Mark on November 19th, 2009

Dr. Yvonne Fournier answering questions from a homeschooling family which moved to a testing state. Some highlights about the inherent tension between homeschooling and achievement tests:

Hassle-Free Homework: Achievement Tests Contribute To America’s Decline
By Dr. Yvonne Fournier,
U.S. School System Discourages Divergent, Creative Thinkers
In a world that begs for divergent thinkers (people who can think “outside the [...]

Continue reading about Homeschoolers and Achievement Tests

Mark on November 10th, 2009

If you are concerned about homeschooling your kids you can find encouragement in this story from The Ukiah Daily Journal:

Mathematics, Meyer Style
By Carole Brodsky
Ukiahan making waves in academia and cyberspace
For the Daily Journal
Holiday shoppers can thank Dan Meyer and his Ukiah High instructors for helping them shave precious minutes off their waiting time in crowded [...]

Continue reading about Making Waves in Academia and Cyberspace

Mark on November 5th, 2009

In formal remarks at James C. Wright Middle School in Madison Wisconsin, President Obama outlined the federal government’s 4.3 billion dollar Race to the Top awards. His presentation defined “four challenges that our country has to meet for our children to outcompete workers around the world, for our economy to grow and to prosper, and [...]

Continue reading about Race to the Top

Mark on November 4th, 2009

In a Letter to the editor published online and in print, Maryann Klaus, with 40 years experience as “teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent” questions testing:

Why, when all of the research points to gains made by a focus on teaching and learning, formative assessment, teacher collaboration, and strong leadership, is the government looking to increasingly restrictive [...]

Continue reading about Questioning the Wisdom of New, Common Tests

Mark on November 4th, 2009

This disturbing piece is from May 2001 and re-published yesterday online. Counts don’t add up, by Lucy Hood, Edmund S. Tijerina and Sharon K. Hughes. Some excerpts:

To assess the extent of the dropout problem, the newspaper last fall began to track the 1,053 freshmen who enrolled at Holmes in the 1997-98 school year. Holmes was [...]

Continue reading about Homeschoolers and Texas Drop-out Rate

Mark on November 2nd, 2009

While homeschoolers will continue to live their lives according to their beliefs and convictions, public perception of homeschooling can make life easy or much harder.
With that in mind, NBC’s Housewives series has written homeschooling into their script. From this week’s online summary:

Reading, writing and respect: When Juanita lets a swear word fly in her school [...]

Continue reading about Mainstream Perception of Homeschoolng

Mark on October 13th, 2009

The title and subtitle tells us what the article is about.

Online High Schools Test Students’ Social Skills
As Digital Learning Programs Grow, Educators Hope to Prevent Teens From Feeling Isolated
Online high schools are growing more popular. Roughly 100,000 of the 12 million high-school-age students in the U.S. attend 438 online schools full-time, up from 30,000 five [...]

Continue reading about Online Learning and Homeschooling

Mark on October 12th, 2009

An article in The Kansas City Star by Tim Engle is worthy of note and a thank you too. Engle starts his story, Virtual kids: Actually they’re real, but they go to school online describing the school day of eleventh-grader Philip Marten.

Marten’s second-hour class is orchestra. But first hour, third hour, fourth hour and [...]

Continue reading about Homeschooling – Public School Programs

Mark on October 7th, 2009

Found an an interesting response to a column titled “Even Government Envious Of Homeschooling Success” on The Clarion Ledger website by former State Superintendent, Richard A. Boyd.

Matt Friedeman’s column (”Even government envious of homeschooling success,” Aug. 30) praised the success of students who are homeschooled on academic tests, and went on to point out [...]

Continue reading about Homeschooling Envy?

Mark on October 7th, 2009

This article on The Greenville News’ site points to the economy as a reasons for an increasing number of families choosing to homeschool.

With 345 students enrolled this school year, the Upstate Homeschool Co-op has seen its numbers swell dramatically since it first began as a small study group in Suzanne Brown’s Taylors home for her [...]

Continue reading about Economy drives more parents to homeschool

1 of 59 12345»...Last Page »