For your future planning about your middle schoolers' high school years, which will be here before you know it....
Today North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue announced a new program that will allow eligible high school students to take classes at local community colleges for free. The new Career & College Promise program, which consolidates and replaces previous dual enrollment programs, is designed to help students maximize their time in high school by taking community college courses that will give them a head start in either completing college or starting their careers after high school.
In the Career & College Promise programs, students are only eligible for the free community college enrollment if they maintain a B average, demonstrate capability for doing college-level work (largely determined by test scores), and continue to work towards their high school graduation requirements. They can choose one of three paths: (1) a college track that covers courses that will transfer to a four-year undergraduate institution; (2) a career track that includes classes and certifications in their designated profession, (3) for students enrolled in specified innovative high schools, students may be able to earn an associates degree at the same time as they complete their high school graduation requirements.
In the past, many homeschoolers have taken advantage of older free dual enrollment programs at community colleges. However, my friends with high schoolers have told me it has been harder to get such classes because of budget cuts. The official announcements from the Governor's office do not say specifically whether this program includes (or excludes) homeschooled students. However, this page on the website of Durham Tech says that the program is available for any public, private, or homeschooled student. So it appears that this program will include homeschoolers. However, Durham Tech also says this replaces previous programs, so homeschoolers or other student categories, such as gifted and talented, will have to follow the rules under this program, rather than the previous systems to which they may be accustomed.
For more information, visit the Career & College Promise website, and/or watch the video below:
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Study Casts Doubt on the Ability of Highly Competitive High Schools to Raise Test Scores
While more and more applicants try to get into the country's most competitive high schools, a new study suggests that all that effort may not be worth it. The study, entitled "The Elite Illusion," by economists from MIT and Duke University, compared the students who gained entry to some of the nation's top examination schools (public school that students must apply and take entrance exams in order to attend) to their peers who didn't quite make the cut. They found that, three or four years, there were virtually no difference in test scores, including state standardized tests, SAT and ACT tests, and AP exams, between the two populations.
This obviously is a narrow study, and applies only to the top tier of students. Plus, of course, it conflates educational value and achievement with test scores, which readers of this blog know I find a dubious proposition.
However, it should alleviate some of the pressure on students to get into these top schools. It demonstrates that smart, hard working students can attain equivalent test scores without having to attend the one "magic" school set up for the top achievers. It also disputes one of the main arguments about these schools--that being around other top students will drive high achievers to superior performance. This study found that their test performance was no better than the top students left to pursue their education with a traditional school filled with "average" students.
If this is true, it may even behoove students NOT to attend such schools if they are planning on applying to the most competitive colleges. The thing is, the colleges all have a cap on how many students they will take from any one high school. For example, if Bill Gates could prove that he had rounded up the 1,000 most brilliant students in the country for an advanced Bill Gates High School, Harvard wouldn't accept all 1,000 of them, no matter how much smarter they might be. They would only take a small percentage--25 or 50 students maybe?--because they want a diverse, but still high achieving student body. A student with a 2200 SAT score who is number 1 in an average school that doesn't have a lot of Harvard applicants may stand a better chance than a student with a 2300 SAT score from an elite school that has dozens of other applicants also trying to get in.
It's just something to consider....
This is particularly interesting for homeschoolers to consider. Many families decide to have their homeschooled children go to school for their high school years for a whole variety of reasons. But certainly an important consideration is preparation for college and trying to make the students more competitive by having them in school with other high achieving students. But this study implies that elite peer relationships don't result in higher test scores.
For example, in our area, most of the homeschoolers I know who are going to school for high school want to get into Raleigh Charter High School, which was the Number 1 school in North Carolina in the Washington Post annual High School Challenge that ranks the best high schools in the country (although it was only 55th best on the national list). But it is not that much more likely to get into Raleigh Charter, which I think accepts 11% of eligible applicants through a lottery system, than to get into Harvard, which accepts about 7% of applicants.
Anyway, this study is reassuring for those other 89% that don't get into Raleigh Charter that by taking the right classes and doing the hard work, they can earn equally impressive test scores even at a "normal" school.
