Alabama Home Schooled and Private Schooled Students Don't Want to Live in This Village of Government Regulations

The State Board tried to seal the fate of home and private school students to be under public regulations. 

We had a major alert for Alabama home schooled and private schooled students a few days ago.  The state commissioner of education decided to create new departments and regulations for those students outside the public education system.  These regulations included having to use state certified teachers, the same state curriculum (which is now aligned to Common Core standards)  and register with the state.  Failure to register  do so would prohibit students from attending a 2 or 4 year university.

We have an update reporting the halting of this proposed educational direction in Alabama.  It would have taken the rights of citizens/private institutions to educate students as they see fit.  Thanks to our readers who supplied these comments and alerted us to recent developments:

ALSDE has issued a response here. 36review has a link to the letter in its post "ALSDE Update: Changes on Hold"

http://the36review.com/

Basically, they've put the new regs on "hold" but have "concluded that not only do the regulations need revision, there is also a need for a thorough review of the current statute governing this matter."

In other words, Superintendent Bice will try to find another way to stick it to private schools.

and

Home School parents came out in force in Alabama this past week and have won a temporary victory over “state-led” regulations and licensing. Governor Bentley put his foot down and “he and the superintendent of education, Dr. Tommy Bice” came to terms.

This power grab by Dr. Bice should be a warning to Home Schoolers in other states. The same may happen to them. There is documentation that this is not just “state-led” but the USDOE salivating to get hold of Home School / Private School period.

http://www2.ed.gov/admins/comm/choice/regprivschl/regprivschl.pdf

To learn more go to
https://www.facebook.com/AlabamiansUnitedForExcellenceInEducation

Sharon Sewell
Alabamians United for Excellence in Education

The commenters understand this is a temporary victory.  We all must watch what our state boards of education are trying to implement and the ramifications on our liberty to educate our children.  We have seen this power grab tried in Florida and Missouri.  Let us know if your legislature/Board of Education is trying to take control of private educational development/delivery.

Follow the36review.com for up to date information and kudos to the home schooling groups for mobilizing and understanding their freedom to educate children was in serious jeopardy in Alabama.  As Hillary Clinton said, "It takes a village".

It certainly takes a village of like-minded people and groups to make sure their liberties and freedoms as parents are not gobbled up by the State, whether it be on the local or federal level.  I wonder if she knew about the villages that don't want the government living in their midst.   Whether or not you agreed with Bob Dole's politics, he had a valid point in response to Clinton's statement:

The theme of the book, at least as perceived from its title, aroused immediate opposition within the United States. The most famous instance of this occurred during the 1996 presidential election: during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, nominee Bob Dole said: "... with all due respect, I am here to tell you, it does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a family to raise a child."^[4]

 

Do Common Core Standards Dictate the Necessity for a National School Board and National Superintendent?

This is from the chief architect of Common Core standards & new leader of The College Board.

Anngie wrote yesterday how the Republican legislators voted to expand charter schools across Missouri.  This is even as a 2010 study, "Charter Schools in Missouri: Student Achievement and Best Practices" by Missouri senators came to a conclusion on page 3/40:

The diversity among charter schools and traditional public schools does not provide evidence to allow a confident or accurate assertion that one type of school consistently outperforms the other.

What's changed between 2010 and 2012?  Charters will now be under the same common core mandates as traditional public schools, so that pesky diversity argument can be cast aside.  Since all the schools are "common", maybe Missouri taxpayers can begin the grand experiment of charters and the results will provide sufficient evidence on the grand experiment of the success (or not) of charters compared to traditional public schools.  

Currently the verdict is not in on whether charters make gains over traditional public schools.  However, it is a fact that Imagine Schools had to close in St. Louis for dismal test results, regardless of any diversity that existed between Imagine schools and the St. Louis City schools.

The Republican legislature voted overwhelmingly for charter expansion.  They have bought  into  the StudentsFirst premise that charters are a magic bullet.  They will be the panacea to failing students.  They are "choice" for parents.  They may be "choice" to get your child out of a terrible school setting into a school demanding more discipline and signed contracts for parents/children for behavior/expectations checklist, but the education will be the same as the traditional public school.  The educational delivery will be different but the education will be the same due to common core standards.

I've asked this question to some folks who like the charter school option:

Is anyone concerned on this thread that local districts have little to zero control over WHAT your child is learning? Even though you are forced to pay taxes into that local district? That educational power has been given to a 26 state consortia controlled by private interests. For instance, is it okay that your child learn the global warming "theory" is all due to man? Is it okay with you that if your child can't learn math in the manner the assessments are structured, your child is just out of luck? Does it bother anyone just a little bit that your child's educational decisions by private corporations cannot be held accountable by taxpayers? Does it bother anyone that this is really the educational version of Obamacare or Solyndra? Government money has been given to private organizations to direct our life choices in health, energy and now, education?

Is anyone concerned WHAT is being taught to children OR is all about "choosing" a school that teaches the same material as the traditional public school?

