Should Homeschooling Parents Be Certified?

re: Should Homeschooling Parents Be Certified?

Mello — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:56:18 GMT

To liken teaching with giving a root canal is certainly like comparing apples and oranges. I can't give myself a root canal, but I can learn something all on my own. I am a homeschool parent of a high school student. I am not a certified teacher, although I have taken some college courses in education. The public school has tried hard to foster the belief that learning has to happen in a state approved facility, with a state approved teacher. The problem is that learning is something that comes natural to humans. Look at any preschooler and you will see an amazing curiosity about everything. In the space of a year an infant goes from knowing nothing to learning people, language, motor skills and much more. How did they learn that without a state approved instructor? The institutionalized learning process, for some children, stifles their natural curiosity, makes things like reading literature and exploring interests a chore and stifles natural curiosity.

For my daughter, school was torture. The social experience was killing the joyful child that she was. In middle school, my daughter brought me a copy of the book "The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to quit school and get a real life." She begged to be homeschooled, and after thinking about it in depth, I agreed. I realize that I am out of my depth with some of the subjects she needs, so our solution was to get a core curriculum from a correspondence school and then fill in the gaps with whatever she is interested in. In a typical school day, very little time is spent on actual work. Think about this, if you could get all the core stuff done in large blocks, what would you do with the rest of your time? Most people think that a teenager would spend all their time playing video games and sleeping. This is true to an extent, or at least at first. It takes awhile to decompress, but after awhile, sleeping and video games get old. Then comes hobbies. It is amazing the change I saw in my daughter about 6 months into homeschooling. She gets her year worth of core work done in a few months, and then devotes herself to her hobbies, which are website design, graphic art, writing short stories and journalism. She has had the time to do things that most kids thing about doing, but never have the time. When it comes to being ready for college, I think that she has a head start, because she already knows how to take control of her own education and doesn't need a teacher to force her to be in class or babysit her. This was a hard thing for me to learn when I made the transition to college.

re: Should Homeschooling Parents Be Certified?

Knitty — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:40:25 GMT

Seriously -- how dare the same worthless government that brought us the unmitigated disaster of "No Child Left Behind" threaten compulsory certification for homeschoolers? Regardless of what the homeschoolers are teaching their kids, or how, I have little doubt that those kids will do just as well, if not better, than their public-school-educated contemporaries.

re: Should Homeschooling Parents Be Certified?

Krystal — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 05:02:17 GMT

The following is from a research paper written by Tanya Dumas, Sean Gates and Deborah Schwarzer.

"A. Studies Show No Correlation Between A Parent’s Being Credentialed And

Student Achievement

The weight of available empirical evidence demonstrates that homeschooled students’

academic achievement is not affected by whether their parents possess a teaching credential. For

instance, a nationwide study of homeschooledstudents showed no significant statistical correlation

between having a parent who is a certified teacher and the student’s academic achievement.97 A

nationwide Canadian study reached a similar result, finding no correlation between homeschooled

students’ test scores and whether either parent had a teaching credential.98 A study of

homeschooled children in Washington found that the “absence of contact with a certified teacher

does not keep homeschoolers from doing well.”99 Studies in Alabama, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania,

and Texas, as well as another nationwide study, each found no significant relationship between

homeschooled student achievement and whether either of the parents was a certified teacher."

The rest of the paper can be found and downloaded here: papers.ssrn.com/.../papers.cfm

re: Should Homeschooling Parents Be Certified?

Sue — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:57:17 GMT

I find it so strange that others get up in arms about individual education choices. We homeschool and when I was at a mom's meeting a few years ago, one woman asked "for prayer" for her sister's children who were (in her opinion) attending a sub-standard public school.

I never attended another meeting with that group. People are people, and we all find ways to feel superior to others, and the education issue is a biggie. Public, private, home--all have their benefits and drawbacks. Each family needs to find what works for them. Honestly, who has the energy to "care" so much about what someone else's legal decisions are?

re: Should Homeschooling Parents Be Certified?

Alice — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:35:18 GMT

My state requires you to have a least a high school degree. They also require the child to be tested every 3 years to be sure they are not too far behind. I use teaching manuals with subjects I am weakest in as do many other home schoolers. Homeschooling is often the last resort for many parents. Most do a great job of it too. I think most of what certified teachers learn is child psychology and how to teach groups of children, not just one or two. Besides, every teacher I have talked with says they dont get to use their education most of the time. They have to do what the local school board says to do, often in stark contrast to what they were trained to do. I am just floored that the education of someones children is anyone else's business anyway! What's next? Will we monitor what people feed their kids or what they wear on cold days? Remember, most home schoolers want their children to have a better education than what the public school system offers, so they tend to try harder. Besides, who cares more that your child masters a subject? You or their teacher.

My kids do get lots of socialization. There are home school orchestras, PE Classes, art classes, foot ball and cheer leading teams, spelling bees. They work in groups and compete with each other just like public or private school. Please don't knock until you tried it. I think that often parents who dont home school are either jealous they cant do it or just dont know very much about it. My neighborn who home schools her son who is afflicted with severe Cerebral Palsy does so because he was abused by the teachers and other students at public school. Should she spend thousands of dollars to be certified? What about my oldest daughter who has an IQ off the charts and sat drawing pictures all day in public school? Should she be made to suffer boredom all day rather than learning advanced biology and math with me? What about my friends austic son? Should he be in a room all alone all day long because he was "disruptive and a distraction" to the other children trying to learn? Please, just leave us alone.

re: Should Homeschooling Parents Be Certified?

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:56:31 GMT

The whole certification process is learning a bunch of pedagogy that may or may not be useful - and not necessarily learning about the subject. There are some pretty crappy certified teachers and some awesome un-certified teachers. I think insisting that parents know about the subject matter is important. Though when I taught undergraduate recitation sections during grad school I often had to run a class where I knew very little - so I taught to the textbook. And honestly, half my certified teachers in school taught to the textbook which doesn't take any effort and hardly special certification.

It's a rambling response to say that certification is only a good thing if the certification programs are themselves good - right now, I think certification is just a glorified extra degree. I'd much rather have kids taught by an uncertified teacher who could really inspire them.

re: Should Homeschooling Parents Be Certified?

Laura — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:29:34 GMT

Absolutely not. I was home-educated, and my mother is a former public school teacher with a bachelors in elementary education. She told me when I was in high school that her degree didn't help much at all when it came to teaching a class full of kids or her own children.

I know dozens of home-educated students with parents who don't have education degrees, or even bachelors degrees. Several of them are national merit scholars. One got a 32 on the ACT in 6th grade.

Certification is just something the state would use to usurp the role of parent. If the kids are health, happy, and performing well on standardized tests, who cares?

re: Should Homeschooling Parents Be Certified?

Holly — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:23:11 GMT

Not for elementary school - most adults do know the material or can figure it out. When you start studying subjects in depth in middle or high school, then yes, certification should be required.