This obviously is a narrow study, and applies only to the top tier of students. Plus, of course, it conflates educational value and achievement with test scores, which readers of this blog know I find a dubious proposition.
However, it should alleviate some of the pressure on students to get into these top schools. It demonstrates that smart, hard working students can attain equivalent test scores without having to attend the one "magic" school set up for the top achievers. It also disputes one of the main arguments about these schools--that being around other top students will drive high achievers to superior performance. This study found that their test performance was no better than the top students left to pursue their education with a traditional school filled with "average" students.
If this is true, it may even behoove students NOT to attend such schools if they are planning on applying to the most competitive colleges. The thing is, the colleges all have a cap on how many students they will take from any one high school. For example, if Bill Gates could prove that he had rounded up the 1,000 most brilliant students in the country for an advanced Bill Gates High School, Harvard wouldn't accept all 1,000 of them, no matter how much smarter they might be. They would only take a small percentage--25 or 50 students maybe?--because they want a diverse, but still high achieving student body. A student with a 2200 SAT score who is number 1 in an average school that doesn't have a lot of Harvard applicants may stand a better chance than a student with a 2300 SAT score from an elite school that has dozens of other applicants also trying to get in.
It's just something to consider....
This is particularly interesting for homeschoolers to consider. Many families decide to have their homeschooled children go to school for their high school years for a whole variety of reasons. But certainly an important consideration is preparation for college and trying to make the students more competitive by having them in school with other high achieving students. But this study implies that elite peer relationships don't result in higher test scores.
For example, in our area, most of the homeschoolers I know who are going to school for high school want to get into Raleigh Charter High School, which was the Number 1 school in North Carolina in the Washington Post annual High School Challenge that ranks the best high schools in the country (although it was only 55th best on the national list). But it is not that much more likely to get into Raleigh Charter, which I think accepts 11% of eligible applicants through a lottery system, than to get into Harvard, which accepts about 7% of applicants.
Anyway, this study is reassuring for those other 89% that don't get into Raleigh Charter that by taking the right classes and doing the hard work, they can earn equally impressive test scores even at a "normal" school.
Friday, March 18, 2011
How NOT to Respond to Reports Critical of Wake County School Board
In case you missed the latest in the agony and the ecstasy that is the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), here are this week's headlines for the leading educational stories in the local paper, the News and Observer:
3/12/11 (School Board Member) Goldman's child sent to out-of-zone school, soon followed by
3/15/11 (WCPSS Superintendent) Tata to look into transfer
(Short version: Board Member Goldman's middle school daughter was one of only 15 students out of the 140,000+ students in the system to receive a little-used administrative procedure to transfer out of her usual school choices that requires merely an oral request, rather than the more extensive paperwork necessary for traditional transfer requests.)
3/15/11 Play nice, audit tells board
(Short version: An outside audit conducted by Superintendent Tata's educational training organization concluded that the WCPSS school board's public fighting, disrespect for fellow board members, and even name calling was damaging the school system's image with the public and overshadowing all the good work the schools were doing. You can read the entire 52 page audit on the WPCSS website using this link.)
The biggie, however, was this one:
3/17/11 Schools lost Wake's trust, report says
(Short version: The WCPSS accrediting agency, AdvancED, is giving the school board one year to clean up its act or risk the system losing accreditation. AdvancED accused the Republican majority of alienating much of its constituency by giving inadequate notice of major action and ignoring data when making major policy decisions. Because the system's governance had created "a climate of uncertainty, suspicion, and mistrust throughout the community," AdvancED gave WCPSS its second toughest rating, Accreditation Warning," which means that it is a serious problem that must be addressed within a year in order to remain accredited. You can read the entire 15 page report on the WCPSS website using this link.)
That story broke, by the way, two days after Superintendent Tata presented his budget cuts for the 2011-2012 school year, and on the same day as Tata was meeting with officials of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which is investigating WCPSS' elimination of its diversity policy.
My two-bit response to all this good news is:
YA THINK?
After a year in which school board meetings have become a zoo, with many citizens regularly protesting and even getting arrested, while the board members insult each other in front of the public, AND the NAACP is bringing lawsuits and administrative actions against the system, AND our school system has been publicly criticized from such national figures as the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, former president Bill Clinton, and even Steven Colbert, AND just plain old residents such as myself are writing blog posts like Wake School Board Majority Should Be Ashamed....yes, I think it is reasonable to say that there are some serious governance issues here.
