<story><title>Home schooling&apos;s rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/homeschooling-growth-data-by-district/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dmazzoni</author><text>Are you comparing the best public schools to the best homeschools? Or the worst to the worst? Or the average to the average?&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the education kids get at the worst 20% of public schools in the country is still way better than the worst 20% of homeschoolers.&lt;p&gt;I also would totally believe that the education kids get at the top 20% of homeschools is better than the average public school.&lt;p&gt;Public schools are far from perfect, but there are minimum standards and there are resources at the state and federal level to try to improve schools that aren&amp;#x27;t meeting those standards.&lt;p&gt;My problem with homeschools is that in most states, there aren&amp;#x27;t any standards being enforced. If homeschools had surprise inspections and biannual state-run testing, I&amp;#x27;d be fine with it.</text></item><item><author>keiferski</author><text>Sure, I don&amp;#x27;t think anyone denies that there are some home schooling horror stories. But it really doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like most public schools do a great job either, so the question is if this broken system damages more people than one dominated by home schooling.</text></item><item><author>pixl97</author><text>There are plenty of &amp;#x27;public school&amp;#x27; horror stories because these things are public and can be audited in a great number of cases.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t get to hear the homeschooling horrors when they happen because they are private. Maybe you&amp;#x27;ll be a therapist and years later get to talk to one of these people how they are effectively crippled for the rest of their life. Or you&amp;#x27;ll be like me that grew up in a place that had a bunch of religious organizations that homeschooled most of their children with educations that I&amp;#x27;d consider completely and totally deficient, and then pull those same people back into the organization as cheap&amp;#x2F;uneducated labor they could abuse.</text></item><item><author>keiferski</author><text>It seems to me that the only relevant question here is how home schooling compares to public schools when it comes to “horror stories.” And there certainly aren’t a lack of public school horror stories…</text></item><item><author>CharlesW</author><text>There are many home-schooling success stories, and also many home-schooling horror stories.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;gazette&amp;#x2F;story&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;law-school-professor-says-there-may-be-a-dark-side-of-homeschooling&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;gazette&amp;#x2F;story&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;law-school-pr...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>brightball</author><text>When I moved into my current house about 10 years ago, the family next door home schooled. I&amp;#x27;d never known any home schoolers before and definitely had some notions about how terrible it must be until I learned about it.&lt;p&gt;This family was part of a home school group with other families. The kids went to different houses every day and had an instructor focus on 1 subject for half of the day, mixed in with free time, depending on the age. 2 subjects per day, so as a parent your teaching commitment was a half day a week on 1 subject.&lt;p&gt;They would do field trips. They held a school play in a garage complete with costumes and video. And the kids were smart, well mannered, socially adjusted kids with very happy and normal lives. And there are plenty of sports opportunities as well. As far as I know, they all went to public high school too.&lt;p&gt;Completely shifted my view of what I thought home schooling was, which was the kids stuck in 1 house with 1 parent all day in social isolation.&lt;p&gt;The reality was closer to a model of a Montessori school which has a huge amount of success stories.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>NoMoreNicksLeft</author><text>I read r&amp;#x2F;teachers every few days.&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, there was a teach complaining that they weren&amp;#x27;t allowed to flunk students who did not show up for class. For middle school. They weren&amp;#x27;t allowed to flunk students who scored 0% on tests, because they would sit at the back of class and play on smartphones the entire time, or disruptively talk to other students.&lt;p&gt;When they would demand from administration some kind of answer, they&amp;#x27;d be told they weren&amp;#x27;t doing enough to engage the students.&lt;p&gt;You claim there are minimum standards, and technically that&amp;#x27;s true... any of us could look those standards up on the internet in only a moment, those standards are ignored for some incredibly large fraction of public schools.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; If homeschools had surprise inspections and biannual state-run testing, I&amp;#x27;d be fine with it.&lt;p&gt;The great thing is, I don&amp;#x27;t have to put up with you being fine with how my wife and I teach our children. We don&amp;#x27;t have to answer to you.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not just a contrarian here. You are fine with what the public schools are doing, right now. Your oversight, such as it is, doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be effective at doing any of the things that I could want. It does lead me to be suspicious about what it is that you want.</text></comment>
<story><title>Home schooling&apos;s rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/homeschooling-growth-data-by-district/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dmazzoni</author><text>Are you comparing the best public schools to the best homeschools? Or the worst to the worst? Or the average to the average?&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the education kids get at the worst 20% of public schools in the country is still way better than the worst 20% of homeschoolers.&lt;p&gt;I also would totally believe that the education kids get at the top 20% of homeschools is better than the average public school.&lt;p&gt;Public schools are far from perfect, but there are minimum standards and there are resources at the state and federal level to try to improve schools that aren&amp;#x27;t meeting those standards.&lt;p&gt;My problem with homeschools is that in most states, there aren&amp;#x27;t any standards being enforced. If homeschools had surprise inspections and biannual state-run testing, I&amp;#x27;d be fine with it.</text></item><item><author>keiferski</author><text>Sure, I don&amp;#x27;t think anyone denies that there are some home schooling horror stories. But it really doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like most public schools do a great job either, so the question is if this broken system damages more people than one dominated by home schooling.</text></item><item><author>pixl97</author><text>There are plenty of &amp;#x27;public school&amp;#x27; horror stories because these things are public and can be audited in a great number of cases.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t get to hear the homeschooling horrors when they happen because they are private. Maybe you&amp;#x27;ll be a therapist and years later get to talk to one of these people how they are effectively crippled for the rest of their life. Or you&amp;#x27;ll be like me that grew up in a place that had a bunch of religious organizations that homeschooled most of their children with educations that I&amp;#x27;d consider completely and totally deficient, and then pull those same people back into the organization as cheap&amp;#x2F;uneducated labor they could abuse.</text></item><item><author>keiferski</author><text>It seems to me that the only relevant question here is how home schooling compares to public schools when it comes to “horror stories.” And there certainly aren’t a lack of public school horror stories…</text></item><item><author>CharlesW</author><text>There are many home-schooling success stories, and also many home-schooling horror stories.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;gazette&amp;#x2F;story&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;law-school-professor-says-there-may-be-a-dark-side-of-homeschooling&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.harvard.edu&amp;#x2F;gazette&amp;#x2F;story&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;law-school-pr...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>brightball</author><text>When I moved into my current house about 10 years ago, the family next door home schooled. I&amp;#x27;d never known any home schoolers before and definitely had some notions about how terrible it must be until I learned about it.&lt;p&gt;This family was part of a home school group with other families. The kids went to different houses every day and had an instructor focus on 1 subject for half of the day, mixed in with free time, depending on the age. 2 subjects per day, so as a parent your teaching commitment was a half day a week on 1 subject.&lt;p&gt;They would do field trips. They held a school play in a garage complete with costumes and video. And the kids were smart, well mannered, socially adjusted kids with very happy and normal lives. And there are plenty of sports opportunities as well. As far as I know, they all went to public high school too.&lt;p&gt;Completely shifted my view of what I thought home schooling was, which was the kids stuck in 1 house with 1 parent all day in social isolation.&lt;p&gt;The reality was closer to a model of a Montessori school which has a huge amount of success stories.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>biomcgary</author><text>The reason why many homeschoolers opt out of public schools is because of those minimum standards. Who wants their children to be taught to a minimal standard? My autistic son would still be completely non-verbal (and probably worse) if we put him into the local public school system. We saw the classroom he would have been in, it was horrific. Instead, he has a speech language pathologist working with him one-on-one three to four hours per day.</text></comment>