California parents w/o credentials cannot homeschool

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Except that many of our districts are impacted - the school district my children are in, for example, while to happy to "market" to keep as many children in the district as possible, would not be physically able to accomodate all the children that are currently choosing private or home schooling instead. It's more a matter of staying competitive within the current list of choices, than trying to grab all the potential students.

I don't see our district trying to follow up on that judge's ruling, either. It would be a nightmare. Nobody wants that answer.

But I do hope that the children in the case that was litigated find a better situation as a result of all that family is going through. From what I've read, I not care for the father one bit. I would LOVE to hear from the mother.

I don't know. You should see how excited the district people get when we talk about pulling Pop out. They are closing 4 schools here for "underenrollment", so they can expand on the other side of town. They think nothing of classes with 35 students.
Districts get matching funds from state and Federal gov't, especially from daily attendance rosters and special ed students. Yes, they cry "broke" every chance they get. I'm also surprised at the high absentee rate of the teachers, substitute teachers are very expensive.

They have fundraisers every month for various projects and supplies and still ask for donations (copy paper, crayons, scissors, etc)

Kim, I think I am happy to be in my school district instead of yours

But I can co-miserate on the constant request for donations. I actually am deep into the fundraising at our school, so I get immersed in those finances. I think if I was in a district with a high level of funding per student, I would be really annoyed by it all, but I was surprised to discover that our district has relatively low funding per student. You wouldn't know that by our test scores. Overall, it really does look to me like they are doing a relatively good job with what they have available. Not to say the whole allocation system state-wide couldn't be better, but that is what it is and our district deals with it.

Our teacher contracts don't allow more than 28 students in a classroom, and our district has tried to keep to the state mandate for no more than 20 students in a k-2 classroom, although there could be a point where the need to go over that exceeds the incentive payments they get for meeting it. But the teacher contract limit would still apply.

I've noticed the same thing you have with substitutes, and there seem to be a myriad of reasons for it, some that seem to institutionalized into the system, and some that are just life. I am not sure there is much wiggle room there. I do know that when my daughter's teacher had been absent quite a bit because a combination of illness and contract talks (she is a teacher's union rep), the school basically told her she had to come in sick, because her class needed to see her face, so it is clear that they do have some limit on it.

We've had problems with the special ed teacher being absent on key days. Like making appointments with other teachers to transfer grade information, not coming in and then missing the information to the point of not turning in my son's grades on time. Or reporting on some awful event and then finding out that the teacher is repeating a story second and third hand because she wasn't there. One time we came in for a conference and she planned to miss school that day and told us that she didn't need to be there. Her absence essentially made us waste our time and have to return for another meeting.

Tucson school district has the lowest per classroom funding in the state and a third of the schools are literally failing.

I think here they get an aide if the class size exceeds a certain number. The schools they are closing have the optimal 1:18 and 1:20 numbers.

Bear with my one last mega-rant here -

For the folks who are painting this uproar as some kind of weird Christian backlash against the culture in general: I have to say that I don't know any fundamentalist Christians. Not one. Nada. Zip. Zilch-o-roonie. I do know one kind of flakey neo-pagan family, but they are not homeschooling for religious reasons. Their kid has some serious health issues. Maybe someone else is upset about the ruling due to religious reasons, but nobody I know has their knickers in a twist about it over religion.

Let me give you the bottom line of my argument first, so you can skip the rest unless you have nothing else to do. I firmly believe that the determining factor in this argument should be the kids - if the kids in question are becoming functional, are learning the material (whatever material is mandated), that's the desired outcome. If so, I don't care if a talking ostrich with purple splotches teaches them in person or via the Internet or satellite radio while they're rafting the Colorado. As long as they are safe, happy, and learning it just doesn't matter.

That being said, most of the people that I know who are home-schooling are doing so for the chance to see that their kids get a decent education in a safe environment and are allowed to progress at their own rates, rather than being held back by their less functional classmates. Some are teaching their children at home because, quite frankly, the kids can't handle being in a factory-school setting. Their neurological issues do not mesh well with a formal school setting. Others have pulled their kids out of schools where the "status quo" was so abysmal as to be detrimental: the level of functioning of the other children in the classes was just terrible and the general cultural attitude toward education was that it was basically free daycare.

I trained to be a teacher here in a major university in California and was absolutely horrified with both the level of expectations in the public schools in which I apprenticed and what passed for "training" that I paid good money to obtain. I'll address the expectations in a moment, but here and now I have to say that I have absolutely no confidence in a teaching certificate meaning much of anything, other than as serving as an entry document into a protectionist guild. I've been through the state-mandated program and I can tell you that, unless it's been significantly revamped in recent years, it's so minimalistic as to be a very bad joke. Again, I have met many self-educated people who are entirely more competent to teach their own children than any graduate from that credential program. Until you start talking about the more demanding upper-division/high-school coursework (calculus, a foreign language, one of the hard sciences, etc.), I do feel that anyone with a high school diploma can get the minimally required information across. Many can do a hell of a lot more, and better.