However, how are the Republicans responding to these critiques? Well, good old Apex Representative and NC House Majority Leader Paul Stam (sponsor of the bill to give tax credits to families who pull their children out of school in order to send them to private school or homeschools, which I wrote about in this blog post) is one of several Republicans who have introduced a bill to effectively bypass the well-established tradition among ALL of American education of outside accreditation, and instead create a state-run accrediting agency. The bill would also PROHIBIT any North Carolina higher education institutions (colleges, universities, or community colleges) from considering whether or not a candidate's high school is accredited when making admission, scholarship, or loan decisions. (You can read the full text of the bill, HR 342: High School Accreditation, through this link.)
I'm sorry, but I think this is the same "heads in the sand" thinking that I criticized the WCPSS board in my post Why Wake County Board Should Continue Accreditation with AdvancED. I know it sounds naive to say this, but if there is anything that should be above politics, it should be our children's future. A community will come to pieces if it can't trust the people responsible for their children's education. That is the point of OUTSIDE, NON-POLITICAL, UNBIASED accreditation agencies like AdvancED. They aren't Republicans, pushing more charter schools and lower budgets, etc., and they aren't Democrats, pushing more early intervention and social programs for disadvantage populations, etc. They come in without an agenda, and say, Are the policies fair? Are children being treated equally? Are people--teachers, administrators, support staff, and even BOARD MEMBERS--do their jobs right at the level of quality that the public deserves to expect? They also have a regional and national perspective, and can comment on how a system is doing vis-a-vis their peers in the state, area, and country.
A state agency will be immediately suspect of bias. Even if it can avoid a partisan bias, which seems difficult, given the increasing involvement of the NC legislature in educational issues, it will certainly seem to have a bias to continue accreditation of NC schools to maintain the state's reputation. I mean, isn't that why it is being created? What purpose would it serve but to provide NC schools with some alternative accreditation if AdvancED pulls their, as they are threatening to do in Wake and Burke county (coincidentally enough, most, if not all, of the co-sponsors of the bill come from those two counties).
Also, this view point is very provincial. Outside this state, college specify requirements of accreditation from regional accrediting organizations, so it would not help with the thousands of NC graduates who want to attend higher ed institutions outside of North Carolina. However, it would probably diminish the national reputation of North Carolina colleges and universities, not to mention setting a bad precedent of the legislature messing around in the UNC admissions policies. ( And I thought the Republicans were supposed to be the party of less government interference....)
Wake County can not continue to ignore the big rifts in our community over school issues. But things seem to be getting better since Superintendent Tata came on board. The Board has been acting more professionally. They actually managed to go on a weekend retreat and come back with something constructive. The WCPSS has been open about these critical reports and have posted them on their websites. I think the general mood is hopeful that some healing and compromises can take place. However, that is only possible if people feel that they have been listened to and respected, even if there are disagreements and ultimately their positions don't win. And it only works if people feel like they can trust their school system.
In my opinion, HR 342 would only make things worse, not better.
3/12/11 (School Board Member) Goldman's child sent to out-of-zone school, soon followed by
3/15/11 (WCPSS Superintendent) Tata to look into transfer
(Short version: Board Member Goldman's middle school daughter was one of only 15 students out of the 140,000+ students in the system to receive a little-used administrative procedure to transfer out of her usual school choices that requires merely an oral request, rather than the more extensive paperwork necessary for traditional transfer requests.)
3/15/11 Play nice, audit tells board
(Short version: An outside audit conducted by Superintendent Tata's educational training organization concluded that the WCPSS school board's public fighting, disrespect for fellow board members, and even name calling was damaging the school system's image with the public and overshadowing all the good work the schools were doing. You can read the entire 52 page audit on the WPCSS website using this link.)
