Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

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The rise of totally unregulated and unassessed homeschooling probably scares me more than any other long term problem we have in the country. Most of the other problems we face can be fixed by an educated population, but if we lose that, we won't be able to fix anything. We're eroding our global edge in terms of having an educated population, and the constant efforts towards chipping away public school are accelerating this. The possibility of taxpayers funding this erosion is just icing on the cake.

Yes, there are good examples of homeschooling. I'm not saying they aren't. How many of these "as many as 2.7 million home-schooled children" (they don't even have a way of counting them!) are ending up with a better-than-public education, and how many of them are ending up at a 2nd grade math level and believing Jesus rode dinosaurs?

If you disagree, please read the article! These "schools" are totally unmonitored. Literally anything can be taught and it counts as education. And many states actively forbid oversight or even disclosure by parents.

Your comment makes it sound like the only people choosing to homeschool are ultra religious nuts. That is absolutely not what the numbers say.

It is two things:

1. The pandemic exposed to parents that many teachers were doing a poor job and lazy educators.

2. A small number of politically biased teachers being allowed to push views onto children.

Get teachers unions to hold teachers accountable and to some minimal standard and the problem is resolved.

Instead, teachers unions put all their efforts into resisting any accountability and protecting political activist teachers.

Why can’t we all agree to make teachers do their jobs and stop them from politically indoctrinating students?

Practically speaking, homeschooling will usually require one parent stay at home. That isn't a luxury that a lot of families have and will tend to be higher income families which usually goes with higher educated parents. Higher educated parents tend to have value education so I don't think there's a risk for them to get a poor education.

> That isn't a luxury that a lot of families have and will tend to be higher income families which usually goes with higher educated parents. Higher educated parents tend to have value education so I don't think there's a risk for them to get a poor education.

The most non sequitur.

You got any of them datas to back up those claims?

Or did you get that from the school home.

Oof

The article has examples of "bad" homeschooling, but the growth trend the past few years is largely driven by the total failure of some public schools.

I went to a particularly good public school growing up, and I'm not opposed to them in principle. Just pointing out that when your only public option is a school that is utterly failing (https://www.illinoispolicy.org/1-in-6-chicago-third-graders-...) you might want a different option.

Oh for sure! I have no doubt that terrible public schools exist, parents who are focused on academics exist, and good homeschooling resources/groups exist. And when you get that magical combination, homeschooling might be justified.

So, measure to ensure that's what's happening! Monitor and assess. Know how many kids are being pulled out, and know how adequate their alternate education is. And provide a regulatory regime to ensure it's adequate.

Pulling a kid out of a bad school and providing an academically rigorous education should be fine. Pulling a kid out of a not-bad school so that unqualified high-school drop-outs can teach from the Bible that pi=3 and that the Earth is 6,000 years old should not be fine. The public should be able to differentiate between theses cases, allow one, and disallow the other.

I don't object to the concept of some line being drawn, but your line is so broad and blunt that I and many others would definitely have issues with it.

What issue could you possibly have with the reasonable and sensible line drawn in that comment? Are you ok with "science" being taught from a magical religious text?

> The article has examples of "bad" homeschooling, but the growth trend the past few years is largely driven by the total failure of some public schools.

Public education is undermined by the very people who want homeschooling and public vouchers. It's being dismantled deliberately. As a strong supporter of education, in general, I'm horrified by the future we're creating for future generations.

> Public education is undermined by the very people who want homeschooling and public vouchers

The whole article is about how those are two distinct groups who are at odds with each other- home schooling parents don't want to receive vouchers on the whole.

In any case, public education has plenty of challenges; homeschoolers are the least of them.

From the utter lack of involvement of parents (child tardiness, behavior issues) to lack of teacher authority (unable to prevent disruptive behavior from derailing classes) to some districts having too many students who don't know English and not enough funding for sufficient ESL teaching resources, all the way down to funds being drained by oversized administrations and unions (remember the NYC rubber rooms?).

Some of the worst performing schools get the most per-child funding. All of that money is going somewhere, and it's not going to teaching kids.

I was fortunate enough to go to a good public school system and had friends who cared about getting good grades, but would have floundered in an environment like what you see in some rural schools, or Chicago or Boston.

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