I don't know if any of you have kids who participate, or want to eventually participate, in MathCounts but they have made a rule change for this year. They will allow homeschoolers to participate as individuals, but they will no longer allow them to form teams for the team competition. The reasons for this rule change: 1) There are some tutoring centers drawing students from different public schools forming 'super teams' and calling them 'homeschool' teams. So public school students breaking the current rules. You already have to file an affidavit saying you are legally homeschooling. 2) There are people saying that homeschoolers have an unfair advantage because they can pull from a larger geographic area. 3) Since homeschoolers only make up 1-2% of their participants, the easiest solution was to ban homeschool teams. If you don't like this change, I urge you to contact the national office at www.mathcounts.org
Hmmm...for a bunch of mathwhizzes they sure don't have much common sense. The logical option is to ban tutoring center teams, right? And I fail to see how pulling from a larger area while having 98% less kids of the available pool of math whizzes, adds up to an unfair advantage. I mean, I'm no math whizz, but this sure seems like some redonkulous reasoning. Perhaps they should look into teaching those tutoring center teams some ethics.
So again, homeschoolers pay the price for public schoolers' breaking the rules. Several years ago, homeschoolers could order and use standardized tests from quite a few sources that are not available now. Then the public schoolers jumped in and started ordering and using the tests to practice for those end-year public school tests, which is absolutely NOT ethical! So now homeschoolers can't use those sources anymore. Fortunately, there are other sources, but a few more hoops to jump through than there used to be.
Here in IL, the IL High School Athletics organization (who creates the rules for organized high school team sports) had to create rules that state a student must be a full-time student in the district they play for. The rule was created because Chicago area public schools were recruiting parochial school students for their teams. The parochial schools belong to IHSA and their students still get to participate; however, that rule now excludes homeschooled students from playing on a sport team for any IL school, private or public. :roll:
They have reinstated homeschool teams. (squeaky wheel, and what-not) http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/201008230.asp
No they haven't. They have given a reprieve to homeschool teams that existed in the 2009/2010 school year. They can go ahead and compete this year while MathCounts review their rules. New homeschool teams cannot compete this year!! New school teams are welcome though. The final outcome is still very much in doubt.
They did meet with them. I read minutes of the meeting posted by the homeschool coach who attended. They have a long way to go and they do not see anything wrong with the basic premise: we have examples of public school students cheating using homeschool designation therefore it is logical to ban homeschool teams. It is a long way from fixed. Allowing last year's teams the ability to compete was their way to appease people so they'd stop emailing and phoning. It is a political move not a solution to a problem. We have a group of disappointed kids here since they still can't compete.
Sorry. I'll be honest, I didn't read the press release before posting the link. But the HSLDA FB page titled the link "Mathcounts reinstates homeschool teams."
And they did reinstate teams that were registered LAST year, but would not accept any NEW homeschooling teams. The article leads you to believe that HSLDA and the Mathcount people were going to continue to work toward a fair solution for next year.