The biggie, however, was this one:
3/17/11 Schools lost Wake's trust, report says
(Short version: The WCPSS accrediting agency, AdvancED, is giving the school board one year to clean up its act or risk the system losing accreditation. AdvancED accused the Republican majority of alienating much of its constituency by giving inadequate notice of major action and ignoring data when making major policy decisions. Because the system's governance had created "a climate of uncertainty, suspicion, and mistrust throughout the community," AdvancED gave WCPSS its second toughest rating, Accreditation Warning," which means that it is a serious problem that must be addressed within a year in order to remain accredited. You can read the entire 15 page report on the WCPSS website using this link.)
That story broke, by the way, two days after Superintendent Tata presented his budget cuts for the 2011-2012 school year, and on the same day as Tata was meeting with officials of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which is investigating WCPSS' elimination of its diversity policy.
My two-bit response to all this good news is:
YA THINK?
After a year in which school board meetings have become a zoo, with many citizens regularly protesting and even getting arrested, while the board members insult each other in front of the public, AND the NAACP is bringing lawsuits and administrative actions against the system, AND our school system has been publicly criticized from such national figures as the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, former president Bill Clinton, and even Steven Colbert, AND just plain old residents such as myself are writing blog posts like Wake School Board Majority Should Be Ashamed....yes, I think it is reasonable to say that there are some serious governance issues here.
However, how are the Republicans responding to these critiques? Well, good old Apex Representative and NC House Majority Leader Paul Stam (sponsor of the bill to give tax credits to families who pull their children out of school in order to send them to private school or homeschools, which I wrote about in this blog post) is one of several Republicans who have introduced a bill to effectively bypass the well-established tradition among ALL of American education of outside accreditation, and instead create a state-run accrediting agency. The bill would also PROHIBIT any North Carolina higher education institutions (colleges, universities, or community colleges) from considering whether or not a candidate's high school is accredited when making admission, scholarship, or loan decisions. (You can read the full text of the bill, HR 342: High School Accreditation, through this link.)
I'm sorry, but I think this is the same "heads in the sand" thinking that I criticized the WCPSS board in my post Why Wake County Board Should Continue Accreditation with AdvancED. I know it sounds naive to say this, but if there is anything that should be above politics, it should be our children's future. A community will come to pieces if it can't trust the people responsible for their children's education. That is the point of OUTSIDE, NON-POLITICAL, UNBIASED accreditation agencies like AdvancED. They aren't Republicans, pushing more charter schools and lower budgets, etc., and they aren't Democrats, pushing more early intervention and social programs for disadvantage populations, etc. They come in without an agenda, and say, Are the policies fair? Are children being treated equally? Are people--teachers, administrators, support staff, and even BOARD MEMBERS--do their jobs right at the level of quality that the public deserves to expect? They also have a regional and national perspective, and can comment on how a system is doing vis-a-vis their peers in the state, area, and country.
A state agency will be immediately suspect of bias. Even if it can avoid a partisan bias, which seems difficult, given the increasing involvement of the NC legislature in educational issues, it will certainly seem to have a bias to continue accreditation of NC schools to maintain the state's reputation. I mean, isn't that why it is being created? What purpose would it serve but to provide NC schools with some alternative accreditation if AdvancED pulls their, as they are threatening to do in Wake and Burke county (coincidentally enough, most, if not all, of the co-sponsors of the bill come from those two counties).
Also, this view point is very provincial. Outside this state, college specify requirements of accreditation from regional accrediting organizations, so it would not help with the thousands of NC graduates who want to attend higher ed institutions outside of North Carolina. However, it would probably diminish the national reputation of North Carolina colleges and universities, not to mention setting a bad precedent of the legislature messing around in the UNC admissions policies. ( And I thought the Republicans were supposed to be the party of less government interference....)
Wake County can not continue to ignore the big rifts in our community over school issues. But things seem to be getting better since Superintendent Tata came on board. The Board has been acting more professionally. They actually managed to go on a weekend retreat and come back with something constructive. The WCPSS has been open about these critical reports and have posted them on their websites. I think the general mood is hopeful that some healing and compromises can take place. However, that is only possible if people feel that they have been listened to and respected, even if there are disagreements and ultimately their positions don't win. And it only works if people feel like they can trust their school system.
