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Canton schools takes step to place $60M tax issue on election ballot

Canton schools takes step to place M tax issue on election ballot
Canton schools takes step to place M tax issue on election ballot

CANTON − A tax problem that could transform how Canton Metropolis Schools educates its elementary pupils is heading toward the May possibly election ballot.

The Canton City faculty board on Wednesday took the to start with in a two-step procedure to put a 36-year, $60 million bond concern on the Might election ballot. The board’s vote asks the county auditor to identify the volume essential for the tax difficulty so it would raise $60 million. After the auditor certifies the sum desired for the levy, the board will vote to formally put the situation on the ballot.

A lot more on Canton Metropolis CollegesCanton’s Baxter university, now practically 100 a long time previous, to be demolished

While the total of the tax challenge has not been established, Superintendent Jeff Talbert has earlier reported an owner of a $100,000 dwelling would fork out no more than an further $4 a calendar year over what is paid out now. Householders currently pay $132 a year for a $100,000 household for a 4.3-mill bond problem that voters accepted in 1999, according to the Stark County Auditor’s Business office. That bond issue will expire at the conclude of 2023.

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With States Hands-Off, Homeschooling Takes Off |

With States Hands-Off, Homeschooling Takes Off |

South Dakota epitomizes the rapid growth of homeschooling in America. Guided by the principle that parents, not the government, have the right to determine what and how their kids are taught, homeschooling families have overturned existing rules and batted down attempts over the last decade to impose new ones in many states, including South Dakota. 

What’s left in much of the United States today is essentially an honor system in which parents are expected to do a good job without much input or oversight.  The rollback of regulations, coupled with the ill effects of remote learning during the pandemic, have boosted the number of families opting out of public schools in favor of educating their kids at home.  

Reflecting a national trend, the number of children homeschooled in South Dakota rose more than 20{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} in both of the last two school years. 

Homeschoolers in the Mount Rushmore state advocated for a new law that strips away key pieces of the state’s oversight and eases the way for parents leave public schools.  Last year Senate Bill 177 ended the requirement that parents provide annual notice to a district of their intent to homeschool their child. More significantly, homeschool students no longer must take standardized tests, as public schoolers do, or face possible intervention by the school board if they fail. 

“It was a big win for parental rights,” says Dan Beasley, then a staff attorney at the influential Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which helped craft and pass the legislation. “It cut out unnecessary regulation and streamlined the process so parents can invest their time in providing the best education they can for their children.” 

This freedom stands in contrast to outraged parents who feel powerless over how their kids are taught in public schools. In high-pitched battles at school board meetings, some take aim at the easing of admissions standards, others at what they see as the promotion of critical race theory and transgender rights, and still others at segregated classrooms and the presence of police officers on campus. And almost everyone is concerned with the sharp decline in already low reading and math scores of students in nearly every state during the pandemic, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress released in late October.  

For a growing number of parents, homeschooling is the answer to the institutional barriers to the education they believe in.  Beyond requirements that homeschooling parents teach a few core subjects like math and English, they are free to pick the content.  
 
American history, for example, can be all about the glory of the Founding Fathers and the prosperity of free markets, or the oppression of Native Americans and people of color and the struggle for equality. For many homeschoolers, history is taught through a Christian lens, while others follow a standard public school curriculum.  

Parents’ Rights vs. State Control 

The push to deregulate homeschooling raises difficult questions about how to balance the rights of parents to educate children as they see fit with the responsibility of the state to provide educational opportunity – and protect kids when things go wrong. While U.S. courts have stood behind parental rights, with the caveat that states have the authority to impose reasonable regulations to ensure students are educated, European countries lean the other way. To safeguard children, they have imposed much more stringent oversight of home schools.  
 
Cases of child abuse and academic neglect in home schools are a real concern, especially as the guardrails are removed. Most cases of mistreatment are discovered and reported by teachers in public schools, a protection that doesn’t help homeschooled children. Homeschool alumni at the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) and academic researchers have documented hundreds of examples of harm to children, many leading to criminal charges, ranging from fatalities and sexual abuse to poor instruction from parents who can’t or don’t teach.  

But calls by CRHE and others for more protections don’t get much traction in the United States. In March, after Maryland lawmaker Sheila Ruth introduced a bill to create a homeschool advisory council to collect information from homeschooling parents and advise state officials, she was inundated with calls and emails. A few were so nasty and threatening that her office called the police. In a Facebook post, Ruth promised the homeschool advocates that she would let the bill die and pleaded with them to stand down. 

Virginia-based HSLDA has spearheaded the opposition to regulations in court and legislative chambers, often in collaboration with local organizations. The group helped defeat many requirements, including that families provide notification of their intent to homeschool in Illinois, that students take standardized tests in South Carolina, and that home schools submit to visits to ensure the safety of children after one starved to death in Iowa, according to an Arizona Law Review article by Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard Law emeritus professor.  

“There is a significant segment of homeschooled children who are at serious risk for maltreatment,” Bartholet says. “And no homeschooled children have safeguards to protect them since they are not seen by teachers. That seems deeply wrong to me.”  
 
Homeschool advocates don’t face much political opposition, at least not yet. That may soon change. Teachers’ unions, for one, have an obvious motivation to become adversarial: School districts have been losing students, and thus funding, at historic rates during the pandemic, and some of those kids are going to home schools.  
 
