I was wondering if anyone here, besides me, homeschools because of poor academics in the schools they are zoned for? It is not the only reason for me, but it became one of the reasons after I started homeschooling. When my children were in public school, I was so sure they did so much. But once I started homeschooling, my oldest was still in public and my 2nd was homeschooling, it opened my eyes. I learned they never did grammar. She was in 3rd and he was in 4th. They did not even know what a noun was. I found out that they did not do handwriting. And much to my shock, they did not really do spelling. At the end of the first year, my daughter was doing division, but my son, who was older, still had not started. So finally, I asked the teacher. I figured my son must be slacking at school. Afterall, how could you get to end of 4th grade with no grammar, handwriting, spelling, or division? She told me it was true, they had been instructed to ONLY teach what was on the TAKs test, and those things were not on there. She said division did not start until the 5th grade test so they were told not to teach it. They simply spent the whole year taking practice TAKs tests and going over and over those. Ironically, there actually was 1 division problem on the 4th grade TAKs that year, but that was the first time ever and I don't know if it happened again. They do not really have to know math facts for the TAKs tests and when they do start doing computation type stuff, they are allowed to use calculators and are provided with formulas. I also obtained a copy of the rubric for the writing TAKs (given 4th and 7th grades, optional) and found out that the main criteria was length, not quality. It was specifically instructed to not take off for handwriting, grammar, or spelling. Why bother with the writing? My sister, who teaches there, told me her principal got mad because she was only doing one practice TAKs run per week per subject. It is 3rd grade so that makes 2 subjects. So, when I started homeschooling, it was for one reason. But once I got going, this became another reason. I just felt like school was a waste of time. I was thinking about this as some people posted how much the children are doing at their local public schools. Please, when you answer this post, please add in how you know what they are doing at the local public schools. When I have attempted to tell people around me that their children are not doing spelling, handwriting, or grammar, they always say they are just SURE their child is. But when I ask if they have ever seen a spelling list or anyone homework come home in those areas, they always just sort of say no, but they are just sure. Sometimes, later, they will come back to me after looking in to it. Then they are shocked and telling me how I was right. I know I am right because they made this decision official within the district. They have officially instructed the schools to not teach these things. Every year, before the classes start, the teachers go to conferences for an entire week. They have spent a fair amount of time explaining why these topics were a waste at these conferences. Then my 7 yr old went to their first grade this past year and spent a lot of time on the computer, freely typing whatever he wanted. He was never even given topics to type on so every single thing he brought home this year was about the same exact thing (riding rollar coasters at 6 Flags). He had just started 5+5 at the end of the year. He also seems to have forgotten how to tell time as the clocks at school are all digital and he was told at school that he does not need to know how to do a regular clock. Lovely.
I agree with you on the academics. I just pulled my children this year from public school. They teach to the state tests. Our test is an ILEAP and they take a P-ILEAP starting in 3rd grade. They do have spelling lists, but that is where the spelling stops. They do not correct writing errors with spelling, grammer, or punctuation. There is a big writing component on the state test, but I have no idea what the rubric for it entails. Handwriting, strong math, and grammer are overlooked until it is going to be on one of the state tests. They teach to the tests. My kids have always done well in the public schools b/c they weren't challenged. My dd7 (almost 8) loves home school b/c, "We learn things here that we don't at school." They don't do science or social studies truly until 3rd grade and then it is specific to the test. If it is going to be on the test, then they study it. If it isn't, then it isn't important. The thing to realize is the school's funding is based on these test scores. They teach to the tests b/c that is the way that they get funding for raises, improvements, and purchases. I am home schooling b/c of the way they teach. They teach to a test and here they test every year starting in 3rd grade on through. If it isn't a test they have to pass in order to not fail, then they have a pre-test in the in between years. My child could make all A's all year long and miss this test by 5 points and fail and she would fail the entire grade for the year. There is something wrong with this system.
That is a big factor for us as well. I feel like even the good schools in our area are being forced to cater to the lowest common denominator, leading to boredom and wasted time for the average and above-average kids. I am not a fan of all the testing or the push for academics in kindergarten either, as I haven't seen any evidence they lead to increased performance in the long run.
I started homeschooling bc of many factors but academics is one of the top reasons. All the schools do is Taks Test prep work. Parents with ps childern complain about the taks homework that is given out, they also complain that all they work on is math, english, reading than math, english, reading. no science, or history to think of. Students in our local ps (some from our chruch) are so tired that they have failed the taks test and were made to go to summer school. they are getting burned out! I want my girls to have fun with school and not have a big burn out!