In my opinion, HR 342 would only make things worse, not better.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Middle School Minorities Achievement Gap in Math and Its Effect on College Success
On an email loop of my friend Maria's Natural Math community, there is a discussion going on right now about some research that taking advanced math, particularly calculus, in high school leads to greater success in science classes in college. But I think the path to calculus in high school begins earlier, particularly with the math instruction students get in middle schools. And several articles or reports published lately suggest that advanced math instruction in middle schools is problematic for many ethnic minorities, particularly African-American males.
One great example of this, I think, came from a recent article in The Washington Post about the school many publications list as the best public high school in the country, the magnet Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County (outside Washington DC). While the school is almost universally lauded for the quality and subsequent success of its graduates, it has come under fire recently for the low percentage of black and Hispanic students, despite several years of a concerted minority outreach and recruitment program. While blacks and Hispanics represent about one third of all students in the surrounding public schools, they make up only 4% of the TJ population. Approximately 90% of students are Asian or white (with Asians accounting for a slight majority of that number), while the remaining students categorize themselves as "multi-racial."
The school's explanation for such a dramatic under-enrollment of blacks and Hispanics? One of the pre-requisites for applying to Thomas Jefferson is that the student passed Algebra in middle school. School officials claim that there is not a large pool of black or Hispanic middle school students with Algebra already under their belts from which they can recruit. So should Thomas Jefferson drop that requirement for underrepresented minorities, or should the area middle schools do a better job of getting more of those students through Algebra? (For comparison, the state-wide magnet program at the the residential North Carolina School for Math and Science has about a 10% black, 3% Hispanic, and 1% Native American population; that high school strongly recommends, but does not require, Algebra.)
This issue has been under a lot of discussion here in Wake County, because recent data shows that in previous years, where teacher recommendations were a major factor in admittance to advanced math classes, Asian and white students were admitted to Algebra at much higher rates than other minorities. In 2008, over half of all test-qualified white or Asian students were enrolled in Algebra 1 in 8th grade, while among black and Hispanic students with similar test scores, only 40% went on to Algebra. Things were even worse in 2006, where only 19% of high-scoring black male students were placed into advanced math. This led to a policy change this year where students were placed into math classes purely on math scores, rather than considering teacher recommendations (although the effects won't begin to show up in Algebra until next year, because they still have a requirement for students to complete pre-algebra before entering the Algebra 1 class). For a detailed analysis of this data, see the article entitled "Math Placement and Institutional Racism in Wake County Schools?" on the excellent blog "Barbara's Take on Wake."
It will be interesting to see the data in a couple years about what happens with this policy change. Is it really true, as Barbara suggests, that the WCPSS has institutional racism in terms of minorities in math? Or do the teachers know something that the test scores don't show? Of course, if we refused to allow failure and gave minority students additional time, if necessary, to complete such classes, that might be the best of both worlds. But as my blog posts of November 14 and November 21 demonstrate, that's unlikely to happen any time soon.
But this only deals with the under-represented minorities who are actually scoring well on their math tests. According to a recent study by the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of the nation's largest urban school districts, among the urban school systems participating in the study, only about 12% of black males tested at or above the Proficient level in 8th grade math; at least 50% of 8th grade urban black males scored below the Basic level. According to CGCS, this eventually leads to black men accounting for only 5% of all college students in 2008.
I don't know the answer to all this. But it is a troubling question to examine.
One great example of this, I think, came from a recent article in The Washington Post about the school many publications list as the best public high school in the country, the magnet Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County (outside Washington DC). While the school is almost universally lauded for the quality and subsequent success of its graduates, it has come under fire recently for the low percentage of black and Hispanic students, despite several years of a concerted minority outreach and recruitment program. While blacks and Hispanics represent about one third of all students in the surrounding public schools, they make up only 4% of the TJ population. Approximately 90% of students are Asian or white (with Asians accounting for a slight majority of that number), while the remaining students categorize themselves as "multi-racial."
