Gman, there may be a way …
August 25th, 2006 | by Walter Greenspan |… of keeping children from Conservative/Libertarian families out of the insidious grip of the Leftist education establishment:
According to an article in Monday’s (August 21) Deseret News, “Home schooling became less of an undertaking … for families … in Utah two years ago after they enrolled in the (state-financed) Utah Online Academy, a program in its fourth year that affords parents free curriculum, myriad school supplies, yearly trainings and a teacher to fall back on whenever they need help.”
5 Responses to “Gman, there may be a way …”
By Gman on Aug 25, 2006 | Reply
Good article, Walter. But, it’s one thing to do something in Utah, and yet another to do something in the 49 other states. Utah is a very homogenous society in almost all respects — religion, politics, culture, etc. Hence, a publicly subsidized program that helps homeschooling is not surprising in Utah. If it illustrates anything, it’s how much sway the Mormon religion has on politics there. Homeschooling is for the most part a “conservative” phenomenon — it’s “pro-family”. It’s not surprising, then, that it is subsidized by a government run by conservative Mormons. I’m sure they consider fostering home schooling to be good pro-family public policy.
So, where do classical liberals come in on such public policy. Well, what the gov’t giveth, the gov’t can taketh away. So, homeschooling parents are at the whim of gov’t, and are turned into an interest group. This breeds dependence instead of self-sufficiency. When the rug is pulled out from under them, they have trouble sustaining themselves. Moreover, they will likely, as I mentioned, turn into a lobbying group. That would be unfortunate.
A more important principle here is this rule of thumb: gov’t subsidy is always followed by gov’t intervention. Sure, in Utah gov’t intervention in home-schooling wouldn’t be overly problematic for obvious reasons mentioned above. But, in areas where humanistic secularism is embraced by the general populous — in particular the powers that be in school districts — it could be very problematic. In fact, I could see these school districts adopting something similar to Utah’s law for the sole purpose of subsequently controlling what homeschoolers use as curricula. Chiefly, they may ban parents who receive gov’t subsidies from also teaching, say, the bible to their students (their children!!!).
Sure, it’s the slippery slope argument, but it’s very realistic. I remember when I first read this article article back in 1999 and it completely changed my opinion about school vouchers as good public policy. Leave it to FEE to set you straight.
Subsidizing homeschooling is not worth the risk.
By Walter Greenspan on Aug 25, 2006 | Reply
Gman, Utah may no longer be as homogenous as it may have been.
The following is from an eFriend:
Our neighborhood near Hill AFB Utah really turned rough on us about 3-years ago. What was a well kept, modest neighborhood of mostly retired and starter families 7-years ago when we bought our first home; quickly turned ugly because of illegal immigrants flooding the schools, California originating, white trash/meth users moving in, and a weak city government who failed to enforce residential zoning laws strictly.
We helped other like-minded residents fight back successfully tightening the city focus on the damage being done by slum lord style investors taking advantage of lack of city code enforcement. Some neighborhood improvements are occurring meanwhile, we are biding our time till we can upgrade our housing to a more family friendly neighborhood. As far as schooling, a gun incident at the local elementary and the “no child left behind (no child is allowed to excel) requirements federally forced on our otherwise honorable local school administrators — pushed our family on over to where we were leaning in the first place…home schooling.
The “choice in education” movement is strong enough here in Utah, that School District Officials have opted to not only accommodate home schooling but also offer to finance an online supported program of materials adaptable to various home school needs. The K-12, Inc. program sponsored by the School District has been a godsend to our family and others. Enrollment is up to 800 families after just two years.
According to Laura Belnap, state program coordinator, the reasons parents choose to keep their students at home run the gamut — religious reasons, they don’t want their children associating with others in low-income areas, they want to avoid immunization requirements, they want to be in control of schedule, and some students have medical problems or just don’t do well in public school and want to try something else.
By Gman on Aug 25, 2006 | Reply
There are always exceptions to the rule.
It just amazes me that people run to the gov’t to do something they can do themselves. There are various homeschoolers associations in existence in Montana and they provide everything the homeschooling community needs to sustain itself.
