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Reasons Some Parent Homeschool

There are many reasons, parents may decide to homeschool as I talked about it before in Why Some Parents Choose To Homeschool?  In olden days before there were any official school system or mandatory education in those systems, parents taught what they knew to their children, be it what type of work they did, how to cook, clean and survive and so on. That was kind of education at home for that time. Many of famous people around a few hundred years ago were homeschooled, there was no surprise as it was the norm then before schooling system came in to picture.

According to wikipedia and NCES (National Center For Education Statistics) survey done around 2007 shows following data. While it has now been 2013, information is important to know.

In the 2003 and 2007 NHES, parents were asked whether particular reasons for homeschooling their children applied to them. The three reasons selected by parents of more than two-thirds of students were concern about the school environment, to provide religious or moral instruction, and dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools.

From 2003 to 2007, the percentage of students whose parents reported homeschooling to provide religious or moral instruction increased from 72 percent to 83 percent. In 2007, the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction (36 percent of students). This reason was followed by a concern about the school environment (such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure) (21 percent), dissatisfaction with academic instruction (17 percent), and “other reasons” including family time, finances, travel, and distance (14 percent).Other reasons include more flexibility in educational practices and family core stability for children with learning disabilities or prolonged chronic illnesses, or for children of missionaries, military families, or families who move often, as frequently as every two years.

Number and percentage of homeschooled students in the United States, by reason for homeschooling: 1999, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
Reason for homeschooling Number of
homeschooled students		 Percent standard error
Can give child better education at home 415,000 48.9 3.79
Religious reason 327,000 38.4 4.44
Poor learning environment at school 218,000 25.6 3.44
Family reasons 143,000 16.8 2.79
To develop character/morality 128,000 15.1 3.39
Object to what school teaches 103,000 12.1 2.11
School does not challenge child 98,000 11.6 2.39
Other problems with available schools 76,000 9.0 2.40
Child has special needs/disability 69,000 8.2 1.89
Transportation/convenience 23,000 2.7 1.48
Child not old enough to enter school 15,000 1.8 1.13
Parent’s career 12,000 1.5 0.80
Could not get into desired school 12,000 1.5 0.99
Other reasons* 189,000 22.2 2.90

The data numbers may have changed but reasons behind parent choosing to homeschool somewhat remains similar. What are your reasons for homeschooling?

10 Things to Consider Before you Start Homeschooling

Homeschool Reference Books for Parents

Getting Started

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Homeschooling tips

How To Answer Well Meaning People About Homeschooling

One of the dreaded thing do once you convince yourself, your spouse and children about homeschooling is answering to your well meaning family or friends about your decision. Homeschooling gets bad rap sometimes in news and other media that no wonder people are confused. While there are bad parents who may misuse homeschooling to hide their neglect and abuse, there are lot of good parents who homeschool their children for actually educating their children. It is same way there are lot of bad and good public school parents too. How you educate your child has personal choice, as long as they are learning, and have a well growing and social skills to grow in well adjusted adults.

How to Tell Friends and Family about Your Homeschooling Choice?

So, how do you answer questions from family and friends about your decision to homeschool without being judged and without argument and feeling guilt in either sides. Follow this 3 tips to share your decision about homeschooling that makes you and them feel good;

1. Tell them homeschooling is legal

Homeschooling is legal in America, Canada and many other countries. For more details see our homeschooling resources for individual state or country of your choice. Making sure what you doing is legal, will comfort your well meaning friends and family in your choice of homeschooling. If they need more convincing you can show them HSLDA website for official information for re-assurance.

Just make sure you follow the right process to register your private school, go through public school or private school independent study program or whatever specific process for your local state is. File those paper work in times, gather vaccinations or proper forms from your pediatrician and all requirements, attendance and proper records and grade for your child just to be in legal side.

2.  Tell Them Many historical and famous people were and are homeschooled

There has been many famous past presidents, novelists, scientists have been homeschooled. There are also current celebrities and famous intellectuals are homeschooling their kids in today’s world. Current president hopeful Rick Santorum believes and homeschools his kids, will smith’s kids are being homeschooled.

Read or send them our famous homeschoolers article to see how many famous, successful and smart people have done homeschooling and it worked for them and it will work for you and your children too.

3. College actually want Homeschoolers

One of the big problem many well wisher friends and family with homeschooling is that the child may not be able to go to prestigious college, or become a doctor or an engineer. Assure them that many ivy league and other colleges actually want and look for homeschooling graduates in thier colleges. Your child can become a doctor, president, engineer or whoever he/she wants to be even when he/she is homeschooled.

I have seen it personally many homeschooler really sought after in colleges, and some actually starting a college at earlier age such as 14 due to being already ahead in education. But you do not have to take my word for it, you can see article here for homeschooler really wanted by colleges or do search on yahoo yourself to share it with friends and families.