The point is, while we are spending money on yet another educational model of charters, when we don't even have enough money to fund the existing model, the transfer of power of education is occurring from union domination to corporatist domination.  As my buddy Van tweeted yesterday about our charter post:  

The choice to choose what govt/biz-partners chose for you to choose -aint the choice of a Free Market fb.me/1R7e8369Z 

When will folks understand the people who are paying the taxes and sending their children are paying into a system they can't access in terms of decision making?  That's not choice, that's just more of the same of what we have now, except other power brokers are taking our tax money and making the decisions for us and for our children. 

I don't want to spend much more time on writing about the charter school argument because that's not the elephant in the room.  This honor belongs to David Coleman, chief architect of the common core standards.  He sold his company to McGraw Hill which now stands to make millions of dollars on the standards Coleman wrote. What did Coleman's company provide which made it so attractive to McGraw Hill in terms of providing text for common core?

Grow Network (Grow.net, Inc.), a privately held company...is a leading provider of assessment reporting and customized content for states and large school districts across the country

Coleman, with help from Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee and others have coerced most states into these standards using financial threats and promises of reform based on unproven and untested standards.  Just a handful of states did not sign onto the standards, so how can this group of elitists complete the plan of the takeover of education?  Mind you, I didn't label this takeover of just "public" education.  Coleman and company are in effect taking over public, private and homeschooling education.  How?

Coleman was recently named as head of the College Board, which is responsible for constructing the SATs. According to EdWeek:

Coleman told Education Week that he hopes to align the SAT to reflect the common standards, a move that would help ensure, he said, that students who do well on the exam possess the skills that colleges and universities are seeking.

Aligning the SAT with the common core would touch on a piece of the college-readiness formula that higher education's support of the common assessments does not reach, and it's a highly sensitive piece: college admissions. Shifting the college-entrance exam to embody the new standards would involve the same significant shifts that mark the standards themselves.

Top education leaders—including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a big fan of the common standards—are on record in the College Board's press release as commending Coleman's selection as the organization's new leader.

If you privately school or home school, this move toward aligning toward the common core standards will dictate how/what you teach children so they can pass the SAT to gain college admission.

Pretty nifty, eh?

Schools Matter blogged about Coleman's power play and the takeover of education:

The testing industry: self-appointed non-elected national school board?

The hiring of David Coleman as its next president is consistent with the College Board's aggressive push into the K-12 assessment arena. Unlike the university admissions testing market where the Board has little or no growth potential due to the end of the baby boom echo and competition from ACT, K-12 has been flush with money and demand for more exams as a result of programs such as "Race to the Top" and NCLB Waivers.

Under Gaston Caperton, who was hired with the goal of "growing the bottom line" for the company, the Board aggressively expanded its Advanced Placement program of high school courses and tests, introduced the controversial middle school ReadiStep pre-pre-SAT, and promoted its SpringBoard curriculum as well as services to align high school subjects with its tests.

Coleman's pledge to align the SAT with the Common Core Standards is the next logical move in the testing industry's drive to dominate public U.S. public education with "one-size-fits-all" products in its self-appointed role as the country's non-elected, national school board. 

Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director
FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing
ph-    (239) 395-6773    fax-   (239) 395-6779
cell-   (239) 699-0468
web-  http://www.fairtest.org  

Charters are replacing the traditional public education model under the assumption they will improve test scores in an alternative educational setting....with the same mandates as traditional public schools.  This is promoted as "authentic" choice.  Parents are happy to get their children out of classrooms filled with discipline problems. This "choice" pacifies parents and they believe their children are receiving an education promoting critical thinking skills.  Educational content won't vary much from traditional schools, so it seems to be just a difference in education delivery, not content.  

In the meantime, many folks are missing the most important announcement from yesterday and the realization an important door in education and America is closing.  The cries of  "I'll home school" or "I'll put my child in private school" to escape the national standards will be useless and hollow at the nearest SAT testing center for your child when he/she applies for college.   

Your children (publicly, private or home school educated) better know the material used for common core assessments and answer in the way public school students have been taught to answer or else college might not be an option for their future.

Anyone see a way out of this trap of national standards, national school board and national superintendent?  The takeover of American education is about complete.

Perhaps Homeschooling Parents Should be Heading Up the Department of Education. They Spend Less Money for Better Test Results.

We are highlighting two articles tonight regarding educational expenses and test scores with the expenses noted. One article, from Homeschooling United gives statistics from homeschooling expenses and test scoring, and the other is written by Andrew Coulson from Cato, tracking Department of Education spending and resultant test scores.

Homeschooling United states the following:

In 2009, Dr. Brian Ray released a study on the progress of homeschooled students compared to their publicly schooled counterparts.

Drawing from 15 independent testing services, the Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics included 11,739 homeschooled student from all 50 states who took three well-know tests–California Achievement Test, Iowa Basic Skill, and Stanford Achievement Test for the 2007-08 academic year. The progress Report is the most comprehensive homeschool academic study ever completed.