The school's explanation for such a dramatic under-enrollment of blacks and Hispanics? One of the pre-requisites for applying to Thomas Jefferson is that the student passed Algebra in middle school. School officials claim that there is not a large pool of black or Hispanic middle school students with Algebra already under their belts from which they can recruit. So should Thomas Jefferson drop that requirement for underrepresented minorities, or should the area middle schools do a better job of getting more of those students through Algebra? (For comparison, the state-wide magnet program at the the residential North Carolina School for Math and Science has about a 10% black, 3% Hispanic, and 1% Native American population; that high school strongly recommends, but does not require, Algebra.)
This issue has been under a lot of discussion here in Wake County, because recent data shows that in previous years, where teacher recommendations were a major factor in admittance to advanced math classes, Asian and white students were admitted to Algebra at much higher rates than other minorities. In 2008, over half of all test-qualified white or Asian students were enrolled in Algebra 1 in 8th grade, while among black and Hispanic students with similar test scores, only 40% went on to Algebra. Things were even worse in 2006, where only 19% of high-scoring black male students were placed into advanced math. This led to a policy change this year where students were placed into math classes purely on math scores, rather than considering teacher recommendations (although the effects won't begin to show up in Algebra until next year, because they still have a requirement for students to complete pre-algebra before entering the Algebra 1 class). For a detailed analysis of this data, see the article entitled "Math Placement and Institutional Racism in Wake County Schools?" on the excellent blog "Barbara's Take on Wake."
It will be interesting to see the data in a couple years about what happens with this policy change. Is it really true, as Barbara suggests, that the WCPSS has institutional racism in terms of minorities in math? Or do the teachers know something that the test scores don't show? Of course, if we refused to allow failure and gave minority students additional time, if necessary, to complete such classes, that might be the best of both worlds. But as my blog posts of November 14 and November 21 demonstrate, that's unlikely to happen any time soon.
But this only deals with the under-represented minorities who are actually scoring well on their math tests. According to a recent study by the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of the nation's largest urban school districts, among the urban school systems participating in the study, only about 12% of black males tested at or above the Proficient level in 8th grade math; at least 50% of 8th grade urban black males scored below the Basic level. According to CGCS, this eventually leads to black men accounting for only 5% of all college students in 2008.
I don't know the answer to all this. But it is a troubling question to examine.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Should We Send Homeschoolers to School for High School?
Although we're just in our first year of middle school, I am often asked, "Will you continue to homeschool your son through high school?" My response is that we'll see where things are when we get to that point, but right now I don't know why we wouldn't continue homeschooling. But certainly many families do decide to send their children to school for high school.
Just like with the decision to homeschool, sending a child to school for high school can come from many different reasons. Some homeschooling parents are just tired, or have spent enough time devoted to their children and want to get back into their former careers, start a new career before they get too old, or just need some time for themselves and their interests. Some don't want to add the pressures of having to be a teacher on top of the conflict that sometimes comes with being a parent to a child going through a rocky adolescent. Others feel intimidated about teaching subjects at a high school level, and feel their children will get better instruction from specialists in each field.
But one big argument people give in favor of sending a homeschooler to school for high school is to prepare them to look attractive to and do well in college. I don't want to judge those families who make those decisions; for many, especially those who want to pursue careers that will require a lot of schooling (like becoming a doctor) or that will ultimately be in education (like being a college professor), that is probably a wise choice. But I also have to ask, especially for those with children like my son, who certainly doesn't have such a driving ambition right now: Is teaching our children the skill set to do well in school going to help them, hinder them, or have no effect on their success in the rest of their adult lives?
My thinking along these lines was sparked by Alfie Kohn's latest blogging in the Huffington Post (followers of my blog know that Kohn is the source of some of my greatest educational inspiration). Entitled "'Ready To Learn' Equals Easier to Educate,"Kohn explores what may be American education's greatest irony--that our best and most elite institutions are devoted to finding, attracting, and teaching the students who need it the least (or, as I'm constantly saying in discussions with my friends, if you have what it takes to get into Harvard, you don't need to go to Harvard because you already have it made). Kohn argues that, starting in preschool, we cherry-pick the "brightest," usually most advantaged, and most cooperative students and give them additional educational resources that only increases the gap between them and their less advantaged peers, justified by the rationale that those other children aren't "ready to learn" (at least, in that institutionalized way, since children are learning all the time, one way or another). But this gap continues and expands all along the educational pipeline until one set of children is on track for Harvard (or Duke or Cal Tech or whatever...it's not Harvard per se) and the other set is on a conveyor belt towards failure (see Waiting for Superman for more details).