Answering Homeschooling Questions Help Sources:

But What About Socialization? Answering the Perpetual Home Schooling Question: A Review of the Literature

Homeschooling the Child with Autism: Answers to the Top Questions Parents and Professionals Ask

So – WHY Do You Homeschool?

Asking Questions, Finding Answers: A Parent’s Journey Through Homeschooling

Conclusion:

Many well meaning friends and family question and concern may seem annoying but if you truly look it, they have child’s welfare at heart to make sure he or she is succeds in education and finds a good job or career to support himself or herself when adult. Once thier concerns are answered properly, they will see it homeschooling as choice in education just as you do. And having right support from friends and families is always better than not having any.

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Homeschool Curriculum Homeschool News Homeschooling tips K12 Homeschooling

Online Charter Homeschool is Growing

There are more and more people are homeschooling through charter school and now online education charter school to teach their kids at home. Online schooling has many benefits and some issues. Not everyone agrees, if that is a good thing or not. As debate for online charter school increases among parents, only you can tell if it works for your and your family. We like many family, use some online class, some in classroom classes and some subjects are taught at home with right homeschooling curriculum.

 Source: NY Times

Half a million American children take classes online, with a significant group, like the Weldies, getting all their schooling from virtual public schools. The rapid growth of these schools has provoked debates in courtrooms and legislatures over money, as the schools compete with local districts for millions in public dollars, and over issues like whether online learning is appropriate for young children.

One of the sharpest debates has concerned the Weldies’ school in Wisconsin, where last week the backers of online education persuaded state lawmakers to keep it and 11 other virtual schools open despite a court ruling against them and the opposition of the teachers union. John Watson, a consultant in Colorado who does an annual survey of education that is based on the Internet, said events in Wisconsin followed the pattern in other states where online schools have proliferated fast.

“Somebody says, ‘What’s going on, does this make sense?’ ” Mr. Watson said. “And after some inquiry most states have said, ‘Yes, we like online learning, but these are such new ways of teaching children that we’ll need to change some regulations and get some more oversight.’ ”

Two models of online schooling predominate. In Florida, Illinois and half a dozen other states, growth has been driven by a state-led, state-financed virtual school that does not give a diploma but offers courses that supplement regular work at a traditional school. Generally, these schools enroll only middle and high school students.

At the Florida Virtual School, the largest Internet public school in the country, more than 50,000 students are taking courses this year. School authorities in Traverse City, Mich., hope to use online courses provided by the Michigan Virtual School next fall to educate several hundred students in their homes, alleviating a classroom shortage.

The other model is a full-time online charter school like the Wisconsin Virtual Academy. About 90,000 children get their education from one of 185 such schools nationwide. They are publicly financed, mostly elementary and middle schools.

Many parents attracted to online charters have previously home-schooled their children, including Mrs. Weldie. Her children — Isabel, Harry and Eleanor, all in elementary school — download assignments and communicate intermittently with their certified teachers over the Internet, but they also read story books, write in workbooks and do arithmetic at a table in their basement. Legally, they are considered public school students, not home-schoolers, because their online schools are taxpayer-financed and subject to federal testing requirements.

Despite enthusiastic support from parents, the schools have met with opposition from some educators, who say elementary students may be too young for Internet learning, and from teachers, unions and school boards, partly because they divert state payments from the online student’s home district.

Other opposition has arisen because many online charters contract with for-profit companies to provide their courses. The Wisconsin academy, for example, is run by the tiny Northern Ozaukee School District, north of Milwaukee, in close partnership with K12 Inc., which works with similar schools in 17 states.

The district receives annual state payments of $6,050 for each of its 800 students, which it uses to pay teachers and buy its online curriculum from K12.

Saying he suspected “corporate profiteering” in online schooling, State Senator John Lehman, a Democrat who is chairman of the education committee, last month proposed cutting the payments to virtual schools to $3,000 per student. But during legislative negotiations that proposal was dropped.

See source and full article here: NY Times

Online curriculum has its benefits and issues. Many homeschooler and public school teacher use combination of online curriculum to use 100% online schooling or supplement their educational process. If you choose online curriculum, make sure it is from reputable company with options to change curriculum choices just in case it does not work with your child’s learning style.

Check out:

Distance Education: A Systems View of Online Learning

Engaging the Online Learner: Activities and Resources for Creative Instruction

How do you educate your child at home?

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Homeschool FAQ homeschool-Children Homeschool-Family Homeschooling tips

Does Homeschooling Magnify The Family Issues?

Homeschooling Magnifies Family Problems (and That’s a Good Thing)

BY Jennifer Fulwiler

“Okay, guys, it’s time for today’s lessons!” I say in my most positive voice. “We’re going to start with math. Let’s look at—”

“Maaa-aaath? I hate math!” comes a voice from the peanut gallery.