There are lots of reasons we HS, but the pathetic academics in our local schools are a huge part of the reason that I never want them to attend one. Even before we chose to HS, we paid out the rear end to have them in private school, thinking that was the way to go. But it wasn't really any better. If you saw my post yesterday about my son's standardized test scores arriving, you can see how poorly he ranked at the end of 3rd grade (where the first half of the year was spent in school) compared to how well he's doing now. There's just no comparison. When we first got started, I felt like I had to reteach him everything, in math, especially. Yet somehow he always brought home good grades from school. I knew he hated homework, but now in retrospect I'm thinking it might've been that he acted out so badly because he really didn't understand what he was doing. But I had no idea he wasn't learning enough because this school was/is notorious for inflating grades to make them sound better to prospective parents. They are all about the money there...something I wish I'd known before I gave them 3 1/2 years of OUR money!) How do I know that kids aren't learning what they need to in our local public schools? Mainly from hearing PS parents, friends of mine, talking about what their kids are and aren't doing in school. For instance, I talked to one of them about how I'm concerned that DS1 (rising 6th grader) probably isn't up to par on his writing skills, because he said he didn't know what a research paper was when he came across that terminology. She said that, to her knowledge, her 8th grader has never written any kind of paper before....that he would also be clueless about what it takes to write a research paper. I was like, he's never even written a one-page report about something? And she said he'd done some short book reports but she'd never had to help him with anything more substantial than that, nor had she seen anything come home from school to indicate that he'd done that there. There are other examples of the same, where I hear a parent comment on something and I feel surprised that their kids aren't being expected to do more in school. It really sounds like everything they do is geared toward teaching to the test. I've also heard the above friends' kids read aloud and they all seem very behind where I'd hope my kids would be by their ages.
Well, it was a big part of the decision for us, but nothing like what's being talked about here on this thread. My oldest was in the first grade when we started looking into it. At the beginning of that year, when I'd told the teacher (who promptly made ds demonstrate) that my son could already read, I was informed that the school librarian only lets first graders check out yellow-dot books no matter what their reading level. It started there, and progressed through the year. She wasn't making sure he got done what he was supposed to do (wasn't even sending his uncompleted work home or letting me know he wasn't finishing work), and I'm sure he was bored out of his mind. The then-local ps was all about teaching to the average kid, with almost no programs for the advanced or the learning disadvantaged. That was a big part of why we started looking into homeschooling. We kept looking because we found that not only were they not meeting academic needs, they also would not, could not meet his social instructive needs either. That cinched it for us, and we haven't looked back. But if I'd discovered what's being said here, I'd have yanked quicker than lightening, and it's sure a good reason to not ever consider going back!
Was our main reason. Our oldest son lost 70% of his hearing as a baby which of course put his speech WAY behind, which in turn put everything else behind. The ps he went to preschool then kinder to was really a joke. They didn't want to fool with him. I had to stay on them just to get them to do anything. Like not let him sleep until lunch! We then moved him to a private christian school thinking things would be much better. After all he only 7 other kids in his class. His first year was wonderful. His teacher really helped him a lot. The next year something happened to her attitude, I'm not sure what. There was for some reason a lot of friction within the school between staff that year. That year was an absolute waste of our money and his precious time. So we pulled him out at Christmas break. We've hs'ed every since. Best thing we ever decided to do. Even though it was the most nerve wracking decision we ever made!
We do! The schools here were rated way low on the school report cards. But that is only part of it, we too have personal reasons. As my younger ds has grown he has had his years of hyperness and I am sure he would have been in trouble for it, dd was advanced in her learning style and that would have been problematic. They were the perfect home schoolers so far! Are? They learn quickly and are excellent at retaining information on most subjects. I could see both of them being bored in a class room that only gave you so much to do at a time. Now in my friend's town they allow kids to go advanced at the ps and it is run very much like a private school because it is a small town. So her kids are advancing, her daughter in 7th grade already has scholarship programsin place for Universities! They have her in an honros program that sets her up.. our schools don't seem to have that as my neighbors who went to ps here did not go on to college.
Honestly, the only reason we decided to homeschool was because we moved from TX to LA and the school we were zoned for was HORRID. We have since moved back to the Fort Worth area and my kids will be attending public school this August. I will really miss having them around and teaching them, but they are so excited to be in "a real school".
