy,
which they do. They also have the support of the majority of parents who want a full range of choices, even if they'd
never choose homeschooling for themselves. Mom needs a credential to teach her kids? Not going to happen.
Governor vows to protect
homeschooling. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denounced a state appeals court ruling that severely
restricts homeschooling and promised Friday [3/7/2008] to change the law if necessary to guarantee that parents
are able to educate their children at home. "Every California child deserves a quality education, and
parents should have the right to decide what's best for their children," Schwarzenegger said in response to the
ruling, which said children educated at home must be taught by a credentialed teacher.
A threat
to home schooling: In a blow to parents everywhere, the Los Angeles 2nd District Court of Appeals
ruled last week that under provisions in the state's education code, parents do not have a constitutional right
to home school their children and in fact criminalizes efforts to do so since they are not certified teachers.
Perhaps more disturbing than the ruling is how some "education experts" are classifying it. One National
Education Association (NEA) official has referred to home-school parents as "gullible, amateurs" who don't
have the skills to teach their own children. Sound a little condescending?
Home
Schooling Poses a Threat to The State. Socialism, of which liberal-progressivism is the American sect, is
more than control of the economy. Most importantly it is mind-control through the public education system. … Why
the animus of liberal courts and teachers' unions against home schooling? The obvious answer is that home
schooling does a better job, revealing the poor quality of public education. Less obvious is the desire of
home-schooling parents to teach Judeo-Christian moral principles, which directly conflicts with the public school
aim of teaching the secular religion of liberal-progressive-socialism.
It
Takes a Village to Raise an Idiot: California and Parental Rights. For teachers unions and
education bureaucrats, compulsory school attendance is a tool of social control.
Saying No to the Nanny
State: While I bemoan the liberal goings-on in my once liberty-loving state, I only have that much more
empathy for the many good people of California, who also have a RINO governor, but labor under the "leadership" of a
much worse regime. This week's outrage concerns the ruling of an appellate court that "parents do not have a
constitutional right to homeschool their children" and that those who do so might be subject to severe penalties.
California: Giving Home-Schoolers
the Shaft. Teachers' unions are pro-choice on abortion, but not on education. They use their enormous political
capital with the Democrat Party to block voucher initiatives in whatever state or municipality proposes them, including in
California. Consequently, many parents home-school their children at their own expense, even though they still have to
pay local property taxes which are spent mostly on public schools their children do not attend.
Homeschoolers
in the Crosshairs of the NEA. Recently a landmark ruling that stunned many parents and could have
legal repercussions for families across the country was handed down by a California state appellate court.
Judge H. Walter Croskey wrote a court opinion that declared California children were only allowed to be
taught by teachers credentialed by the state. Such a decision was a stark about-face from the previous
California policy that provided parents with options in determining how best to educate their children. A
decision such as this has profound ramifications that stretch beyond educational choice, from parental rights
to privacy laws.
Did
someone mention the NEA?
Your Child Is Not State Property.
California legislators were entitled to enact this blanket prohibition, according to the judge, because they
feared the supposed social disorder that would result from "allowing every person to make his own standards on
matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests." "Allowing"? By what right
does government presume to "allow" (or, in this case, forbid) you to make your own standards concerning your
child's education? Government has no such right.
Other items not related to the recent court ruling in California:
Home-school effort becoming
mainstream. In 1984, the Virginia legislature passed a law allowing home schooling as an education option.
Until then, it was illegal and the few who dared say they were subject to persecution. Today, nearly 27,000 children in
the state are taught at home, and the number is growing 10 percent to 15 percent a year, said Jim Bentley,
executive director of the Home Educators Association of Virginia.
Protests Call for Public School
Exodus. Houston lawyer Bruce Shortt refers to himself as an ordinary guy who "lives in flyover
country." But he has an unusual pastime that has attracted both critics and supporters: He's
working to encourage parents to "leave behind" public schools. Shortt said if parents take their
Christian beliefs seriously, they will do everything possible to ensure their children get a thoroughly
Christian education. A growing segment of the faith community is joining Shortt's call for an exodus,
saying the public school system is hostile to their values and unresponsive to their concerns.
The Editor says...
This idea has come up before. Earlier in 2006, it was the Southern Baptists who were in favor of
abandoning the public schools. There is more information in a subsection near the bottom of
this page.
German Court Says Parents May Not Educate
Children. German parents lost their last legal appeal on September 11, 2006 when the European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR) allowed to stand a German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) decision from
November 2003 stating parents do not have a right to educate their children at home. The case involved
Fritz and Marianna Konrad, a Herbolzheim couple that wanted to homeschool their two children because they
believed the public schools undermined their religious values.