The National Education Association, the nation’s largest professional union, issued a resolution in 2021 essentially opposing homeschooling. It said home schools “cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience” and called for regulations that force them to basically duplicate public schooling at home. Other than that, NEA has been curiously silent about homeschooling and isn’t seen as much of an opponent by HSLDA. 
 
“HSLDA has been enormously influential,” says Robert Kunzman, an authority on homeschooling at Indiana University. “They have been able to mobilize a lot of legal resources and grassroots organizations to push back on regulations.” 

A Wide Spectrum of Rules

Just a handful of states, like Colorado and New York, have maintained a comprehensive set of rules, according to CRHE. These states require the teaching of a full list of subjects without dictating the actual content of courses. They also mandate the total annual hours of instruction and formal assessments like standardized tests in an effort to make home schools accountable. In New York, districts can intervene, with the threat of putting the home school on probation, if the student performs poorly. 

Most states, such as Texas and Idaho, are much more laissez-faire. They require a short list of subjects be taught but no assessments. Texas is also among a dozen states where parents don’t have to tell the school district that they are homeschooling.  
 
In half a dozen states, like Mississippi and Utah, there are no subject, time, or assessment requirements, according to CRHE. Parents are completely free to do as they wish. 

As states have eased requirements for parents, the number of homeschooled students has expanded significantly, from an estimated 850,000 in 1999 to about 1.7 million in 2016, or about 3.3{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of the school-age population, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. While experts agree that homeschooling grew quickly during the pandemic and will probably continue to do so but at a slower pace, there is no reliable national data, with some estimates that exceed 3 million students in 2021 considered to be inflated. 

Homeschooling took off in the 1960s, fueled by religion and ideology. Christian conservatives wanted to imbue their children with religious doctrine away from the temptations of public schools, and progressive anti-institutionalists sought to nurture the kind of free thinking in their offspring that rote education stifled. 

In recent years a more diverse group of families, including a notable percentage of black parents, have turned to homeschooling for more practical concerns: to escape poor performing public schools, unsafe campuses, bullying, progressive ideology, and racism. 

At the same time, public schools, aiming to retain at least a limited grip on homeschooled students, are increasingly supporting them with everything from art and music classes to athletics and online education tools. What has emerged is a hybrid model in which students toggle back and forth between home and public schools. For instance, some students start their education at home and then enter public schools in their mid-teens to take more advanced classes that parents can’t teach.  
 
Whatever the motive for homeschooling, deregulation has made it a much easier choice for parents.  
 
“The movement to reduce regulatory barriers has definitely opened up homeschooling to growth for people from all socio-economic walks of life,” says Brian Ray, co-founder of the National Home Education Research Institute and a longtime advocate. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.” 

A Success Story in Missouri 

In Missouri, Kim Quon had only a few rules to abide by when she decided to homeschool her two kids so they could learn about Christian faith from her point of view. In her in St. Louis County home, she had to provide 1,000 hours of instruction a year, with 600 of those hours in key subjects like math and English, and keep a written log of the work completed, according to the state’s homeschool law. 

Otherwise, Missouri, like most states, takes a mostly hands-off approach. It doesn’t test the students and has no way of knowing if parents are doing a bad job of teaching them unless a report of educational neglect is filed, in which case the Department of Social Services may investigate. A spokesperson declined to say whether educational neglect is a concern in Missouri and said the department doesn’t release data on the number of complaints it receives. 

“There have been claims of educational neglect, but the vast majority are not legit,” Quon says. “Most homeschool parents take their job very seriously.” 

Quon certainly did. After finishing the required classes, her children had a lot of time left in the day to explore their own interests, which is one of the biggest benefits of homeschooling. The enormous workload of educating two children was made easier for Quon by relying on curricula created by homeschool groups, online resources, and community college for advanced math classes. 

“I’m not a college graduate,” Quon says. “So you don’t have to be a brainy person to homeschool your kids because there are so many resources and people available to help.” 
 
Homeschooling prepared both of her children for college. They went to the University of Missouri in St. Louis and did well, like most homeschoolers who seek post-secondary degrees. Her son studied anthropology and works at the Heritage Museum in St. Charles County. Her daughter earned a degree in biology and works at the St. Louis Aquarium. 

After homeschooling her kids, Quon was recruited by Families for Home Education, a statewide advocacy group, to direct its operation in the greater St. Louis region. While FHE has 1,200 members, its network of 10,000 to 20,000 supporters has been quickly mobilized to bombard lawmakers with calls and emails to defeat attempts to place additional rules on homeschooling that were first established in Missouri in the mid-1980s. There are grassroots groups like FHE in every state. 

FHE has successfully opposed proposals to make students start school at age five rather than the current seven. The group is now struggling to change a Missouri scholarship program that would force homeschooled students to take standardized tests and allow a review of their educational records, which FHE considers an unnecessary government intrusion. 
 

“Lawmakers pretty much leave us alone,” Quon says. “I would like to think it’s because of our presence as a lobbyist, and that we built those relationships over the years.”