National Average Percentile Scores
Subtest Homeschool Public School
Reading 89 50
Language 84 50
Math 84 50
Science 86 50
Social Studies 84 50
Core-a 88 50
Core-b 86 50
Core-a is a combination of Reading, Language, and Math
Core-b is a combination of all subjects that the students took on the test.

There was little difference between the results of homeschooled boys and girls on core scores.

Now we'll focus on some information published by The Cato Institute entitled "The Impact of Federal Involvement in America's Classrooms:"

For over half a century, a succession of Congresses and presidents has sought to do two things for American elementary and secondary education: raise overall achievement, and narrow the gaps between high- and low-income students as well as between minority and white students. The federal government has spent roughly $2 trillion on these efforts since 1965, adjusting for inflation.¹


Math and Reading scores at the end of high school are unchanged over the past forty years, while Science scores suffered a slight decline through the year 1999, the last time that test was administered. Data from another nationally representative test series show a continuing decline in 12th grade Science between 1996 and 2005, the last year for which we have trend data.²


We spent over $151,000 per student sending the graduating class of 2009 through public schools. That is nearly three times as much as we spent on the graduating class of 1970, adjusting for inflation. Despite that massive real spending increase, overall achievement has stagnated or declined, depending on the subject.

Why is the difference in test scores so marked between homeschooled students and public educated students? How is it that even families who spent less than $600.00 annually on homeschooling performed at an 86% level while public educated students at almost $10,000.00 per year only scored at a 50% level?

One could make the assumption that homeschooling parents have higher level of education and income than parents of public educated students and that's the reason they outperform publicly educated students . Here's more information from Homeschooling United:

Household income had little impact on the results of homeschooled students.

$34,000 or less – 85th percentile
$35,000 – $49,999 – 86th percentile
$50,000 – $69,999 – 86 percentile
$70,000 or more – 89 percentile

Educational level of parents:

Neither parent has a college degree – 83rd percentile
One parent has a college degree – 86th percentile
Both parents have a college degree – 90th percentile

Whether either parent was a certified teacher did not matter.

Certified (i.e. either parent ever certified)-87th percentile
Not certified (i.e., neither parent ever certified)-88th percentile

Andrew Coulson of Cato reports on the importance of the level of parental education for public education student testing results:

But what of the federal government's other educational goal: narrowing the achievement gaps by income and minority status? Test score breakdowns by family income are not available, but we do have something close: a breakdown by parents' level of education. This allows us to compare the children of high school dropouts to those of college graduates. In Reading and Science, the gap between these students has not narrowed in 40 years. In Math it has narrowed by barely one percent of the test score scale.³ So, here again, federal appropriations and the programs they have funded have failed to achieve their goals.

So what are we to make of this? It's obvious that parents having a higher degree impacts homeschoolers' test results. It seems obvious this fact impacts public school students as well. But the 33%-36% difference in test scores between homeschooled students and public school students is staggering. What causes such a huge difference between homeschooled scores and public educated student scores?

If you follow the last four decades of educational thought and spending, you might believe if the government just throws more money at the problem, the problem will be resolved. Coulson writes:

To sum up, we have little to show for the $2 trillion in federal education spending of the past half century. In the face of concerted and unflagging efforts by Congress and the states, public schooling has suffered a massive productivity collapse — it now costs three times as much to provide essentially the same education as we provided in 1970.

So throwing money at the problem isn't the answer. Federalized standards aren't the answer. Homeschoolers test better than publicly educated students....how do we provide better education to public school students, then? What is it that homeschooling students receive from their education that apparently is missing from public education? Coulson gives us an idea on what has worked with a small section of public education students:

But amidst this bleak overall record, there is one federal education program that has been proven to both improve educational outcomes and dramatically lower costs. That is the Washington, DC Opportunity Scholarships Program. Research conducted by the Department of Education finds that students attending private schools thanks to this program have equal or better academic performance than their peers in the local public schools, and have significantly higher graduation rates. This, and very high levels of parental satisfaction, come at an average per pupil cost of around $7,000. By contrast, per pupil spending on k-12 public education in the nation's capital was roughly $28,000 during the 2008-09 school year.⁶

The OSP program is thus producing better results at a quarter the cost.

What do the homeschooling community and the private school industry have in common? Little to no governmental interference, no common core standards, innovative curriculum and autonomy in teaching to each child. Now those are radical educational practices; but really, they are not all that radical, are they? Those educational practices have been proven to work for students vs the school "choice" currently being pushed by million dollar lobbyists. Those programs such as trigger options and charter schools are not "choice": they are still controlled by common core mandates and assessments present in traditional public schools. What exactly do you call a choice that is not a choice? An educational version of musical chairs?

Why isn't the DOE studying the successes of homeschooling and private schools and adapting and adopting what they are doing right to truly reform public educational systems? Why aren't local communities allowed to use their tax dollars to provide educational opportunities that work for their district children instead of having standards and assessments dictated to them? How much more money and control will be wrested from taxpayers and states to refine federal programs that haven't worked for at least the last forty years?