Prolonged Silence
Yes, yes. Long time, no post. Chew on some of this.
A new bill is floating around the Nebraska State Legislature, LB 1141. Search for it here. Read more here. Feel free to peruse the comments in the Lincoln Urinal Star article. Lots of opinions. From a quick read, what I gather is that his new bill would require students in unaccredited school situations (read: home-school) to be tested on an annual basis at the parents' expense in order to ensure adequate progress is being made. If not, parents can be required to enroll their students in a public school.
One argument in favor of the bill is that legally speaking, the state of Nebraska, per its constitution, is required to provide education for children ages 5 to 21. Being the responsibility of the state, one would imagine they would like to have some sort of oversight. This seems fairly comparable to all of the state and federally mandated testing associated with, among other legislative tom-foolery, the No Child Left Behind Act. As far as I have seen, that one act constitutes a prime example of what we can call a "paper tiger." No teeth. Regardless of the stipulations, I have not heard one whit about schools being closed, funding being cut, etc., which were provisions of NCLB if standards were not met. Now, while I might have agreed in principle that public schools run on government money should be doing a damn good job to be worth the $8000-$13000 a year it costs them to educate ONE student, I did not then, nor do I now agree that it takes a behemoth of government oversight by means of standardized testing to do so. Here's my take on this whole "responsibility for providing education" bit: isn't having an adequate (yes, I'm saying the state's public schools are adequate) school system in place enough to "provide" for education? If parents decide not to utilize the state-provided educated system, isn't that their loss? (I say loss in that they are still paying taxes for the education system they're not using.) Wouldn't the state's time and attention be better spent on those facets of the system that they are currently responsible for instead of trying to bring more territory under their reign?
Most of how I see the conversation being framed is a same old cat-fight between public schooling and home-schooling. This bill is turning into fodder for home-schoolers and anti-home-schoolers to hash it out once again, making the same recycled arguments about why home-schooling does or does not work. While I can appreciate the debate and the thoughts it brings up, I don't see it as being all that pertinent. This shouldn't turn into a debate about whether or not home-schooling is effective; I have a personal opinion that I'm not going to mention, because it's not important. What is important, what the debate should be about, is whether or not students whose parents have taken them out of the public education system should be required to jump through the same hoops as the public education system.
If I may wax philosophical for a moment and throw a question out there, what's the reason for "educating", and how is that best accomplished by a government entity?
A new bill is floating around the Nebraska State Legislature, LB 1141. Search for it here. Read more here. Feel free to peruse the comments in the Lincoln Urinal Star article. Lots of opinions. From a quick read, what I gather is that his new bill would require students in unaccredited school situations (read: home-school) to be tested on an annual basis at the parents' expense in order to ensure adequate progress is being made. If not, parents can be required to enroll their students in a public school.
One argument in favor of the bill is that legally speaking, the state of Nebraska, per its constitution, is required to provide education for children ages 5 to 21. Being the responsibility of the state, one would imagine they would like to have some sort of oversight. This seems fairly comparable to all of the state and federally mandated testing associated with, among other legislative tom-foolery, the No Child Left Behind Act. As far as I have seen, that one act constitutes a prime example of what we can call a "paper tiger." No teeth. Regardless of the stipulations, I have not heard one whit about schools being closed, funding being cut, etc., which were provisions of NCLB if standards were not met. Now, while I might have agreed in principle that public schools run on government money should be doing a damn good job to be worth the $8000-$13000 a year it costs them to educate ONE student, I did not then, nor do I now agree that it takes a behemoth of government oversight by means of standardized testing to do so. Here's my take on this whole "responsibility for providing education" bit: isn't having an adequate (yes, I'm saying the state's public schools are adequate) school system in place enough to "provide" for education? If parents decide not to utilize the state-provided educated system, isn't that their loss? (I say loss in that they are still paying taxes for the education system they're not using.) Wouldn't the state's time and attention be better spent on those facets of the system that they are currently responsible for instead of trying to bring more territory under their reign?
Most of how I see the conversation being framed is a same old cat-fight between public schooling and home-schooling. This bill is turning into fodder for home-schoolers and anti-home-schoolers to hash it out once again, making the same recycled arguments about why home-schooling does or does not work. While I can appreciate the debate and the thoughts it brings up, I don't see it as being all that pertinent. This shouldn't turn into a debate about whether or not home-schooling is effective; I have a personal opinion that I'm not going to mention, because it's not important. What is important, what the debate should be about, is whether or not students whose parents have taken them out of the public education system should be required to jump through the same hoops as the public education system.
If I may wax philosophical for a moment and throw a question out there, what's the reason for "educating", and how is that best accomplished by a government entity?
posted by the jake at 5:27 PM
3 Comments:
Easy solution -- don't spawn.
More realistically, screw big government. I'd leave a longer, well-reasoned argument but time is limited and I'd like to hear more about what you think.
I think the main argument against the provision rests on the fact that the parent should direct the education of the child and the state should need probably cause to investigate suspicions of wrongdoing, ie., not educating the child.
Children are assessed in homeschools...daily and continually by their parents. The whole point of the testing in schools is to provide more accountability to parents. We should not be accountable to the state.
Anyway, if you want to read more on my thoughts, I've written a bit about it. I addressed two points here and my commenters offered some more thoughts. Along with other links to discussion on this bill in my sidebar. (I'm a homeschooler just outside of Lincoln, so the bill is rather important to me.)
Probable cause, not probably cause. I don't know why I keep doing that. : )
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