Now, Utah’s homeschooling community is destined to be at the mercy of subsidizers. How sad that self-sufficiency is traded in for dependency. How sad that taxpayers that send their kids to public schools also have to pay for homeschooled kids. Sound ridiculous but its true.
By Jeff Woodall on Aug 26, 2006 | Reply
Gman, Honored to be on your blog via my efriend Walter. What I would like to see in education is real market competition for the teaching of the 3-R’s. Real choice in education, bought on the free market, by districts and/or parents, from companies like K-12 Inc. (only one of many home school choices accepted in Utah) The real benchmark here is K-12 Inc. whose former CEO Bob Bennet had a great vision for the distribution of education (despite his personal gambling problem). If there is accessible, performance based, competition for real education, the ability of school districts to socially indoctrinate will be sharply curtailed. In the beginning school districts were just parent ran educational CO-OPs based in small geographic areas of the state. About 100-years ago they started consolidating (a government take-over) and evolved into the monsters they are today. The information age (internet)gives us a chance to de-evolve those monsters. Yet, there needs to be standards. The duly elected state governments have just as much right to administer academic test for advancement (for homeschoolers as well as public schools) as they do to administer a drivers test…as long as the test is not a matter of faith or personal conscience. There is a thin line between having a Libertarian society (whose order is only possible among moral and righteous people) and Anarchy, which happens when amoral people try to be libertarians. Succesful homeschooling is not easy…I’ve seen as many misuses and abuses as I’ve seen successes. K-12 Inc. is helping create more homeschoolers and helping them succeed!
By Cherrie on Aug 26, 2006 | Reply
K12 is based in Alexandria, Virginia. William Bennett (former Drug Czar & Secretary of Education) was the Chairman of the Board.
This curriculum is available to parents and schools in various states in the USA. It’s not just a program available in Utah.
Virtual School Programs are in the following states: Alaska, California, Kansas, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Utah.
Virtual Academies are in the following states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington DC, Washington State, & Wisconsin.
This program is an answer for parents who are fed up with the “dumbing down” which is now in the school system. My children have been in the so called “gifted programs” in elementary school and all started reading, knew their colors, shapes, knew simple subtraction & addition before they started kindergarten. Our two oldest have taken AP courses in High School. Our oldest child graduated last year and was Valedictorian receiving a 4 year scholarship to college.
Through the years they have been frustrated when they have had to wait on class members to complete assignments in class which was supposed to be homework given the night before, or when involved with group projects, my child(ren) do all the work for the group and yet everyone gets the same credit. Two years ago my second grader was doing the same level of school work at the end of the year that he was doing at the beginning of the year. This is because the teacher (and school) would only teach at the level that the slowest learner was capable of doing.
In recent years we have had some of the following experiences in the younger elementary grades: the schools which host the gifted program would not accept siblings who were not in the program. This meant as a mom I had two children in two different elementary schools which started and ended at the same time. I ended up either dropping off children early or picking them up late because of the distance between the two schools. I spent over 20 hours a week just being the taxi driver service for my children since bus service is not available where we live (this was before gas prices took off). At the same time our neighborhood school has the children of illegals who only speak Spanish in the classroom (teacher does not know Spanish), children who share with the class the immoral problems in their homes, or talk about the latest movie/cable T.V. program they have seen at home as the teacher tries to politely stop the conversation, a homeless man who entered the school premises to supposedly use the bathroom, and a 7 year old child of ours who brought home a book geared specifically for 9 year olds, titled “Journey to an 800 number” by Award winning author EL Konigsburg which was filled with vulgarities. When I complained and asked politely that the book be removed I was told that this would be considered censorship by both the principal and the secretary.
This was the last straw and we felt like home schooling for our elementary aged children was our only option. Then after making the decision, we as parents and taxpaying citizens had to try and figure out which curriculum we would use for our children.
It costs less to educate a child through K12 then it does through the overloaded public school system.
We have enjoyed the extra time with our children. It gives our children more time to do extra curricular activities (sports, music, scouting, etc.) after school work is completed instead of having to wait for all of their classmates to move on to the next level.
Visit the website.
http://www.k12.com/