More Parents Taking Education into Their Own Hands

Unless you do not follow the news or politics, you know there are many concerns with the public education system in the U.S. Over the past several decades, they have tried several ways to fix the monopolistic public school system, but nothing has had much of an impact. Money...money...money...was thrown into the schools with little or no impact on student achievement. No Child Left Behind...well, you know that. Now parents are taking education into their own hands. Newsweek's "Home Schooling: More Than a Million Kids and Growing, Can It Work for Your Family?" examines the increase in parents taking control of their child's education.

While there are no national statistics, researchers who study home schooling estimate that as many as 1.5 million youngsters are currently being taught primarily by their mothers or fathers. That's five times the estimated number of home schoolers just a decade ago and bigger than the nation's largest public-school system, New York City's.

That are a lot of children not going to the public schools...not to mention the ones attending private schools. Does anyone else see a problem here? If this many parents want to stay home and teach their children, isn't that a sign the schools are not good enough? Unfortunately, many parents cannot afford to stay home or cannot afford the better private schools. Of course, there are critics to homeschooling, however, homeschoolers disagree.

Their lesson plans are as diverse as their reasons for dropping out of the system, but what unites all these parents is a belief that they can do a better job at home than trained educators in a conventional school. That would have been an outrageous notion a generation ago, when far fewer parents had college degrees and most people regarded teachers and schools with more respect and even awe. Today parents are much better educated, hooked up to a world of information via the Internet and inundated with headlines about problems plaguing public schools. They see home schooling as one more step in the evolution of parent power that has given birth to school-choice programs, vouchers and charter schools. ""Americans are becoming fussy consumers rather than trusting captives of a state monopoly,'' says Chester Finn, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. ""They've declared their independence and are taking matters into their own hands.''

In what field does a monopoly work...not many. It can almost be compared to a dictatorship...there's only one choice, so that is what you get. Now, again, some parents have the choice to home school or do private schools, but most do not. Education should not be run like this! If we open up the education system to free competition, we will surely get better results than we are seeing now.

23 (of 36) was the average ACT score for a home schooler in 1998. Traditionally schooled kids averaged a 21. A 23 could qualify students for a "selective" college.

Sad...very sad to me the schools we are all paying taxes for are all not doing a great job. Sure does make me start to think what I am going to do when my children enter school in a few years.