Homeschooling Stereotypes Shattered.
No longer in the throes of adolescence, North Carolina's homeschooling movement celebrated its 20th birthday this year.
Much has changed since the General Assembly moved to legalize homeschooling in 1988. Here and across the nation, the
homeschooling movement has grown in stature and popularity — defying stereotypes and occasionally, disarming
critics.
Homeschooling,
sweet homeschooling. [Even] though over one million children are homeschooled in America,
there's a surprising amount of resistance to the idea, even from many who support other alternatives
to the state schools (i.e. charter and private schools).
Research points to benefits of
home schooling. Two million children are home schooled in the U.S., according to the Nation Home
Education Research Institute. NHERI reports homeschooled students typically perform 15 to 30 percentile
points above public school students on standardized achievements tests.
The Little Book of Big Reasons to Homeschool:
Drawing from David d'Escoto's experience as a church ministry leader and adult Bible teacher, and Kim's background in
elementary education, these two veteran homeschoolers are committed to reaching out to families and spreading the
homeschool vision. The d'Escotos give concise and compelling reasons why homeschooling is your best option for
educating your children today.
Why Home School? There
is now incontestable evidence that, on average, children who are home schooled fare better academically than children
of either public or private schools. This is not surprising since tutoring has always been recognized to be
the best method of education. Home educated children are spared the corrupting environment of the peer-oriented
classroom and thus benefit socially. A common myth of our society is that children need to be with other children
for extended periods of time to be properly socialized, but this is the exact opposite of the truth. Much time
in a peer culture is damaging to children. Socialization is one of the best reasons to home school.
Here is another reason to start home-schooling...
School
Apologizes to Muslim Student Over Graduation Held in Church. A Muslim student who sued
because his public high school graduation ceremony was held in a Baptist church has received an apology
from Newark's school district and assurances that it will not hold future events in houses of worship.
Home Is
Where the School Is. During a break in a high school debate tournament not long ago, my 17-year-old son struck
up a conversation with a student on the rival team from a New Jersey public school. "Where's your school?" asked the
boy. When my son replied that he was home-schooled, the student probed. "How do you socialize when you're at
home all the time?" he asked. "Well, for one thing, I'm here, right?" my son laughed.
The Why of Homeschool: The
National Education Association regularly passes an anti-homeschooling resolution at its annual
convention. The resolution states that homeschooling "cannot provide the student with
a comprehensive education experience." … Even in a nation that applauds innovation and
liberty, the act of homeschooling continues to raise many uncomfortable, but important,
questions about government regulation of private choices.
Why Public Schools Hate Homeschooling
Parents: Homeschoolers are a direct challenge to the public school monopoly. This
monopoly makes it almost impossible to fire tenured public school teachers or principals. As a
result, tenure gives most teachers lifetime guaranteed jobs. They get this incredible benefit
only because public schools have a lock on our children's education.
Don't Suffer the Little Children.
Another school year has sprung itself upon us, which is always an occasion for my wife, a former Detroit
public-school teacher, and me to remind ourselves why we home-school. Part of the reason, in addition to
my wife's expertise in this area, can be found in Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions," published 20 years ago.
Supreme Court
levels playing field. Now, for the first time, home-schooling has been recognized in an opinion
by a U.S. Supreme Court justice as a viable educational alternative. Morse v. Frederick, which recently
made national headlines, involves free speech and whether a public school can regulate what a student
says. … It is a reminder to all families that when your child enters the public school, you have
virtually ceded your parental rights to the public school.
Publik Skule
vs. Home School: It's been eleven months since we pulled our teenage daughters out of the public
school system and started to home school them, and I could kick myself for waiting so long. … Now …
they actually get to study the basics, pursue their educational and athletic interests, without waiting for the
186% overcrowded class to decide to cease fighting and copulating long enough that the teacher can teach the
students how to write their name so that they can endorse their unemployment check later on in life.
Here's another incentive for homeschooling:
Violence Scares Kids
Into Avoiding School. More than one out of every 20 high school students —
5.4 percent — skipped at least one day of school because of safety concerns in 2003, according
to a CDC survey. That is up from 4.4 percent in 1993.
Colleges Welcome Texas Homeschoolers.
While Texas homeschools often field inquiries from public school officials, social service workers, law enforcement
officials, and employers who question their legitimacy, graduates are finding most colleges and universities eagerly
accept them, and some are actively recruiting them.