I have absolutely no doubt that many of the people who go for teaching credentials are serious and want to do the right thing. I met several, and they were extremely impressive in their good intentions. I also know that an awful lot of the people who were in my classes were there because it was the easiest major on campus and they had to be able to make some kind of living. Are all the teacher ed programs the same? I like to think I managed to find the one that was on the list as next up to be overhauled. Too bad I found it before that point. It did meet all the state requirements at the time.

As to the kids in the classroom - student quality does seem to be directly correlated to the socioeconomic status of the neighborhoods. And there is at least an appearance of the better teachers seeming to migrate to the better schools to get out from under the nightmare of working with the marginally functional kids. The facilities are better, the parent support is better, the children's performance is better, and so the teachers perform better. I don't blame them a bit - who would want to go into the trenches every day and be unable to do what you would like to do? Then have people give you all sorts of grief for it? And maybe come out and find your car vandalized in the school parking lot (if not stolen)? I can honestly understand why the "wash out" rate of new teachers is 50% within two years. There's no way for them to win. If they really love teaching, the regulations and the population they serve can definitely work against them. If they land in a good school, in the right neighborhood, more power to 'em. Given that 50% burnout rate, though, I have to think that what are left behind are the really, truly dedicated ones - and the folks who can't make any other living.

My experiences? We were allowed to give my fourth graders one pencil per year. That's all the budget would carry - unless we bought them supplies out of our own pockets. The district mandated that any supply that was necessary for the kids to have had to be provided by the district. No budget meant no supplies. That pretty much hamstrung us. And you've GOT to be kidding me if you think we could send home a sheet of required supplies and that the kids would show up with them. Fantasy land, there. Free daycare, remember?

So why did I loathe sending my kid off to the public schools? As if the above hasn't given you a good clue: I broke up drug deals among fourth-graders and took at least one knife away from an elementary school child. I spoke with parents who said their kids couldn't do their homework because they had soccer practice and how that was so much more important than their kid being able to read well enough to eventually be able to vote or fill in a job application. I spoke with parents who, when I pointed out that their fourth grader (who was supposedly a native English speaker) didn't know what a sentence was and needed remedial work, blew up that I was being "unfair" to their kid and was causing him "mental anguish" by not passing him. (No, really.) He did pass, though. He got a social promotion to the fifth grade. I would assume he ended up in juvenile hall a few years later, as he had the attitude and was functionally illiterate. My master teacher got a certificate of merit for having so many of her students pass.

It's not just California schools that I have a beef about. I moved my family to Texas to go to grad school and so my daughter started school there. When she started kindergarten she was able to read at the third grade level and do her basic math functions. She had already begun to write short (very short) stories., which she illustrated with watercolors and crayons. The teachers had her sit on her hands during "alphabet time" when they taught the other kids their letters, colors, and numbers. When I asked if she couldn't be allowed to have a book to read I was told no, that would be "unfair" to the other children. I asked if she could go to the higher grades during reading times and was told no, that would be "disruptive" to the other kids in the kindergarten. I asked if there was a gifted program, since (given their functional levels at each grade) she seemed to qualify for one and was told there was nothing. There was no program. Period. She would sit in the same room as her "peers" and do the same work at the same time. Even if it was several grade levels below her. She could not work ahead. She was not allowed enrichment exercises.

She came home after a few weeks to tell me that it was not good to be smart, as the teacher would never call on her and the other kids made fun of her because she already knew how to do what they did not. I did a lot of outside work with her there, obviously. And got us the hell out of that school district ASAP.

When we returned to California, she was running several years ahead of her age-mates here, but there were no programs in place to provide her with an appropriate education until she hit middle school. She did have some excellent teachers in that program, when she finally got to it. She was placed in advanced classes for half a day. The other half of the day? Her high school economics teacher had the kids watch "The Apprentice" on TV. They took two weeks to learn how to fill out a Federal EZ income tax form - with a cheat sheet provided to them so they could transfer the dollar amounts to the form - nothing else was discussed about the tax system, or even what they were filling in or why. They were just told "copy the amount from #4 to line #4 on the form".... They watched the old 1950s movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth" in science class because it "was about geology" - it wasn't even that good a bad movie! These were not the remedial level classes, these were the "standard" level classes. You will understand how thrilled I was that she at least had a half-day of GATE classes available. I shudder to think about where the kids who were in the "normal" classes every day have ended up.