Educational Neglect 

Quon’s dedication is common among homeschoolers, but what’s less understood is the extent of educational neglect since most states don’t collect assessment results. From his perch at Indiana University, Robert Kunzman has an anecdotal view of the problem after spending hundreds of hours with dozens of families in many states observing their homeschooling practices.  

The professor has been impressed with some home instruction – highly structured and directed lessons as well as those allowing exploration and creativity – but he has also witnessed serious problems: families who focus almost exclusively on a small subset of subjects they are comfortable with; a teenager who still counts on his fingers to do math; a mom who doesn’t know how to help her daughter sound out words, creating much frustration between them; and a parent who considers an episode of Little House on the Prairie to be a history lesson.  

“These are the kinds of things that are certainly going on,” says Kunzman, who wrote a book on Christian homeschooling. “It’s a small percentage of homeschoolers, perhaps less than a quarter, in which children’s educational interests are being profoundly neglected.” 

Homeschool advocates tend to dismiss this concern. While a small number of parents may not do a good job educating their children, Quon says, the same can be said of teachers in public schools, where many students graduate with skills far behind what’s expected of a 12th grader, or drop out. 

Brian Ray, the influential researcher embraced by the homeschool movement, also says he isn’t too worried about educational neglect. A Ph.D. in science education and the father of eight homeschooled children, Ray points his and other studies purporting to show that homeschoolers significantly outperform public school students on standardized tests. In his view, the research supports his position that government oversight of homeschooling is unnecessary.  

But Kunzman and other scholars have criticized the papers as advocacy masquerading as research. They point out that some of the studies have been designed and funded by HSLDA and say that they have methodological limitations. 

In Ray’s 2010 national study of achievement on standardized tests, for instance, homeschoolers who volunteered scored in the 86th percentile, well above the 50th percentile national mean. 

But the homeschoolers in this study, and in others like it, were an unrepresentative and privileged group: almost entirely white (97{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}) and raised by married parents (98{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}) with college degrees (64{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}). These traits are strongly associated with high academic achievement and don’t reflect the much more diverse and less educated population of public school parents.  

Ray waves off this issue, saying these traits don’t have much of an impact on home school performance, but researchers still question his results.
 
“The idea that homeschool students do better on standardized tests has been repeated so many times by advocates and the media that legislators take it at face value and it is now accepted common knowledge,” says Kunzman, who cofounded the International Center for Home Education Research to support non-biased studies. 

Calls for Regulation 

CRHE and Harvard’s Bartholet don’t buy Ray’s findings. They are advocating for what they consider reasonable protections for children. They say parents need to tell districts if they are homeschooling each year; they should cover the same subjects as public schools; and students should be assessed to make sure they are making progress. 

“We get messages every week from people around the country who know a homeschool child who is being educationally neglected,” says Chelsea McCracken, CRHE’s research director. “Where there is no annual notification, subject requirements, and assessments, there is no way for states to ensure that children’s rights are protected.”  

Kunzman sees such reforms as politically untenable. He advocates for a more modest approach: Require homeschoolers to take a basic skills test in literacy and numeracy. That’s it. The proposal might face less resistance since parents generally share a common belief that, despite religious and political differences, every child should learn how to read and do some math. Kunzman’s test would identify the students who are not learning so they could get some help. 

Ray thinks all the proposals for regulation are nonsense. Just look at public schools. “For many decades public schools have had regulations including certified teachers and testing,” Ray says. “And we have children who are illiterate and can’t do basic math. All the testing schools do every year doesn’t guarantee anything.” 

But Ray and Kunzman do agree on one thing – homeschooling will continue to expand.  

Posted on

With States Hands-Off, Homeschooling Takes Off | Investigative Reports

With States Hands-Off, Homeschooling Takes Off | Investigative Reports

South Dakota epitomizes the rapid growth of homeschooling in America.  Guided by the principle that parents, not the government, have the right to determine what and how their kids are taught, homeschooling families have overturned existing rules and batted down attempts over the last decade to impose new ones in many states, including South Dakota. 

What’s left in much of the United States today is essentially an honor system in which parents are expected to do a good job without much input or oversight. The rollback of regulations, coupled with the  ill effects of remote learning during the pandemic, have boosted the number of families opting out of public schools in favor of educating their kids at home.  

Reflecting a national trend, the number of children homeschooled in South Dakota rose more than 20{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} in both of the last two school years. 

Homeschoolers in the Mount Rushmore state advocated for a new law that strips away key pieces of the state’s oversight and eases the way for parents leave public schools. Last year Senate Bill 177 ended the requirement that parents provide annual notice to a district of their intent to homeschool their child. More significantly, homeschool students no longer must take standardized tests, as public schoolers do, or face possible intervention by the school board if they fail. 

“It was a big win for parental rights,” says Dan Beasley, then a staff attorney at the influential Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which helped craft and pass the legislation. “It cut out unnecessary regulation and streamlined the process so parents can invest their time in providing the best education they can for their children.” 

This freedom stands in contrast to outraged parents who feel powerless over how their  kids are taught in public schools. In high-pitched battles at school board meetings, some take aim at the easing of admissions standards, others at what they see as the promotion of critical race theory and transgender rights, and still others at segregated classrooms and the presence of police officers on campus. And almost everyone is concerned with the sharp decline in already low reading and math scores of students in nearly every state during the pandemic, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress released in late October.  