Woman abandons home to escape
public schools. A Utah woman who was ordered by a juvenile court judge to enroll
her children in public school or lose custody of them has abandoned her home, furniture and
other possessions to escape the order. Denise Mafi, a nine-year veteran of homeschooling,
has confirmed to WND she and her children packed up their essentials — clothes and
homeschool materials — and fled Utah over the weekend, spending more than 50 hours
on a bus trip to an undisclosed part of the country.
City Tries to Bring Big Brother to Home
Schooling. After moving to Lynn, Massachusetts in 1993, Michael and Virginia Brunnelle decided
not to enroll their five children in the public schools, opting to educate them at home instead. Although
Lynn public school officials approved the Brunnelles' qualifications as teachers and the contents of the
curricula and the instructional materials, they still would not allow the Brunnelles to home school their
children unless they allowed school officials to conduct periodic inspections of their home "to verify that
the Home Instruction Plan is being implemented."
Liberating your children from government
schools: Some parents are ready to take the big step to liberate their children from government
school and enroll them in private or homeschool. They just need to find out how and where to do so.
Many others are considering the idea but are concerned about the cost of private schooling or the difficulty of
homeschooling.
Home Schooling Yields Socially Involved,
Above-Average Citizens. The first large-scale study of adults who were home-schooled as children has
been released, and among other revelations, it debunks the notion that home schoolers become socially isolated.
Homeschoolers
in the trenches: Given the poor academic track record of public education in
many areas of this country, you would think the government and education establishment would
be a little less arrogant about superimposing their will on homeschooling families who prefer
to opt out of their system. But you would be wrong.
Homeschoolers
vs. big brother: Legislators and the liberal media are pushing for increased regulation of homeschooling
parents, including criminal background checks, because the grass-roots movement gravely threatens their
socialist agenda of promoting dependency.
Government
agent, cops confront homeschoolers: [The parents] contend that no government
entity has the legal right to force their children to take standardized tests, even
though DSS workers have threatened to take their children from them.
California homeschool advocates celebrate
"victory": California homeschool advocates are breathing a sigh of relief after the state education
department reversed its former stance that home education is illegal.
Illinois Home Schoolers Told to Resist
Demands of Area Superintendent: The Home School Legal Defense Association is urging home-schooling
families in northeastern Illinois to ignore demands that they attend a pre-trial hearing to prove they are in
compliance with the law.
Homeschoolers get a knock on the
door from police: A public school superintendent [in Illinois] has sent police in squad cars to
the houses of homeschooling families to deliver his demand that they appear for a "pre-trial hearing" to prove
they are in compliance with the law.
Tune in, turn around, drop
out: If you are for constitutionally limited government, freedom, individual rights, self
government, personal responsibility and accountability to God, you are a rebel in today's America. The
political-cultural status quo opposes all of that.
Why Christians don't belong in
government schools - Part 1: "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America
the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
The rantings of a right-wing fanatic? No, it's the conclusion of the National Commission on Excellence in
Education, convened 21 years ago by U.S. Education Secretary Terrence Bell.
Why Christians don't belong in
government schools - Part 2: These are not people who are deliberately trying to destroy
youth. They are, rather, people who fervently believe, with a religious zeal, in a radically different
worldview than the one in which you believe, in which most Americans believe.
Why Christians don't belong in
government schools - Part 3: Some Christians, aware that the modern public school has become a
God-free zone, comfort themselves with the notion that their Christian children are bearing witness to their
unsaved peers. This, increasingly, is being seen for what it is – a convenient excuse.
Carolinas React To NEA's Anti-Home-Schooling
Resolution: Home-schooling parents say the claims that home education isn't comprehensive are unfounded.
Why are Christians losing
America? [Quoting John W. Chalfant] Once God was shown the door, America went into chaos.
Scholastic Aptitude Test scores plummeted. Violent crime rocketed upward. The abortion mills did an
unprecedented business as they devised ever-more-sadistic ways to kill children before and even during birth.
Home-school
battle heats up in California: Confusion over California's insistence
that home-schooling is illegal has prompted the state's superintendent of public
instruction to call on lawmakers for help.
District digs its heels in over home
educators: Family facing prosecution and jail over "truancy" considers lawsuit.
Let's
get government, not God - out of our schools: Instead of
fighting to retain God in government schools, why not battle to
remove government from education? That is the real outrage.