From her high school graduation, I remember overhearing a kid not knowing the name of the nearby ocean (you know, the PACIFIC Ocean?). And another talking about the kangaroos in Africa. Not that it really matters - all they have to do is be able to run a cash register that has images of burgers and fries and sodas....

OMG. Just OMG.

Ok. End of rant, my last on this topic. Hopefully it will become a moot issue very soon. PS - Constitutions are written by men. They can be amended. Perhaps that's in order?

This is all ( horrible) news to me; I thought the USA education system was the land of the free.

In France they brought in the annual visits by the Academy ( for the school work )and the local council, (for the social development), after the cult/sect scares in 1989 (?, need to check that date), at least that's what was given as the reason. ( If the woman candidate for presidency last year, Royale (?), had been elected she would have instituted obligatory schooling from 3 years old. )

You get out of the academic visits if you follow an accredited correspondence course.

There is no requirement for any educational level for the parents, which is odd in france which trains its teachers hard. But instead the child is tested to see if is advancing.

Some/a few brave strong parents ( that's not me; we do the min nec on a correspondence course to avoid any risk) who follow free style/home unschooling principles, have managed to persuade inspectors of their good and serious intentions even when the child is not at all at the usual level for its age. Apparently the bottom line is that the child should reach national guideline standards at age 16. In french, maths, history, geography, science, computing, civics, a second language, and something else.

If they do not you can be put in prison or fined for negligence. As KimJ points out, imagine if every teacher and/or school failing to educate its students to the national standard was fined/imprisoned. Basically it would be most schools, and most teachers.

The govt in france is taking out on homeschooling its rage and impotence, its bafflement and embarrassment about the modern state of education. Because the state version works so badly anyone showing/proving that unqualified members of the public, ( mere parents), can do it better, is being inflammatory/provocative.

And the govt's reaction is scarily totalitarian. We are "harassed". Put under pressure. Home-schooling is a radical political activity, going by how heavily the state controls and polices it, and punishes its smallest mostly imaginary failures. As JohnTaylorGatto's site about schooling shows vividly, schooling has become more and more regulated rather than freer, and produces more and more badly educated people, ( but better and better consumers) .

The educational system in the US varies widely, because the people have wanted local control over education. Some state interference. Less federal. It can be a great thing, and it can be a bad one.

I live in an area with a fantastic school system. My child is actually enrolled in one of the lower scoring schools, but that results from having diversity in all it's forms. You cannot expect a child who has only been speaking English for 6 months to score well on a test in English. But that diversity, I have discovered, in the end, is GREAT for education. ESPECIALLY for an Aspie child like mine.

The school teaches to the individual child from day 1. DAY 1. Looking for each child's unique needs, and teaching ALL the children in the class to respect ALL the children in the class. Whether they are dark skinned, light skinned, speak English or Spanish, sit quietly or flap their hands.

Nan, I am sorry that you experienced the downside of an inconsistent educational system, but that should never be used to judge all schools. I congratulate every last teacher in our school, every last administrator, the principal, the special education department, on a job well done.

I would never have even know my son was an Aspie if it had not been for them. They called it. I knew something was causing my son issues, and asked for an evaluation, but I never in a million years imagined it as a spectrum disorder.

The miracle, once you see it in practice, is that the students having more difficulty in class don't have to lower the bar for everyone. Instead, they can actually become part of raising it. A few months ago a new student came into my NT daughter's class, into my daughter's table group. She was very far behind acedemically and socially. My daughter caught it right off. But my daughter and her table mates, with the encourage of their teacher, have made the choice to help her out. They have made friends with her, they help her with the skills, they help her listen, they refuse to allow her to copy. In the end, all of the children are benefiting from the process. It has been fascinating to watch. And really beautiful.

I read a study about half a year ago extolling this very concept, using the bright children to help the ones who struggle, and how a study showed it raised the bar for everyone.

I rarely hear a parent of a gifted child complain that their child is bored. On those rare occassions, it is addressed immediately. We barely have a GATE program, there is no money for it, and all classes are integrated with students at all levels. Yet the kids are not bored. Because the school works hard to address the needs of each individual student.

Almost half of my son's grade has been GATE qualified. Can you believe that ratio? WOW. My Aspie son opted out the first time it was brought up, because he felt he had enough on his plate, but we will be getting him GATE qualified for middle school. I still worry about the additional work load and stress, but as his teacher pointed out, he can always bounce down from an honors class to a regular class; going the other way is more difficult. So, he is choosing to try it.

I realize there are bad schools and bad teachers out there. But it is not fair to the good ones to rant against the school system in one big swell swoop. If a parent looks for a good experience, they can find one. I am convinced of it.