For a growing number of parents, homeschooling is the answer to the institutional barriers to the education they believe in. Beyond requirements that homeschooling parents teach a few core subjects like math and English, they are free to pick the content.  
 
American history, for example, can be all about the glory of the Founding Fathers and the prosperity of free markets, or the oppression of Native Americans and people of color and the struggle for equality. For many homeschoolers, history is taught through a Christian lens, while others follow a standard public school curriculum.  

Parents’ Rights vs. State Control 

The push to deregulate homeschooling raises difficult questions about how to balance the rights of parents to educate children as they see fit with the responsibility of the state to provide educational opportunity – and protect kids when things go wrong. While U.S. courts have stood behind parental rights, with the caveat that states have the authority to impose reasonable regulations to ensure students are educated, European countries lean the other way. To safeguard children, they have imposed much more stringent oversight of home schools.  
 
Cases of child abuse and academic neglect in home schools are a real concern, especially as the guardrails are removed. Most cases of mistreatment are discovered and reported by teachers in public schools, a protection that doesn’t help homeschooled children. Homeschool alumni at the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) and academic researchers have documented hundreds of examples of harm to children, many leading to criminal charges, ranging from fatalities and sexual abuse to poor instruction from parents who can’t or don’t teach.  

But calls by CRHE and others for more protections don’t get much traction in the United States. In March, after Maryland lawmaker Sheila Ruth introduced a bill to create a homeschool advisory council to collect information from homeschooling parents and advise state officials, she was inundated with calls and emails. A few were so nasty and threatening that her office called the police. In a Facebook post, Ruth promised the homeschool advocates that she would let the bill die and pleaded with them to stand down. 

Virginia-based HSLDA has spearheaded the opposition to regulations in court and legislative chambers, often in collaboration with local organizations. The group helped defeat many requirements, including that families provide notification of their intent to homeschool in Illinois, that students take standardized tests in South Carolina, and that home schools submit to visits to ensure the safety of children after one starved to death in Iowa, according to an Arizona Law Review article by Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard Law emeritus professor.  

“There is a significant segment of homeschooled children who are at serious risk for maltreatment,” Bartholet says. “And no homeschooled children have safeguards to protect them since they are not seen by teachers. That seems deeply wrong to me.”  
 
Homeschool advocates don’t face much political opposition, at least not yet. That may soon change. Teachers’ unions, for one, have an obvious motivation to become adversarial: School districts have been losing students, and thus funding, at historic rates during the pandemic, and some of those kids are going to home schools.  
 
The National Education Association, the nation’s largest professional union, issued a resolution in 2021 essentially opposing homeschooling. It said home schools “cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience” and called for regulations that force them to basically duplicate public schooling at home. Other than that, NEA has been curiously silent about homeschooling and isn’t seen as much of an opponent by HSLDA. 
 
“HSLDA has been enormously influential,” says Robert Kunzman, an authority on homeschooling at Indiana University. “They have been able to mobilize a lot of legal resources and grassroots organizations to push back on regulations.” 

A Wide Spectrum of Rules

Just a handful of states, like Colorado and New York, have maintained a comprehensive set of rules, according to CRHE. These states require the teaching of a full list of subjects without dictating the actual content of courses. They also mandate the total annual hours of instruction and formal assessments like standardized tests in an effort to make home schools accountable. In New York, districts can intervene, with the threat of putting the home school on probation, if the student performs poorly. 

Most states, such as Texas and Idaho, are much more laissez-faire. They require a short list of subjects be taught but no assessments. Texas is also among a dozen states where parents don’t have to tell the school district that they are homeschooling.  
 
In half a dozen states, like Mississippi and Utah, there are no subject, time, or assessment requirements, according to CRHE. Parents are completely free to do as they wish. 

As states have eased requirements for parents, the number of homeschooled students has expanded significantly, from an estimated 850,000 in 1999 to about 1.7 million in 2016, or about 3.3{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of the school-age population, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. While experts agree that homeschooling grew quickly during the pandemic and will probably continue to do so but at a slower pace, there is no reliable national data, with some estimates that exceed 3 million students in 2021 considered to be inflated. 

Homeschooling took off in the 1960s, fueled by religion and ideology. Christian conservatives wanted to imbue their children with religious doctrine away from the temptations of public schools, and progressive anti-institutionalists sought to nurture the kind of free thinking in their offspring that rote education stifled. 

In recent years a more diverse group of families, including a notable percentage of black parents, have turned to homeschooling for more practical concerns: to escape poor performing public schools, unsafe campuses, bullying, progressive ideology, and racism. 

At the same time, public schools, aiming to retain at least a limited grip on homeschooled students, are increasingly supporting them with everything from art and music classes to athletics and online education tools. What has emerged is a hybrid model in which students toggle back and forth between home and public schools. For instance, some students start their education at home and then enter public schools in their mid-teens to take more advanced classes that parents can’t teach.  
 
Whatever the motive for homeschooling, deregulation has made it a much easier choice for parents.  
 
“The movement to reduce regulatory barriers has definitely opened up homeschooling to growth for people from all socio-economic walks of life,” says Brian Ray, co-founder of the National Home Education Research Institute and a longtime advocate. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.” 