But it seems to me one manifestation of this "ready to learn" concept is sending students to high school to prepare them for college. On one hand, and particularly for some kids, sometimes it makes sense. On the other hand, what does sending homeschool students to high school teach them? For one thing, it certainly teaches them to expect less individual attention and less one-on-one discussion with teachers and peers. I fear that it teaches them to give up pursuing their unique questions and curiosities about a subject in favor of following the pack along the educational path set by the teacher. Since homeschoolers are an admittedly fairly homogenous community, even within a pretty sophisticated secular group like our Cary Homeschoolers, learning with a more diverse population might be a valuable aspect of school. But reports from my friends in high schoolers in school say that their children are tracked or gifted-programmed or cliqued into groups that are no more diverse than our homeschool peers (who at least are definitely exposed to a greater age range of fellow students).
As I said, this is probably the right route for many students. But does it develop skills that all students need to become happy, productive adults? I don't think so. Or am I missing something? Please let me know, because I'm open to reconsidering this position.
Just like with the decision to homeschool, sending a child to school for high school can come from many different reasons. Some homeschooling parents are just tired, or have spent enough time devoted to their children and want to get back into their former careers, start a new career before they get too old, or just need some time for themselves and their interests. Some don't want to add the pressures of having to be a teacher on top of the conflict that sometimes comes with being a parent to a child going through a rocky adolescent. Others feel intimidated about teaching subjects at a high school level, and feel their children will get better instruction from specialists in each field.
But one big argument people give in favor of sending a homeschooler to school for high school is to prepare them to look attractive to and do well in college. I don't want to judge those families who make those decisions; for many, especially those who want to pursue careers that will require a lot of schooling (like becoming a doctor) or that will ultimately be in education (like being a college professor), that is probably a wise choice. But I also have to ask, especially for those with children like my son, who certainly doesn't have such a driving ambition right now: Is teaching our children the skill set to do well in school going to help them, hinder them, or have no effect on their success in the rest of their adult lives?
My thinking along these lines was sparked by Alfie Kohn's latest blogging in the Huffington Post (followers of my blog know that Kohn is the source of some of my greatest educational inspiration). Entitled "'Ready To Learn' Equals Easier to Educate,"Kohn explores what may be American education's greatest irony--that our best and most elite institutions are devoted to finding, attracting, and teaching the students who need it the least (or, as I'm constantly saying in discussions with my friends, if you have what it takes to get into Harvard, you don't need to go to Harvard because you already have it made). Kohn argues that, starting in preschool, we cherry-pick the "brightest," usually most advantaged, and most cooperative students and give them additional educational resources that only increases the gap between them and their less advantaged peers, justified by the rationale that those other children aren't "ready to learn" (at least, in that institutionalized way, since children are learning all the time, one way or another). But this gap continues and expands all along the educational pipeline until one set of children is on track for Harvard (or Duke or Cal Tech or whatever...it's not Harvard per se) and the other set is on a conveyor belt towards failure (see Waiting for Superman for more details).
But it seems to me one manifestation of this "ready to learn" concept is sending students to high school to prepare them for college. On one hand, and particularly for some kids, sometimes it makes sense. On the other hand, what does sending homeschool students to high school teach them? For one thing, it certainly teaches them to expect less individual attention and less one-on-one discussion with teachers and peers. I fear that it teaches them to give up pursuing their unique questions and curiosities about a subject in favor of following the pack along the educational path set by the teacher. Since homeschoolers are an admittedly fairly homogenous community, even within a pretty sophisticated secular group like our Cary Homeschoolers, learning with a more diverse population might be a valuable aspect of school. But reports from my friends in high schoolers in school say that their children are tracked or gifted-programmed or cliqued into groups that are no more diverse than our homeschool peers (who at least are definitely exposed to a greater age range of fellow students).
As I said, this is probably the right route for many students. But does it develop skills that all students need to become happy, productive adults? I don't think so. Or am I missing something? Please let me know, because I'm open to reconsidering this position.
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