“I’m bored. I don’t want to do homeschool today,” says another one.

Thus began our first day of homeschooling for the season, and it only went downhill from there. The subsequent days have been somewhat better, but I still have to fight at least one battle of wills at the homeschool table every day. I don’t expect perfect behavior, but do ask that I see a slightly better attitude than you might expect from, say, prisoners working on a chain gang. We don’t always get there. And it tests the limits of my patience every time.

After a particularly frustrating session I called a friend who is also a homeschooler, and wondered aloud if we should send the kids back to school. We had tried a public charter school for a semester last year. It wasn’t a good fit for our family for a lot of reasons—reasons that I still agreed with—but I was tempted to go back there just because I was so frustrated with the behavior problems I was seeing.

Thank goodness for wise counsel, because my friend’s response was exactly what I needed to hear. “Homeschooling isn’t causing these problems,” she pointed out. “It’s just magnifying problems that were already there.”

She was right. Before we homeschooled, I was still impatient. My kids are generally quite sweet, but we still had occasional issues with them talking back and not wanting to listen. Sending them to school didn’t solve any of those problems, it just made them easier to forget about since I didn’t have to confront them as often. Having my children’s education taken care of by someone else also led me to be relaxed—probably too relaxed—about what happened in the house on a daily basis. There was no specific goal we were trying to accomplish on a typical day, so if my requests were being ignored here and there, it didn’t feel like a big deal. But when my children’s education became my responsibility, that changed. Suddenly, there was more at stake than whether or not I had help picking up the living room floor in the afternoon—if they continued not to do what I asked them to do, it could impact their entire education.

Homeschooling isn’t for everyone (as Simcha pointed out in her recent post about the benefits of sending her kids to school). There are a lot of reasons a family might choose a different model of education, but I’ve come to think that a bad dynamic between parents and kids shouldn’t be one of them. I used to think that those daily battles of wills were a bug in the homeschooling system; now I see them as a feature. Homeschooling acts as a magnifying glass, enlarging your view of any cracks that run through the foundation of your family, thus allowing you to address them before they grow larger and deeper.

Source: http://www.ncregister.com/ National Catholic Register

Related:

Help! I’m Married to a Homeschooling Mom: Showing Dads How to Meet the Needs of Their Homeschooling Wives

Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother

 

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Homeschool FAQ Homeschool Parenting Tips Homeschooling tips

The Dark Side Of Homeschooling

This site and many other homeschooling sites has many benefits and advantages of homeschooling but it would not be complete picture until we talk about bad side or the dark side of homeschooling too. It’s not all hunky-dory and smooth sailing on the homeschooling
front. Like all things in life, there is a downside that has to be
seriously considered when you explore the homeschooling option.
Though one man’s bane may be another man’s boon, there are certain
common reasons for concern.

The responsibility of teaching your child rests solely on you. You
cannot blame anyone else if your child is seen wanting in the
skills that his peers excel in. If your child cannot do the things
that are expected from other children of his age group, it
reflects badly on you as an educator as well as a parent.

A critical part of homeschooling is the time that you have to
spend with your children. You may have to give up your friends,
shopping and other entertainment and dedicate all these to your
child. This can become frustrating at times. You have to learn to
take the aggravation with equanimity and wait for the rewards with
patience and enthusiasm.

A parent who is dedicated to tutor his or her child single
handedly does not realistically have much time left over for a
career. This means that the family is robbed of an additional
source of income. In turn, this may lead to stress over finances.
You will have to train yourself to live on a strictly controlled
budget. While this is a matter of habit, it does need some getting
used to.

You cannot take a break when you feel like it. Feelings of guilt
will assail you if you neglect studies just because you are
feeling blue. You also fear that the child will take advantage of
the situation. Even when you have given homework, you have to be
around to give a helping hand. This means that anytime your child
is around you, you are on duty! For some, this may mean working
every waking hour. The child studying at home also needs to get
out more. This comes from staying at home all the time.
Interaction with adults and other children needs to be given
special attention.

Children tutored at home cannot develop in the various directions
that are open to children attending public schools. To achieve
that kind of exposure, you either have to be a super-parent
skilled in everything, or enroll your child to various activities.
This may not only prove too costly, but also be
counter-productive.

It is sometimes observed that homeschooled children do not do as
well in SAT tests as their school-going counterparts. Without a
diploma or a GED, some students find it difficult to get into the
military.

Lastly, if you envision enrolling your child to a public school,
there may be a certain period of emotional as well as social
adjustment. A child who is used to being at home for the whole day
and enjoying so much of uncontained freedom may have to undergo
some distressing emotional upheavals before he or she gets used to
the rigors of a regular school life.