A Success Story in Missouri 

In Missouri, Kim Quon had only a few rules to abide by when she decided to homeschool her two kids so they could learn about Christian faith from her point of view. In her in St. Louis County home, she had to provide 1,000 hours of instruction a year, with 600 of those hours in key subjects like math and English, and keep a written log of the work completed, according to the state’s homeschool law. 

Otherwise, Missouri, like most states, takes a mostly hands-off approach. It doesn’t test the students and has no way of knowing if parents are doing a bad job of teaching them unless a report of educational neglect is filed, in which case the Department of Social Services may investigate. A spokesperson declined to say whether educational neglect is a concern in Missouri and said the department doesn’t release data on the number of complaints it receives. 

“There have been claims of educational neglect, but the vast majority are not legit,” Quon says. “Most homeschool parents take their job very seriously.” 

Quon certainly did. After finishing the required classes, her children had a lot of time left in the day to explore their own interests, which is one of the biggest benefits of homeschooling. The enormous workload of educating two children was made easier for Quon by relying on curricula created by homeschool groups, online resources, and community college for advanced math classes. 

“I’m not a college graduate,” Quon says. “So you don’t have to be a brainy person to homeschool your kids because there are so many resources and people available to help.” 
 
Homeschooling prepared both of her children for college. They went to the University of Missouri in St. Louis and did well, like most homeschoolers who seek post-secondary degrees. Her son studied anthropology and works at the Heritage Museum in St. Charles County. Her daughter earned a degree in biology and works at the St. Louis Aquarium. 

After homeschooling her kids, Quon was recruited by Families for Home Education, a statewide advocacy group, to direct its operation in the greater St. Louis region. While FHE has 1,200 members, its network of 10,000 to 20,000 supporters has been quickly mobilized to bombard lawmakers with calls and emails to defeat attempts to place additional rules on homeschooling that were first established in Missouri in the mid-1980s. There are grassroots groups like FHE in every state. 

FHE has successfully opposed proposals to make students start school at age five rather than the current seven. The group is now struggling to change a Missouri scholarship program that would force homeschooled students to take standardized tests and allow a review of their educational records, which FHE considers an unnecessary government intrusion. 
 

“Lawmakers pretty much leave us alone,” Quon says. “I would like to think it’s because of our presence as a lobbyist, and that we built those relationships over the years.”

Educational Neglect 

Quon’s dedication is common among homeschoolers, but what’s less understood is the extent of educational neglect since most states don’t collect assessment results. From his perch at Indiana University, Robert Kunzman has an anecdotal view of the problem after spending hundreds of hours with dozens of families in many states observing their homeschooling practices.  

The professor has been impressed with some home instruction – highly structured and directed lessons as well as those allowing exploration and creativity – but he has also witnessed serious problems: families who focus almost exclusively on a small subset of subjects they are comfortable with; a teenager who still counts on his fingers to do math; a mom who doesn’t know how to help her daughter sound out words, creating much frustration between them; and a parent who considers an episode of Little House on the Prairie to be a history lesson.  

“These are the kinds of things that are certainly going on,” says Kunzman, who wrote a book on Christian homeschooling. “It’s a small percentage of homeschoolers, perhaps less than a quarter, in which children’s educational interests are being profoundly neglected.” 

Homeschool advocates tend to dismiss this concern. While a small number of parents may not do a good job educating their children, Quon says, the same can be said of teachers in public schools, where many students graduate with skills far behind what’s expected of a 12th grader, or drop out. 

Brian Ray, the influential researcher embraced by the homeschool movement, also says he isn’t too worried about educational neglect. A Ph.D. in science education and the father of eight homeschooled children, Ray points his and other studies purporting to show that homeschoolers significantly outperform public school students on standardized tests. In his view, the research supports his position that government oversight of homeschooling is unnecessary.  

But Kunzman and other scholars have criticized the papers as advocacy masquerading as research. They point out that some of the studies have been designed and funded by HSLDA and say that they have methodological limitations. 

In Ray’s 2010 national study of achievement on standardized tests, for instance, homeschoolers who volunteered scored in the 86th percentile, well above the 50th percentile national mean. 

But the homeschoolers in this study, and in others like it, were an unrepresentative and privileged group: almost entirely white (97{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}) and raised by married parents (98{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}) with college degrees (64{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}). These traits are strongly associated with high academic achievement and don’t reflect the much more diverse and less educated population of public school parents.  

Ray waves off this issue, saying these traits don’t have much of an impact on home school performance, but researchers still question his results.
 
“The idea that homeschool students do better on standardized tests has been repeated so many times by advocates and the media that legislators take it at face value and it is now accepted common knowledge,” says Kunzman, who cofounded the International Center for Home Education Research to support non-biased studies. 

Calls for Regulation 

CRHE and Harvard’s Bartholet don’t buy Ray’s findings. They are advocating for what they consider reasonable protections for children. They say parents need to tell districts if they are homeschooling each year; they should cover the same subjects as public schools; and students should be assessed to make sure they are making progress. 

“We get messages every week from people around the country who know a homeschool child who is being educationally neglected,” says Chelsea McCracken, CRHE’s research director. “Where there is no annual notification, subject requirements, and assessments, there is no way for states to ensure that children’s rights are protected.”  