Homeschooling Must Be
Decriminalized: Parents Really Do Know Best. Every fall, as students
return to school, the education debate intensifies. This year it is especially visible
in California — even though the state pumps $45.7 billion a year into K-12 public
education, California's public schools are still among the worst in the country. Critics of
public schools are arguing for alternatives to public education, including school vouchers and charter
schools. However, hardly anyone is citing the merits of homeschooling, the most successful and
affordable alternative to date. Instead, liberals and defenders of the public school system
attempt to criminalize and stigmatize homeschooling as deficient in educating and socializing
children.
Crusading
to Keep Kids Clueless: Public Education Monopoly Cracks Down on Home
Schooling. As I've said many times before, there's nothing like stiff
competition to bring out the worst in government. Nowhere does this prove more true
than in the battle between home-schooling parents and public school bureaucrats.
Home Schooling Popularity Grows as Public
Education Falters: The popularity of home schooling is growing every semester as more and more
parents in the U.S. opt out of the public education system. And a recent survey found that 75% of
Americans support the right to home school children.
Public education vs. homeschoolers:
When you read about the state of California's latest assaults against its homeschoolers, don't just dismiss it as
another left-coast phenomenon that doesn't affect you. This is bigger than California and involves more than education.
Publik Skool
Biggotz: Despite criminally low test scores, enormous waste, unsafe classrooms and administrative
incompetence, the public schools remain a hallowed and untouchable fixture. The snickering snobs of the
education establishment smear those who seek to protect their children from that corrupted system as ignorant
and intolerant anti-government radicals.
Home
schooling has come a long way: In 1984, five Florida home schooling families were prosecuted for
truancy and one family temporarily lost custody of its children. Home-schooling parents often had to suffer
the disdain of neighbors, ignorant accusations of child abuse, and the hostility of the teachers union. The
Florida State Legislature got the message in 1985 and legalized home schooling.
Charter schools can only help public
education.
School
Choice — Now More Than Ever. Inside of two decades, charter school enrollment in the
U.S. has climbed to 1.1 million from zero. Two tiny voucher programs in Maine and Vermont blossomed
into 21 programs in 13 states and the District of Columbia. Tuition tax credits, once puny and rare,
are now sizeable and commonplace. The idea that teacher pay should be based on performance, not just
seniority, is gaining ground. Not bad for a small band of education reformers facing skepticism from
the liberal media and outright hostility from well-funded, politically connected heavies like the National
Education Association.
"What makes charter schools preferable to traditional schools is that
failing schools can be easily closed down and replaced by new
schools."
– Michael Van Winkle.
The Constitution Favors Parental
Autonomy and Religious Liberty: At its core, the Cleveland Pilot Project Scholarship Program
effects a transfer of power over one of the most basic decisions in a child's education—the decision about
which school a child will attend—from State officials to parents. Far from representing some radical
departure, the program harmonizes with our rich constitutional tradition that recognizes the central role of
parents in the education upbringing of their children.
Study Finds
Home Schooled Children Better at Social Skills: Despite a 1999 statement from the National
Education Association that, "home schooling cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education
experience," a study released earlier this month shows home-schooled students are actually more socially and
academically dvanced than their peers.
Home-schoolers outperform
peers: Home-schooled children in Canada and the United States are more "academically advanced"
than their public and private school-educated peers, according to a noted policy research group.
Maryland
Home Schoolers Fight for their Rights.
Home-schoolers' college wins debate
honors: Patrick Henry students take 8 trophies in first
year of competition.
Revolution via home schooling: The only
effective group of citizens today in open opposition to big government are the home schoolers. They are
the only Americans willing to take on the public education system that props up the entire statist enterprise of
big, intrusive government. Forget about conservative politicians. They are more concerned about
conserving their legislative privileges than rolling back increasingly intrusive government.
Book review
Can Teachers Own Their Own
Schools? Despite more than 15 years of effort, it is widely acknowledged that internal reform
of the public schools has produced little if any success. This has led to renewed interest in alternative
forms of educational delivery to devolve decision-making through charter schools, public and private voucher
plans, contracting out educational services, and home schooling. However, such reforms have largely been
resisted by public school interest groups, including teacher unions, state departments of education, colleges of
education, and school board and administrator organizations that have fought any but the most benign changes.
Another book review
School Choices: True
and False. Economist John Merrifield shows that the "school choice" movement has become
mired in false alternatives, petty distinctions, and diminished vision. Yet, he argues that
programs providing real educational choices must not be allowed to fail like so many government
programs — a freely competitive market for education must remain the ultimate goal.
