I was outraged when I read the article about the CA decision. First of all, HS parents are accountable. They have to report yearly on the progress of students. There are state requirements that must be met. I'm not exactly sure why the supposition is that forcing parents to get teaching certs will guarantee a better education. Many, many many HSed children far surpass the level of education of their public school classmates.

yes, if I were in CA I'd be picketing. If this becomes an issue in FL, you know I will be.

btw, I tried to email you earlier with a response to a question you asked, but for some reason it got bounced back. Shoot me an email and I'll reply to it. :)

 

Amen to that!

 

CA has tons of crazy education laws for both the regular-schooled, homeschooled, etc.

The teaching certificate thing is laughable. They already have way too many restrictions in CA.

What I'm most worried about is its setting a precedent for laws in other states. I'm guessing that one may go all the way to the Supreme Court. It will be a big battle.

 

Not to mention that if CA requires teaching certification, the very notion of homeschooling as being a different kind of education from the mainstream gets entirely subverted.

 

I definitely don't agree that you need a teacher's certification to be a great teacher. I think your stance actually jives well with your liberalness because it's basically just down to individual civil rights - and that's what liberals care about.

I read about the decision in California, and I don't agree with it. I don't think a teacher's license is the answer. On one hand, I like the idea of being able to raise my kids however I want with no government interference. On the other hand, as a former teacher, I've seen home-schooling go wrong on so many, many levels. I don't think it's wrong to want some kind of system that doesn't let these kids fall through the cracks. I'm just not sure what the answer is.

And I would never, ever, ever home school in a million years. Never. Ever.

 

I'm going to go out a limb here, in which many of the fine readers of this blog may want to beat me with, and say that I have no problem with expecting home-schooling parents to demonstrate that they have teaching qualifications. As a society, we have a vested interest to make sure that all kids have access to a quality basic education. I don't care if it comes from public school, private school, parochial school, or home school, there are effective methods of learning that teachers should understand. If we expect teachers in non-home schools to meet certain standards, than it short changes home-schooled kids to exempt their teachers from those standards.

A teaching certified parent may still determine what the child's curriculum is - something I also don't entirely agree with, as it may mean that kids get no exposure to ideas that the parent does not agree with, but that's another story and I don't think most local schools should set their curricula, either because then you wind up with crazy regional selectiveness, like kids in the south not learning about the civil war... now I've really digressed, sorry.

The point is, we expect teachers to meet minimum requirements that enable learning. A parent's love and best wishes for a child are an excellent start, but not always an effective way to prepare a child for success in this complicated world in which we live.

 

Thanks Alex---I agree with so many of your points. Let us parents decide what is best for our kids---the VAST majority of us has weighed all the options and come up with the ones the best fit our family and situation.

 

Suzanne,
Thanks for your comment. I'm all for accountability. The CA law does not address this, though. Different states have different ways of measuring this. Some require students to take tests. Others require the parents to meet with the superintendents to go over lesson plans. I'm sure there's others out there too. To me that seems like a way to check and make sure education requirements are being met or at the very least being thought about.

 

The home schooling thing is very hard for me, since I come from a family with so many teachers. It just strikes me as absurd that we acknowledge that teaching is a profession but then say that really, anyone can just do it. To me, it denigrates all the important skills that teachers should master before they are set loose on kids. At the same time, I acknowledge that there are enormous quantities of extremely shitty certified teachers out there, and I'd like to see something done about that. My husband read somewhere that most new teachers come from the bottom 25% of their graduating class, which is really depressing. I guess my main interest is in finding the right balance to ensure that kids get a quality basic education.

Thanks for providing a format for having such an important discussion!

 

Hmm, I was about to softly disagree with you and then I read someone else's comment clarifying the HS parents are actual subject to annual state requirements. It is a complicated issue for me. On one hand, I think families should be given large amounts of freedom with how to raise their kids, but I also think that parents individual rights cannot be allowed to infringe on their children's right to the same basic education that all other children have access to. Not that public schooling is perfect. Far from it. But I don't discount the knowledge and skills that certified teachers acquire in their study and experience. (I say this as a university teacher, who would feel sorely underprepared to teach elementary education.) I guess, I am not necessarily immediately opposed to having HS parents subject to some regulations...although requiring teaching certification sounds a bit extreme, and, as you already stated in the comments section, doesn't actually address the issue of accountability.

 

Excellent points, Suzanne and Chantelle. That is true. Our teachers work incredibly hard and have to take numerous classes to be qualified. They also need to learn about different learning styles and flags for learning disabilities, not to mention the information that they are teaching. Again, I am also have no plans to homeschool. To me school was a great experience and one that I want my kids to have not to mention it seems like a tremendous of work, but I could be wrong. To me though it's about individual freedom. I think as long as there's accountability, the education is generally speaking still protected. As was pointed out, even in public schools you can't always guarantee that the kids are learning what they are supposed to be learning. Thanks for all your comments!

 

Oh this steams me. I'm a California resident and while I don't plan on homeschooling, I don't like that I no longer have the option (unless I get certified which is such hoop jumping if you ask me.)

Having certified teachers teach your kids in no way guarantees they'll get any kind of a decent education here. People are fleeing to private schools in huge droves because the schools are so bad in areas, my city in particular.

I'm not faulting the teachers of course, but for the parents who need options, taking this one off the table is poor legislature. They might try fixing the schools rather than trying to force kids back in them.

My understanding with homeschooling was that there were standardized tests that they had to take to move up, just like in regular school. If the kids are achieving, why insist on certification?

 

Thank you for being an open minded non-home schooler. As a HSing mom, I am the first to admit that I am not qualified to teach in a large class. The dynamics of the public/private classroom are very different from the dynamics of my 4 student classroom. I can see the areas where they thrive and where they need to improve because I can afford to take the time to see it. I am not held to a bell ring if a math lesson needs some extra time to make sure they understand it today and not wait for the next scheduled class time.

Also, I make sure my kids take the standardized testing (we have more options than that here) because I want to hold myself accountable to their education.

Ultimately, you can have good or bad teachers whether at home or in a school setting, and unfortunately it is the bad that make better news stories.