I always told the union, never fight home schooling. It gets rid of all of the pain in the neck conservatives and allows the progressives to run the school system on progressives lines.

You may or may not have noticed all Ontario (44% of Canada) schools must have a gay-straight alliance. We are bringing in full day juniour kindergarten with wrap around child care, we continue to lower our class sizes, our teacher unions are powerful full partners in education,
and we have no vouchers, no charters, he do have half the testing but it is increasingly unpopular, and guess what – we are almost always in the top 3 in the world in PISA with finland and Korea.

The USA with all of its idiotic right wing experiments is what #17 in a good year. Home schooling charters vouchers and all of that nonsense will not get you anywhere as a nation.

All you talk about is my kid my kid my kids. You are responsible for raising standards for all of the children. Home schooling is a cop out but the lack of any ethos of community responsiblility vs “rugged individualism” is what will do you in in the end.

child #1 Samford University Grad School, 4.0 GPA
child #2 University of Wisconsin Physical Therapy School 3.9 GPA
child #3 Samford Nursing School, 3.8 GPA and on running scholarship
child #4 Starting pre-pharm program and eventually getting P.h.D. in Biomedical Engineering…you know, just for fun…also will be on running scholarship 4.0 GPA
child #5 Jr in H.S. 4.0 and breaking all of her big sisters’ records

We took all A.P. classes…studied abroad…run marathons and mini marathons…graduated college early or will graduate early…graduated with honors…Valedictorians…multiple sports captains with school records…all while paying our own way through school…I mean…really??

A student’s knowledge is NOT limited to the teacher’s mastery; rather, a student’s self-paced learning often surpasses that of the teacher. There are many famed examples of this truism in history. Furthermore, in any given home school, history may or may not be emphasized. Many home schools focus on the interests of the students and peripherally incorporate the required subjects for a holistic interpretation of the curriculum standards.

I attended government schools, and received an adequate education. I was, however, always daydreamng and rarely paying attention in class. I was small for may age and mercilessly reviled and harassed because of my bookishness (which was what we called intellectual hunger in government schools) and my small stature. I was actually lucky to survive physically and emotionally until matriculation. For the record, I did earn advanced university degrees and serve in a professional role for decades.

When motherhood became my role, I carefully researched the literature and surveyed the situation in real time at local government-run child internment camps.

I noted the bars, the drug-sniffing dogs, the lock-down, pat-downs and even strip-searches, the locker searches, the non-stop stream of propaganda, the conflicting messages of zero-tolerance and mandatory-tolerance, and the declining quality of truly creative components like music, art, dance, drama and science… and I chose to homeschool my children.

I chose to give my children an environment in which they can learn respect for the individual as well as for authority; I chose to teach that government obtains its authority from the consent of the governed, and to emphasize the value of citizens being sovereign (a point I was not taught in government schools). I chose to allow my pupils to explore science, mathematics, art and music interwoven within real-life experiences. I encouraged creative thought and questioning authority. I allowed my students to move as and when they pleased, rather than requiring them to sit quietly until a pre-arranged time arrived. My students didn’t have to suffer from bullying or being shamed for their love of learning. My children have literally ten times more friends than I had at my most popular moments in the government gulags.

While I realize that all this feels very threatening to professional teachers, please realize that many people if not most will thrive if they are allowed to explore learning free of the constraints of shame for achievement, time pressures, movement restrictions, and arbitrary/mandatory curriculum.

Perhaps the simplest way I can explain the inherent advantage of home schools is to focus on the student/teacher ratios: Government schools are often in excess of 20, whereas home schools are rarely in excess of 8.

Seldom is there research that is a ‘knock-out punch’ that settles an issue once and for all. However, exploratory research is very helpful and often leads to larger, more controlled studies with greater generality. Noting the limitations of a study is not the same as dismissing it entirely because it’s not perfect.

(An equally important question to ponder is why the existing teachers’ unions and educational associations so strongly resist any attempts to measure their effectiveness compared to alternative systems of education.)

To take the research in the light you argue is to take the position that the subjects of the study account for 100% of the observed effects and that the process used in their education accounts for zero percent of the observed effects. In essence, you would be saying that white, Christian students are smarter than others and that’s why they did so well. Not a very likely conclusion.

In a system of people and process, the system usually accounts for the large majority of observed effects. This fact is counter-intuitive to most people.

Good comment, Dan.