Vouchers, Charter Schools, and School Choice:
Cincinnati Public Schools Lose Students to
Choice. Cincinnati Public Schools lost 510 students this year to vouchers. The remaining
voucher recipients are kindergartners or charter students who would have been assigned to the poor-performing
schools. District Superintendent Rosa Blackwell declined to be interviewed about vouchers because of a
scheduling issue, district spokeswoman Janet Walsh said. The student losses could cost the system about
$3.3 million in state aid, according to the Ohio Department of Education.
The "Problem Profiteers":
In one survey, 83% of black respondents who knew about school vouchers said they were in favor of choice programs
"where parents can send their children to any public or private school that will accept them." Yet in a floor
vote at the 1993 NAACP convention, delegates passed a resolution opposing voucher programs that would provide
low-income children with the means to attend private schools.
School Choice Could Help Lower Latino
Dropout Rate. Latino students are leading the pack when it comes to dropping out
of high school, according to a study by the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), and
two leading researchers say school choice could help solve the problem.
Is Obama Another Elitist Limousine
Leftist? The left in America pretends to care about poor people, but many of them seem more interested
in serving the interests of powerful lobbies such as trial lawyers and teacher unions. The education issue
is a great example. Leftists such as Ted Kennedy and Al Gore have been fierce opponents of school
choice and other proposals to reduce the power of the government education monopoly. Yet they send their
children to private schools.
Kentucky's quest for school choice: America's
schools were locally controlled and funded for more than 200 years. However, that rich legacy
ended in 1839 when Horace Mann, the first Secretary of Education, organized state-mandated, publicly funded
schools. Since then, local control of our schools has weakened considerably. As a result, little
or no accountability exists to ensure our children receive the quality public education necessary to enable
them to compete effectively in the evolving global marketplace.
Black Flight: Something momentous is
happening here in [Minneapolis] the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American
families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter
schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools.
New Orleans Parents Shop for Public
Schools. More than 100 parents, some with children in tow, browsed dozens of booths at the New
Orleans Arena on August 5 in an exercise only an upheaval such as Hurricane Katrina might have
created. They were shopping for public schools, viewing various schools' offerings as a
grocery shopper might inspect melons.
Want
to Help the Middle Class? Embrace School Choice. Promises to help the middle class are as
common in campaigns as yard signs. Both political parties claim their agenda will benefit the middle
class the most. Democrats typically see more government — new regulations and services — as
the solution. They push for a higher minimum wage, more government provided healthcare, more
government funding for daycare, subsidies for college costs, and other government programs.
School Choice for Students in
Underperforming Public Schools. Millions of students across the United States are
enrolled in persistently failing public schools. … In addition, failing schools serve a
disproportionately high number of low-income children. In the large school districts
of New York City and Los Angeles, for example, as many as 300,000 children are attending the
most persistently underperforming public schools.
Competition
works. It works because it gives people the chance to be creative. Educational
experts, freed from the massive regulations that snarl the public schools, can come up with new and
better ideas for teaching.
Open education to innovation.
The last thing we need, contrary to what the American Federation of Teachers seems to be
saying, is to preserve our disastrous status quo. We need innovation. The U.S. has
shown mankind that that nothing unleashes innovation and creativity like free markets.
Time for
choice and competition. From the uproar the governor's plan generated, you would think
that South Carolina had a great school system in place and that the governor wanted to demolish
it. But it doesn't, and he didn't.
The lessons
of school choice: Choosing how your children are educated should be as routine in America
as the ability to choose your neighborhood, your church, and your place of employment.
School choice
threatened: Thanks to an active school-choice movement, funded and staffed by
dedicated and principled private citizens, an increasing number of American parents have the
quintessentially American opportunity of choosing where to send their child to school.
"The behavior of young people in society is of particular importance; it should, above all things,
be marked with propriety in the presence of superiors and elders: the youth who does not learn
betimes a seemly behavior in company will scarcely know how to conduct himself judiciously on
any future occasion."
– George Crabb (1778-1851).
Milwaukee Begins to Ration School
Choice. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction officially announced on
December 27 its plan for rationing seats in the 15-year-old Milwaukee Parental Choice
Program in the 2006-07 school year. The plan, required by state law, means hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of students will not be able to return to the schools they now attend.
Apply "ownership society"
to government schools. President Bush has become, quite rightly, an
evangelist for the virtues of private property, speaking about an "ownership society" just
about everywhere he goes. Just about everywhere, that is, except when he visits a
government-owned school. Then he is a big-government man.