Kunzman sees such reforms as politically untenable. He advocates for a more modest approach: Require homeschoolers to take a basic skills test in literacy and numeracy. That’s it. The proposal might face less resistance since parents generally share a common belief that, despite religious and political differences, every child should learn how to read and do some math. Kunzman’s test would identify the students who are not learning so they could get some help. 

Ray thinks all the proposals for regulation are nonsense. Just look at public schools. “For many decades public schools have had regulations including certified teachers and testing,” Ray says. “And we have children who are illiterate and can’t do basic math. All the testing schools do every year doesn’t guarantee anything.” 

But Ray and Kunzman do agree on one thing – homeschooling will continue to expand.  

Posted on

Online higher education takes center stage at House Dem Policy hearing

Online higher education takes center stage at House Dem Policy hearing

On the web larger schooling will take heart phase at Household Dem Plan hearing

Lawmakers talk about affordability and accessibility

Coverage Committee    Oct 26, 2022

HARRISBURG, Oct. 26 – The Home Democratic Policy Committee convened a listening to Wednesday morning in Harrisburg to examine the affordability and accessibility of on the net bigger education choices throughout Pennsylvania.

“We will need to present learners trying to get to advance their instruction with every single possibility doable to do so. That includes online education, due to the fact as we read from testifiers today, it makes it possible for pupils to total degrees on their personal time,” mentioned Bizzarro. “Education is the lifeblood of our economy, and we ought to consider advantage of each individual chance to help it.”

The listening to, hosted by Rep. Mary Isaacson (D-Philadelphia), highlighted testimony from Western Governors College and Peirce School, two non-revenue better schooling entities that emphasis on furnishing on the web education and learning opportunities for pupils.

“Today’s listening to aided foster a great discussion about what can be carried out to far better hook up college students any where with the competencies they will need to do well,” claimed Isaacson. “It starts with dedicating the necessary funding and assets toward higher education and learning, and it’s some thing I’ll continue on to battle for in Harrisburg.”

Western Governors College is a thoroughly on the web school that was founded 25 yrs in the past by 19 bipartisan governors. According to Rebecca Watts, Vice President of WGU, there are more than 2,500 existing Pennsylvania college students, and much more than 5,000 alumni from the commonwealth. Watts testified that WGU has a yr-spherical term and keeps a tuition amount down below the countrywide average. She explained this flat-amount tuition timetable lets pupils to just take as many lessons as they can and function at a tempo that is finest for them. Watts added that Pennsylvania would have good added benefits if it became a condition affiliate of WGU, which would want to occur through laws.

“Being a state affiliate of WGU signifies a commitment from the college to attain out to and collaborate with universities and companies in that condition. In other states, it can be extra specific toward active services users and veterans to advantage their greater education desires. It can vary relying on what the point out wants to get out of its relationship with the university,” said Watts.

Mary Ellen Caro, President and CEO of Peirce College or university, observed that Peirce was a single of the country’s earliest adopters of on the web education and learning, and the only college in Pennsylvania that is devoted exclusively to serving performing adult pupils. Pierce at this time serves approximately 1,400 undergraduate and graduate college students, 85{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of whom are Pennsylvania people. Caro advisable employing surplus funding to commit in grownup learners to aid them advance their schooling.

“Our students count on community funding to gas their good results, and I believe that it is a wise financial investment for the commonwealth. We really should be developing opportunities for grownups to upskill and reskill in strategies that get the job done for them,” reported Caro. “Online education and learning is a way to improve equitable obtain for lots of, but normal greater training charges keep on being a barrier. Possibilities for expense are possible by way of programs that offer scholarships for limited, stackable credentialing programs.”

Wednesday’s hearing can be seen in its entirety right here. Photographs will be available below.

Details about this hearing and other Residence Democratic Plan Committee hearings can be observed at pahouse.com/policy.   

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Lake View Elementary School’s StoryWalk takes reading outdoors for the whole community | Local Education

Lake View Elementary School’s StoryWalk takes reading outdoors for the whole community | Local Education

Faculty may possibly be out for the summertime, but the outdoor learning choices have not stopped at Lake Watch Elementary University.

Shortly prior to the college calendar year ended, Lake Check out set up StoryWalk — a series of 18 pedestals topped with significant frames that every single can keep a web page of a guide or other tale. The pedestals are spaced apart, and visitors to the college grounds can stop at every single one particular to study a website page of a e book. The thought is to be outside the house, move all over and delight in a tale at the very same time.

David Carlson and Nichole Wittenberg took their daughters to the StoryWalk on new afternoon after their oldest, Hailey Carlson, walked it with her very first-grade classmates in advance of the faculty 12 months ended. Their other daughter, Emma, is 4.

“We took them all down the street — we only dwell about a block absent. We did the StoryWalk as a spouse and children,” David Carlson claimed. “It was a awesome, easy tempo.”

Carlson stated it was a awesome outing mainly because Emma experienced some engagement at every station.

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“It appeared like just a definitely enjoyment issue to do as a relatives, specifically with the pandemic. It was just a really awesome point to do (and) get out in character. It wasn’t crowded,” he explained.