Well, I would consider homeschool to be "real school" too. Just because it is not public does not mean it is not real.
warning-long post When my ds was in public school kindergarten I volunteered in the classroom and at lunch and recess, I talked with the teacher, I talked with my son, I read the teacher's weekly newsletter on what the children did that week, I looked over and read what came home in ds's backpack, I had meetings with the teacher, school psychologist, principal and other teachers, I talked with my neighbor lady who works at the school and had a child in my son's class and I observed things when I picked up my son. That's how I knew what the school and my child were doing or not doing. I saw the difference in what they said they wanted children doing and what the kids could actually do. I saw that the school district rules and expectations weren't the same as the actual school my son went to. I saw many things that made our decision to homeschool easier. There were many issues at the school besides just what was going on with my kid. To be fair I can't completely blame my son's former school for everything bad that year. My son's personality just didn't fit there either. At that time he was a quiet, sensitive and anxious type of kid. It wasn't a good mix with the school. I also didn't prepare him for kindergarten well enough in some respects. When my hubby and I attended the adult only kindergarten orientation for our son (6 months prior to kindy) we were told by a kindergarten teacher (from a different school) that kids coming into kindergarten didn't need to know anything. She said they start with the alphabet the first week, so there is no need to worry about your child not knowing something. They basically told us the kids need to know how to go to the bathroom, wash hands and dress independently and that's about it. I was thinking to myself at that point that my kid will be fine and will be ahead of the game even without preschool, if that's all they require! ....Well, my son entered kindergarten and was considered behind right away because he didn't attend private preschool. Also, I only had him going a 1/2 day versus the full day of school, which the teacher told me in so many nasty words that I better get my son to attend. Half day versus full day was suppose to be the parents' choice according the school district handbook and info. My son was the only one going 1/2 day though. Anyway, before my son entered his teacher's classroom he knew the alphabet capitals and lower case from his magnetic letters, was reading some words (had a list of 20 words knew), was counting to 100 by himself, could recognize numbers, knew circle, triangle and square, knew colors, he could be quiet and listen to a story read to him. What my son DIDN'T know that he should have before entering that teacher's classroom was to have previous knowledge on how classrooms are run, know the difference between square and rectangle, how not to scribble, how to draw shapes, a house, a person (had to be a NON stick person by the way) and a tractor (don't ask), how to color in the lines and use the "right" colors, how to cut, how to squeeze glue bottles, how to do craft projects, how to use a pencil and an eraser, how to do matching worksheets, other worksheets like dot-to-dots, how to write the letters and numbers properly, how to listen and follow 3 to 5 step oral directives, how not to cry when anxious and frustrated or when people call you names, how to solve your own problems, how to initiate conversations with the same age peers and how to tell another kid to move when they were in your space without getting the teacher involved or standing there doing nothing. After hearing from the teacher and principal everything that my son could not do the school threatened to fail my son if we did not put him in for the full day of school. The teacher also said she thought our son had a visual processing problem. Dh and I decided we didn't have a choice at the time, so we put him in for the full day of school. Our son had a hard time adjusting to it, but eventually he did alright during the day. When my son was at home he taught himself how to tell time on an analog clock. They weren't even teaching that at the school and weren't planning on it until 1st and 2nd grade. Anyway, the meeting with the school staff after my son started to attend full day (4 weeks after) was amazing. They told dh and I that are son was doing wonderfully and that all of his problems disappeared (even the supposed visual one) :roll:. They saw no reason why he couldn't go on to the 1st grade. The school's end of the year goals for kindergartners were that they could read at least through a level 5 book (I don't know their leveling system), start to add and subtract a couple of problems, be able to write and recognize numbers up to 100, write all the letters in D'nelian correctly and neatly, know 24 of the school sight words in addition to some color words, days, months and seasons, be able to write 2 related sentences with correct capitalization and end of sentence punctuation with sight words and inventive/temporary spelling. In March of the kindergarten year the school started the book in a bag program for the kids. The kids had to read their leveled readers every night for homework and then read to their reading buddies the next day. Then, the kids either went up in level or picked books from the same level box. My son went from level 3 right away to a level 8. By the end of the year he was at a level 12/13. I think that was way too hard for him though. He was starting to hate reading at that point and struggled through. Basically, dh and I felt that the little kids were feeling pressured, getting burnt out and stressed out about school already in kindergarten. Some kids probably thrive on that and do well, but our son was not one of them. The school district that I've been talking about also tries to advise parents to wait to send their summer birthday kids (especially boys) until they are 6. Well, I better wrap this up. I hope this post explains some things and I hope it helps in some way.
It is a big reason for me, but not the only reason. I worked in several public schools and knew I could do better. One-on-one personalized curriculum almost always wins!