Educational
Freedom In Urban America: In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated
public schools unconstitutional. The ruling in Brown v. Board of Education set
public education on a course toward equality. Yet, five decades later, schools are not
equal. Minority children living in America's inner cities suffer disproportionately
from a failing education system, with black and Hispanic students dropping out of public
high schools at much higher rates than whites. There is, however, reason for
hope. The expansion of school choice offers new opportunities for children
struggling in failing schools.
A
Choice Future for Students: The big winners on Election Day weren't politicians. They were students. That's
because many of the politicians who won — Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Senator-elect
James Talent of Missouri, to name just two — are vocal supporters of school choice.
To Improve, Public Schools Need Competition, Not
More Money: According to the U.S. Department of Education, public education spending in Illinois
jumped 26 percent in the five years through school year 2001-02, with spending per student up almost
22 percent. Spending per student in 2001-02 was $7,600, above the national average of $7,525.
Revenues per student were over $8,000. If 61 percent of Illinois school districts are operating at a
deficit, then taxpayers certainly aren't to blame.
More than
a Lifeboat: an interview with John D. Merrifield: We don't need school
choice as a lifeboat; we need it as a reform catalyst. We have a low-performing educational
system where some schools are better than others, but few are good. In the suburban
districts, the schools are better, but not necessarily good.
Ten Principles of School
Choice. Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled school vouchers are constitutional
in 2002, grassroots activists around the country have been organizing to support pasage of
school choice programs. Legislatures passed statewide programs in Florida and Colorado,
and other states are expected to follow their lead. Some 35 cities have privately
funded voucher programs.
Trapped in the wrong
government school. If you're a public-school student, your chances in life may be largely
dependent on where you live — not just which country, not just which state, but which little
bureaucratic zone. In San Jose, Calif., many parents want to get their kids in Fremont Union schools
because they're so much better than neighboring schools. So parents sometimes cheat to get their
kids in. At least cheating is what local officials call it.
Separating school
and state: It's time to put an end to government control of the schools. There
is nothing indispensable about a state role in education. Parents don't expect the government
to provide their children's food or clothing or medical care; there is no reason why it must
provide their schooling.
Polls Show Vouchers Are Popular and
Would Be Widely Used … But negative wording results in under-reporting of voucher
support. Only 42 percent of Americans polled in the latest Phi Delta Kappa
International/Gallup Poll say they are in favor of vouchers. Yet the same poll reports
57 percent of Americans say they would use full-tuition vouchers, if they were available,
to enroll their children in private schools. A new national study conducted by leading
research firm WirthlinWorldwide suggests an explanation for the discrepancy: The use of negative
wording in a key poll question reduces the reported support for vouchers by more than 20 percentage
points.
Three Objections to
School Vouchers … Answered. Every time a student uses a voucher to
move from a government school to a private one, the budgets of government schools
shrink. In this way, vouchers gradually defund government schools. If
vouchers were adopted by cities and states nationwide, millions of jobs and hundreds of
billions of dollars would move from the government to the private sector. This
is a critical point in the case for vouchers that critics fail to address.
National Study Raises Question
of Bias in Annual Phi Delta Kappa Poll. The study, sponsored by the
Friedman Foundation, set out to determine, using a sound methodology of split sampling,
if the annual Phi Delta Kappa poll, to be released on August 24, used wording that
could artificially lower support for school choice.
$5,000 Voucher Would Open Most School
Doors. There are already many affordable high-quality private schools on the market, and, once they
are allowed to compete on a level playing field with government schools, many more will come into operation.
Uneducated Youth Threaten America's
Future. Despite an increasing awareness that the U.S. public education system offers widely
differing educational opportunities to different ethnic and income groups, the system will change for
the better only when it is exposed to competition from charter schools or vouchers, says former U.S.
Representative Reverend Floyd H. Flake.
What Is Capitalism? Many criticisms
of school vouchers are actually thinly veiled criticisms of capitalism, the way the economy in the U.S. (and
most of the rest of the world) is organized.
DC Vouchers Return to Front Burner:
Representative Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) is quoted as saying, "The best thing we can do to improve education is to
expand parental choice and increase competition…."
Vouchers Within Reason: A
Trojan Horse to Control Private Schools. Finally, someone on the left has presented a thoughtful
rationale for why leftists should favor vouchers: They can use vouchers to push religion out of private
schools and further reduce the ability of parents to inculcate their values into their children.