The tale up appropriate now is “Jayden’s Extremely hard Back garden,” prepared by Mélina Mangal and illustrated by Ken Daley. The e-book was the winner of the 2019 African American Voices in Children’s Literature crafting contest. It tells the story of Black boy who sees mother nature everywhere in his urban community and sets out to influence his mother. He befriends Mr. Curtis, a Black man who makes use of a wheelchair, and the pair generate a local community backyard. Jayden then brings with each other his neighbors and his mother to show them the magic of character in the center of the town.

Lake View’s StoryWalk consists of issues to guide dialogue about the story, alongside with info about the creator, who is a school library trainer in Minnesota, and the illustrator.

Hailey Carlson stated the StoryWalk knowledge with her spouse and children was “awesome,” and she liked the tale.

“I preferred the element exactly where the small boy showed the mother all the nature,” she reported.

Fourth-grader Nehcal Voker was a single of the pupils who led second-graders on the StoryWalk in advance of school ended.

“It was type of pleasurable,” Nehcal claimed. The 2nd-graders “said it was awesome.”

Shannon Furman, Lake Check out librarian, stated she and Eve Dietrich, mother or father liaison at the school at 1802 Tennyson Lane on Madison’s North Side, individually arrived up with the plan for the StoryWalk and introduced it to Principal Nkauj Nou Vang-Vue. Furman mentioned her target was literacy, and Diedrich’s was guardian involvement.

“It’s a opportunity for our households to encounter the outdoor and literacy,” Furman claimed.

The thought came to Furman previous summer time when she observed the Rhinelander District Library’s Story Stroll at Hodag Park on the shore of Boom Lake, a flowage on the Wisconsin River. It opened very last spring and is similar to what Lake Watch installed.

Soon after the concept was proposed, Dietrich did a lot of the exploration to decide how Lake View’s StoryWalk would be created. The venture was funded by the Basis for Madison’s Public Schools, Balanced Young ones Collaborative, Tri 4 Universities and the UW Healthful School rooms Foundation.

A post-hole digger was rented, and volunteers from Blackhawk Church joined Lake View staff to set up the indications May possibly 22. The volunteers arrived as element of the church’s “Love Madison” initiative, a time just about every spring to provide as a church neighborhood in Dane County.

The college initially planned to install the StoryWalk in the college forest, which is part of Lake View’s out of doors schooling place, but the tree roots would have made digging the holes complicated. The close end result has some of the StoryWalk symptoms obvious from the street and the parking large amount and on a lot more level ground, which may appeal to extra folks to take element in the expertise.

Rachel Deterding, Lake Look at community faculty useful resource coordinator, explained the StoryWalk is supposed to be a North Side source for absolutely everyone in the neighborhood.

“We extend an invitation to everyone in the neighborhood to practical experience the StoryWalk even if they do not have little ones enrolled in this article,” Deterding reported.

Student groups will decide the new tale that will be mounted this tumble, Furman reported, and pupils also could assist arrive up with the accompanying queries. Lake Look at has a Hmong bilingual system, and a future plan for the StoryWalk is to attribute tales about Hmong households.

“The alternatives are out there,” Furman mentioned.

Each Monday, the Wisconsin Condition Journal features a story about discovering in Wisconsin. Below are School Highlight stories from the earlier calendar year. 

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GAO takes moderate stance on online program management firms

GAO takes moderate stance on online program management firms

A extended-awaited federal assessment of businesses that lots of faculties contract with to assist style and manage their on the web educational packages was anticipated—by people who favored these types of a move as effectively as those people who did not—to possibly undermine the legality of the earnings-sharing agreements that underlie some of individuals discounts.

The report released Thursday by the Governing administration Accountability Office, immediately after a 12 months and a 50 {e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of study, implies that some of people preparations with on the net program administration (OPM) companies may violate federal legislation that prohibits university student recruiters being compensated based on their achievements in recruiting students, as some congressional Democrats and customer teams strongly assert.

But the GAO report largely affirms the perspective that income-sharing arrangements are lawful as very long as a corporation or other company “bundles” recruiting support with other providers such as instructional design and style or student assist (as laid out in 2011 guidance from the Obama administration). The company focuses on urging the Instruction Office to demand far more and clearer facts from faculties about the extent and character of these outsourcing agreements, to enable auditors and many others analyzing the bargains greater realize whether or not the corporations and their recruiters are becoming compensated centered on how numerous college students they recruit. (It’s crucial to note here that some on-line application management corporations have deserted or de-emphasized their use of profits-sharing arrangements, charging fees for direct companies in its place.)

“To safeguard students from predatory recruiting techniques, it is essential for [the Education Department] to be certain that OPMs that deliver recruiting products and services for schools, as very well as OPM recruiting personnel, do not obtain incentives dependent on their good results enrolling pupils,” the GAO explained in its report. “Without clearer instructions to auditors and schools about the details on OPM preparations that must be assessed through compliance audits and method assessments, there is a danger that Education and learning will not have the details it requires to detect incentive compensation violations.”

When the report unsuccessful to make the form of eye-opening locating some might have hoped for (or feared, depending on their point of view), it did give some insights. Initially, the GAO involves in its definitions of “education programs” that OPMs produce not just diploma plans taken by college students qualifying for federal college student support but also shorter courses, such as microcredentials or boot camps, that might not qualify for federal help.