Check out:

10 Things to Consider Before you Start Homeschooling

Homeschool Reference Books for Parents

Homeschool Curriculum Reviews

Getting Started

Homeschooling via DVD Videos

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Homeschool FAQ Homeschool-Family Homeschooling tips

Advantages Of Homeschooling

edutoy

Image source: amazon

There are more and more people are beginning to look at homeschooling as an option nowadays. Some of them are famous, rich, and highly educated. Are there any benefits or advantages to homeschooling your child? You bet ya, there sure are.

Due to increasing unhealthy competition in the education area, most parents now-a-days find it unacceptable the way schools teach the kids in the good old ways, also from the fact of raising bullying in school and ragging Schools are no longer a safe place for learning, look at the rising number of student committing suicide just because they are not able to cope up with the pressure. Also in few occasion we come across kids are shooting other kid with guns. Due to this more and more parents are thinking that they are well-educated and are sometime better than the so-called school teacher and can teach their children very well at home and cut the risk of all the ill effects.

Look at the limited number of good schools and higher educational institute along with growing number of students, the competition for good carrier path is enormous, we often find cut off mark for admission to premier institutes are such that very few can get to them and this results in very huge pressure on the students, due to this pressure they are actually not learning but regularly fighting for existence is this going to end? I find homeschooling is one of the best alternative which allows the child to pursue what he is good at and do not expose him to the so-called competition for which there are only few winners with chance of success may be only 0.001% because that is only available opportunity for the chosen one who can mug up things faster and write very well in examinations and test. After all can you count very famous personalities who have any link with their educational background? I would name some personality and ask you can you tell me what their education is and which premier school they studied or how much score they got in their plus two? Can anyone tell me which school Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore passed out from? What was Sachin Tendulkar’s percentage in Plus two? From which business school Mr. Anil Agarwal (Vedanta Group Chairman) graduated from? Was Albert Einstein a great scholar in school? Dhirubhai Ambani the founder of Reliance group managed to pass 10th somehow. What was Kapil Dev’s educational background? What was Sunil Gavaskar’s educational background? Can you tell what Tamil superstar Rajinikanth’s degree was? Do you know Amir Khan could go only up to 12th? I can go on asking and the list is endless.

Now let me ask one thing. Are we not just after the masses and doing the same mistake, putting undue pressure on our children? Then why follow the crowd why can’t we find an alternative, I think one of the alternative is homeschooling.

Advantages of Home schooling is many, as you can realize what is the real interest of your kid is and where is his natural talent and you can actually encourage him to work in that direction from childhood which your child will definitely excel better, in normal school your child is taught what others are also learning and in the process he or she may be getting bored and develop disinterest which is actually harmful to his carrier. In Home schooling you can actually develop your child’s interest into a passion and develop him into a better professional than a mediocre educated general citizen. You can also choose to train him on other skills like photography, music, art… and the list is endless. By homeschooling you can give your child with a free atmosphere for learning. Now-a-days information’s are available on fingertip in the internet and one need not depend on schools to guide us for the same.

Let us do something different, just because everybody is after the path it cannot be the only way there are always a better way.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5384250

Check out:

Homeschool Reference Books for Parents

Best early education homeschool curriculum

Best kindergarten curriculum I love! Sing, Spell, Read and Write

Homeschool Curriculum Reviews

Homeschooling via DVD Videos

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Homeschool FAQ Homeschool Parenting Tips Homeschooling tips

How to avoid Burnout When Homeschooling

When you are home with kids and teaching them, there bound to be burn out at some point of time. Homeschool burnout does not have be difficult to deal with, if we take some precaution to avoid it and make homeschooling more fun and enjoyable for you and your child.

When a parent takes on the responsibility of educating his or her
child, homeschool burnout is one of the more common issues they
have to deal with. There are many reasons that lead to this
burnout: an illness, a new baby, added responsibility, change in
routine etc.

The symptoms of burnout vary from lack of patience to overeating
and crying without any apparent reasons. Surprisingly, a burnout
need not be such a bad thing. It is a wake-up call – an indicator
that things are not going well and that you need to reschedule.
Reversing or avoiding a burnout is possible if you get fair
warning.

Firstly, lower your expectations. Do not be a perfectionist. Take
the good days with the bad. Next, when something does not seem to
work, look for alternative methods. Flexibility is a key
factor. If tension starts mounting, take a break. When necessary,
change the style of teaching. For instance, small children love to
take on their spellings when they quiz an adult.

Avoid overkill. Do not pack too many activities for the sake of
socializing your child. A worn out mom means a grouchy kid and
that means no happiness. Get support from your spouse or a
neighbor or a support group. Don’t try to achieve everything by
yourself. Homeschooling means ‘happy schooling’ – don’t forget
that.

Check out:

10 Things to Consider Before you Start Homeschooling

Homeschool Reference Books for Parents

Homeschool Curriculum Reviews

Homeschooling via DVD Videos