Las Vegas Eyewitness News reported that more students are hitting the books online. They called it homeschooling. To be more specific, the report said,
“Until recently, parents choosing to home school their children felt isolated — alone not only in their belief that it would be a better choice for their family, but also because there were precious few resources to help them. But that’s not the case anymore” And “Fifth grader Pierce and third grader Sierra are enrolled at the Nevada Connections Academy. NCA is an online public charter school accredited by the Nevada Department of Education. …”We have licensed, certified, teachers who oversee the program, set the lesson plans and monitor the learning,” said Online Teacher Gretchen Brown.”
Can anyone understand how these reports enrage homeschoolers?
This isn’t even a case of homeschool purists telling new homeschoolers to do it the old way… not at all. This is a case of public schools unable to pull homeschoolers back into the system with free educational resources, so they recruit new families who want to try homeschooling and offer to “help” them. This hybrid of homeschooling, or doing public school at home is a vast improvement over the situation the kids had in public school, especially if they were unhappy there, but there is still a great degree of control by the public schools.
Have you ever heard of a homeschooler needing a certified teacher available by phone, a learning coach, and parental supervision? Come on! This is a farce.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not angry because people have taken advantage of the school at home services provided by public schools. In my early days of homeschooling, I found it attractive myself. That is, until I did some research and found out how limiting it is. I am angry because the schools have hijacked the definition of homeschooling and perverted it for their own purposes. By muddying the waters, people who see homeschooling and want to give it a go are distracted by these new programs and given the old bait and switch. They dangle a carrot labeled homeschooling, and then feed them a watered down version of school. It’s unfair. It’s dishonest. It is also a backhanded way to force new controls on homeschooling.
Please don’t think that because I disagree with public school programs masquerading as homeschooling that I am an old-school homeschooler who disagrees with the direction that new homeschoolers are taking. To begin with, I haven’t been homeschooling long enough to be stuck in the old way of doing things. We started homeschooling in 2003 and readily took advantage of every technological tool we could find.
Currently my kids while homeschooling in the technical sense, do attend classes in kind of a part time homeschooling model that is a cross between private school with a college schedule. You could argue that we aren’t real homeschoolers either. The difference is that unlike with public schools our program is not publicly funded in any way and unlike private schools, we, the parents ultimately have the final say and can make changes to our children’s programs as we see fit. Try doing that with the new NCA program available to Las Vegas “homeschoolers”.
Read:
The differences Between Homeschooling and Public School at Home
State Funded “Homeschooling” Has Just Arrived in Georgia
More about Online Public Schools