The Voucher Trap: In the 1941 case of
Wickard vs. Filburn, the Supreme Court said that "It is hardly lack of due process for the government to
regulate that which it subsidizes." When the trap springs, and the victims scream out their anguish, the
truly private schools' owners will receive their vindication.
Canada's
experience shows that school choice works: Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court early this summer
gave school choice a green light, anti-choicers have asserted that vouchers are chancy because they've only been
tested on a small scale so far. Canadians know that's not true -- 92 percent of the people
to the north of us live in areas with school choice.
Educational
Vouchers: Saving public education is not the same as, and may indeed be exactly the opposite to,
saving children.
Ten benefits of School Liberation:
When government involvement with education is ended, we can prudently predict at least ten changes in America's
schooling systems.
Conservative
Education Scholars Say School Choice is Working: School choice initiatives are showing promise,
conservative education scholars believe. A school choice scholar, who spoke at the Heritage Foundation
press conference in Washington, D.C., indicates that the fears of school choice opponents are unfounded.
No
Voice, No Exit: The Inefficiency of America's Public Schools.
A Tale
of Senate Obstructionism Courtesy of Senator Edward Kennedy: Unlike Senator Kennedy and the NAACP
leaders who pose as champions of the underprivileged, Gerald Reynolds supports school choice scholarship
programs for poor black kids cheated by rotten public schools. He calls it the great "civil rights
issue" of our time. No wonder Ted Kennedy hates him.
A
Minority View: Educational Vouchers: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Cleveland school
voucher case, Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris, that taxpayer funds that go to parents who might use the money to
enroll their children in religious schools was constitutional. One need not be a rocket scientist to
understand why.
School Choice Works: Private
high-school graduates are more likely to be professionals, technicians, managers, proprietors and salesmen.
Their public-school counterparts more likely are craftsmen, laborers, farmers and service workers.
Vouchers
vindicated: If there has actually been harm done to the public schools by
vouchers, there ought to be evidence of it by now. But voucher critics have none, after
all these years, and rely on scary but unsubstantiated theories instead. What we are
really talking about are the teachers' unions wanting to keep a captive audience, for
the sake of their members' jobs, and social engineers wanting to control low-income
children and their parents, as they themselves would never want to be controlled.
Vouchers: Neither
Panacea Nor Poison: Would education vouchers solve all of America's
education problems? No, but we can't "fix" education until we "fix" who makes the
decisions about education. The people who make the decisions are those who control
the money.
Southern Baptist Subsection:
Are Southern Baptists about to
Abandon Government Schools? A resolution recently submitted to the Southern
Baptist Convention for its annual meeting to be held in Indianapolis on June 15–16 calls
on parents in this country's largest Protestant denomination to pull their children out
of government schools, and either homeschool them or send them to private Christian schools.
Simply Rearing
Pagans: Between 12 and 15 million evangelical Christian children
attend public schools. If the mass majority of these students were to leave public
education, it would cripple the one system that is doing more harm to our nation than any
single thing except perhaps the popular media.
On the "sin" of sending kids to
public school: The man who helped push the issue of public education onto the national agenda of
the Southern Baptist Convention has written a new book that blows the lid off government schools, showing
parents the kind of worldview and values their children are influenced by 180 days a year. … "The
truth is that the public school policy and curriculum decisions that matter to Christians are not made
locally. They are largely dictated by federal and state court decisions, federal and state legislation and
regulations, and the teachers' union and other professional associations connected with the public schools."
What happens then?
Will the transition hurt some children? We can go
in one of two directions: a) continue down the present road of bringing more and more families into
dependency with such notions as school breakfast, school clinics, longer day, and longer year, or b) we
can reverse the 160-year slide into parental dependency and move toward more family responsibility for education.
Resources for parents investigating their
options
New: Baptist Home Schoolers
Pushing for SBC to Vote on Public School Resolutions. Home-schooling families
in the Southern Baptist Convention are urging the denomination to vote on a resolution that
calls on Baptists to shield their children from homosexual indoctrination in public schools.
The same idea returns in 2006:
Baptists: Plan exit from government
schools. A group of Baptists activists who two years ago tried to get the Southern Baptist
Convention to approve a resolution urging the faithful to pull their children out of government schools
announced they are proposing a similar measure this year.
However...
SBC Official Questions Wisdom of Public
School 'Exit Strategy' Proposal. The chairman of the Resolutions Committee for next month's
Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is being careful not to throw his support behind
the idea of developing a plan to remove Baptist children from public schools.