And the report features acknowledgment from the Education and learning Division that it is taking into consideration revising the federal assistance on incentive payment to “strengthen” its capability to determine doable violations.

History

The current market of companies that help faculties and universities build, market and control on line academic plans has emerged about the previous 15 years.

It commenced with a team of proven corporations like Pearson and a established of new players that invested up-entrance resources to deliver an array of products and services (admissions and enrollment help, advertising and marketing, online training course advancement, and student expert services) in exchange for a massive share of the subsequent revenue.

The companies commenced having off as nonprofit faculties (public and private) began seeking to contend with the for-gain universities (feel University of Phoenix and Kaplan) that dominated the very first major wave of on the web postsecondary schooling. Quite a few of people new entrants turned to outside the house companies for the reason that they did not consider they had the internal expertise to contend in critical regions this sort of as electronic marketing and virtual university student products and services.

The sector of on-line plan supervisors further expanded as a result of the emergence of businesses established by for-gain schools such as Kaplan and Grand Canyon University to sell the know-how they’d produced in on the net studying to nonprofit friends attempting to enter the marketplace. People companies drew specific scrutiny from buyer advocates and consider tank analysts who are generally skeptical about for-income colleges, who asserted that outside the house providers with a earnings motive would tension faculties to construct on line enrollment at the price of quality handle.

1 these critic, Robert Shireman, who engineered the Obama administration’s amplified regulation of for-revenue colleges, in a 2019 essay in Inside Greater Ed termed for the federal governing administration to revoke the aforementioned 2011 guidance that permitted tuition-sharing payments for recruitment as extended as a contractor furnished nonrecruitment providers as very well.

That’s the direction that some observers were being hoping the Govt Accountability Place of work would issue in when it started its evaluation in early 2021.

What GAO Stated

But that’s not rather wherever the agency went.

The report provides some data about the size and scope of the OPM imprint in larger schooling, although there is minimal that has not been presented in various earlier reports. The bottom line of that information: hundreds of faculties use outside enablers to run thousands of on line academic courses, most of the arrangements require schools paying providers to help them recruit students and several share income primarily based on enrollment (with firms garnering around half of tuition revenue on ordinary).

Most of the rest of the report focuses on how the govt could and really should go about gauging irrespective of whether people earnings-sharing agreements violate the ban on incentive payment. The GAO does not propose at all that the 2011 steerage that permitted the “bundled services” exemption is unwell-advised or really should be invalidated as a substitute, it focuses on irrespective of whether the Education and learning Office and its auditors have enough info to make your mind up irrespective of whether colleges’ relationships with an OPM are legal.

Dependent on interviews with auditors, faculty administrators and federal officials, GAO concluded that the Education and learning Section is not asking for—and therefore institutions are not providing—enough details for federal officers to fairly decide the legality of the arrangements. Initial, the government’s guidelines to auditors are unsuccessful to precisely point out on the net application administration businesses or the 2011 guidance on incentive compensation. Next, the agency’s directions to schools about the facts they need to share about their OPM preparations is incomplete, “and as a result schools do not always report these arrangements,” GAO reported. That is in particular genuine associated to preparations for nondegree academic courses, which are proliferating by boot camps and other providers.

The GAO report directs the Instruction Section to strengthen its guidance to auditors and faculties to be certain that it has greater information and facts with which to decide the legality of these preparations. Education and learning Division officers informed GAO investigators that they prepared to do so.

Eyes of the Beholder

Due to the fact the GAO report was evenhanded, observers with diverse factors of check out uncovered distinct factors to like about it.

Trace Urdan, handling director at Tyton Partners and an analyst of schooling technological know-how, reported he considered the GAO report did not “invalidate or undermine” the use of earnings-sharing agreements or drop other “bombshells” that would threaten the on the net method administration organizations.

“There will be more scrutiny in normal that will probably have a a little bit dampening impact on new contracts, and I can envision possibility-averse faculties being built extra hazard averse by the additional scrutiny,” Urdan said. “But there is an implicit acknowledgment that this thing is critical and is here to remain.”

Certainly, some critics of on the net application administration organizations and earnings-sharing agreements in specific expressed disappointment. Shireman’s colleague at the Century Foundation Stephanie Corridor reported by means of email that she was “pleased to see the [Education] Department agree with the GAO that it need to bring its oversight of college outsourcing into harmony with the incentive compensation ban.”

But the GAO tips “do not go far more than enough,” Corridor said. “The GAO is silent on the legality of the department’s 2011 subregulatory assistance that opened up a loophole in the ban on fee-based payments to student recruiters. That loophole has set learners and future students at chance of exposure to pressurized revenue strategies disguised as recruitment into on-line diploma and certificate courses. On best of strengthening its oversight of college or university-OPM arrangements, the division should really shut the loophole at the time and for all.”

Senator Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who requested the GAO report, seemed on the bright aspect.

“With so quite a few for-revenue providers serving to run—and recruit learners for—colleges’ online training systems, we should make certain college students are protected,” she mentioned. “This report will make very clear the Biden administration desires to conduct correct oversight to defend pupils, protect against abusive recruiting tactics and increase transparency of these small business arrangements—and I’m glad they are dedicated to getting motion.”