Books and Internet Resources
Book review:
The
Harsh Truth About Public Schools: [Bruce Shortt's] advice is to parents: Get your children
out of the system! Home school them if you can. If that's not possible, find a private school where
the textbooks, teachers, and other parents will be reinforcing what you and your spouse are teaching your
children.
Book review:
Let
My Children Go. I have read many books on home education, but never one that touched on sensitive
issues such as socialist indoctrination through "group-think". Government schools are not broken —
they are performing exactly as planned. Christian parents of infants, toddlers and preschoolers work
diligently "to train up a child in the way he should go". Then, at the tender age of five, pack the child
off to government school, to have everything planted in their child's heart completely destroyed.
Web site:
The Exodus Mandate: Don't simply ask what kind of
education you want for your children. Ask what kind of people do you want them to become!
Web site:
Alliance for the Separation of School and State:
The goal of separation is best achieved one family at a time. The brightest future for education begins
with you. If you're a parent, we offer not only the chance to learn how the government came to control
education, but also ideas, resources and encouragement to help you on your road to educational freedom, as
well as true stories of others who have already chosen educational freedom.
Personal anecdotes
This is a subject with which I have personal experience. Our son was homeschooled from
the third grade all the way through high school. He is now halfway through college and
doing very well academically and socially.
One factor that really helped our homeschooling experience is that my wife is a state-certified teacher.
Very recently, she went to work as a full-time math teacher at the local high school (in a Dallas
suburb), and confirmed right away that every bad thing we've heard or suspected about public schools is
true. Many high school kids in public schools appear to have vocabularies of 500 words or less, much of
which is unfit for publication on this web site. Thanks to television, they have a maximum attention
span of about ten seconds. Audacity, arrogance and aggressively bad taste are on display everywhere.
High school kids are totally dependent on calculators to do the simplest math problems, because the availability
of electronic calculators is guaranteed throughout the school. Some of them can't tell time on an
analog clock, because digital clocks are the only kind they ever see. Recently one "student" (using
the term loosely) asked a security guard for the time of day, and was told "It's a quarter to five." Then
the kid got indignant because the security guard wouldn't tell her the time! This is a high school student,
mind you, who was unable to figure out what a quarter of an hour would be, because she has not learned how to work
with fractions. My wife asked an eleventh grade girl, "What is zero minus seven?" The poor girl
had to admit that she had no inkling of the answer — not even a guess. Many of the kids who are taking
Algebra II don't know anything about how to solve an equation, which they should have
learned in the eighth grade, or about fractions, which they should have learned in elementary
school. Public school kids almost seem to take pride in their ignorance
and anti-intellectualism, and are quick to blame everything and
everyone but themselves for their failures.
When politicians tell you "we need more money for education", that is a lie. This high school is
as big as most colleges, and it looks like an airport terminal with hallway after spacious hallway of
first-rate classrooms. The facilities are second to none. There is a huge new auditorium, a natatorium,
and a new football stadium as well. (Earlier I had said they had an olympic-size pool, but as it
turns out, this pool is half that size — a mere 25 meters by 25 yards.) The taxpayers have poured millions of dollars into the
physical facilities and it hasn't helped academics at all.
The school's top priorities are the football team, the band, and
the TAKS test at the
end of the year. Discipline, decorum, and the dress code are secondary concerns at best. As a result, the kids
won't keep quiet in class, they cheat, they lie, they'll steal anything that isn't bolted down, they send text
messages to each other via cell phones, they throw paper wads at the teachers, and they don't care about
learning.
You might get the idea that I'm engaging in harmful stereotypes, or at least painting an unflattering picture
with a very broad brush. And yet the overwhelming majority of the kids enrolled in this
school — I hesitate to call them "students" — have a great deal in common. There
seems to be no stigma associated with
illegitimacy, promiscuity
or fatherlessness. Anti-intellectualism
makes it fashionable to be ignorant. Overexposure to television (and Hollywood) gets them
accustomed to destructive behavior and corrosive communication. And despite decades of
better-than-equal opportunity, they
still think of themselves as victims of
someone else's prejudice.
Of course they aren't all hopeless. There are a few kids who want to learn, who want
to go to college, and who want to do better than their parents mothers. But most
of the kids who graduate from this school will be ill prepared for a life that does not involve
flipping burgers, selling drugs, or welfare dependency. If these kids are "America's
future", we're going to need more prisons.
Updated 9/16/2006:
My wife lasted five weeks as a public school teacher. That was enough. No amount of money
could get her to teach there for an entire semester.
Read more about it, from her
perspective, here.
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