Educating Our Kids on the Home Front

The revolution of the Sixties was imbedded in the campuses of America's colleges. The revolution of the Nineties, while still linked to education, is a movement that begins at home-and it is increasing in great numbers each school semester. While the "Beatles Generation" rebelled against authority and responsibility, the new revolution is aimed at accepting responsibility and assuming authority over a child's education. Many parents with school aged children are electing to remove their children from the public school system, opting to teach their young students at home.

"I know they do the best job that they can with the materials available to them," says Katrina Gardner, referring to the public schools, "but the public school is more geared toward teaching to the most students during the time given."

Gardner, who has three school-aged children, has been teaching her son Jeremy at home for two years.

"We decided to home-school Jeremy because of special educational needs. It was difficult for him to sit in a classroom and absorb what was being taught. He is an easily distracted student, but he is also very intense. He is exceptional in science, and very artistically inclined."

Two of Gardner's children graduated from the public school system, while two others still attend regular school classes. Jeremy's situation, however, warranted a different educational solution, because Jeremy, a gifted student, required what his mother says are "different learning needs that the public school didn't give him, because the public school couldn't reach him." The school system, she says, couldn't teach her son. "It's very surprising how repetitive things can be in a regular school. Once a student has learned, but the others have not, that student can't go on, and school becomes frustrating. It gets to be a let down."

Dissatisfaction with the public school system is the prevalent motivation for parents deciding to home-school their children. For many parents, just talking about the problems in the public school system is not enough, and so they take on the responsibility of educating their children. "They would just keep passing him along," says Janet Laffoon of the public school attended by her oldest son, who is now a junior and in his third year of home-school. "As he got older it got harder and we had to help him a lot at home. So, we decided to do it ourselves. Since he's been in home-school, he's learned more than if he was at regular school."

Laffoon has four children, but, like Gardner, she does not home-school all of her kids. "Our second-to-oldest asked for home-school" says Laffoon, "but I said no. He excels tremendously in school. It just depends upon each child, and each child's needs."

Sending one child to public school in the morning while keeping another at home is common, and the reason for home-schooling a child seems almost universal.

"The primary reason that parents home-school their kids is because they are unsatisfied with the public school system," says Bob Mars, Assistant Director of Horizon Instructional Systems. "They feel unfulfilled, and they don't have a lot of parental input into the school. Many of our parents are very well educated people, and they want to do a more thorough job of teaching their students than what they feel the public school can do. Public school has a lot of wasted time."

There are other reasons why parents decide to home-school their children. "We have some parents who feel that the schools are too dangerous," continues Mars. "They don't like the language or the dangerous behavior of the other kids. If you don't want to send your child to school because you think it's too dangerous, unfulfilling, or too slow for your child's needs, and you don't like the things that your child is exposed to, then you would choose to home-school your student."

Horizon School, the home-school base for Jeremy Gardner, is a charter school. "We are a unit of Western Placer School District," says Mars. "Every charter school has to be so-called underwritten by a public school district in the state of California. It's a State program. Most charter schools are simply modifications of an existing program within a school."

The "modification" is what makes schools like Horizon unique. The students don't go to a classroom. The teacher goes to the student's home.

"The parents are really the teachers," says Mars. "We don't even call our teachers teachers. We call them Ed Specialists. They really are like resource people. They help provide the parents with materials and testing programs, and help to write and define objectives and educational goals for all grade levels."

When the Gardners first began the home-school experiment, they visited with their Ed Specialist twice monthly. "A parent is responsible for most of the teaching," says Gardner, "but the Ed Specialist is very helpful in pointing out our strategies for Jeremy and me. She helped us learn what we needed to do, and how to keep track of how things were going."

Laffoon and her son, who home-school through a different program, visit with their Ed Specialist every three weeks. "We turn in the work that he's done for the three-week period of time. It can be once a week or once a month, whatever you set up. I personally make up my son's schedule, and she [the Ed Specialist] knows all of the requirements-the subjects and how much they have to cover in the subjects to get credit-and then I make the assignments based on that information, and then I correct them. That's the work that we turn in."

Turning in completed work to get the proper credit is imperative. "We're performance-based," says Mars. "We base our school on how well the child does and what they complete. If they don't do any work then they can't stay in our program. That's how our attendance is taken, based on whether the student completes his work, not how much time he spends in a seat."

But while home-schooled students are required to turn in a certain amount of work, there are no stipulations as to how the work is completed. Parents and their students have the right to create an individualized curriculum, and are able to determine the educational goals and objectives.

For Jeremy Gardner, his daily studies are much less restrictive than if he attended public school. "The daily classes are not structured," says Jeremy's mother. "I know that some parents do have more structure to their day, but with our child we follow his interests. He does have assignments that he has to work on each week, and each month, but he can do them in his own time, as long as he gets them done. In the time between, he can pursue more specialty interests, like research on the internet. He did a report on beagles, and he learned a lot about researching and getting down the information, compiling it and creating a final report." One of Jeremy's personal projects is trying to build a rock grinder to go along with his rock-carving interest.

Laffoon and her son, however, have established a different schedule. "In history, for instance," says Laffoon, "my son has a lesson, and it tells him what pages in the book he has to read, and if he has questions based on that material we can talk about it. The school does not require it, but I personally require him to correct all wrong answers, and to come up with the right answers." Laffoon's son gets up with his brothers and sisters, gets dressed like his siblings, and does his home-school work at a desk.

But though the two teaching and learning styles are different, the objectives are the same. Home-school students must complete the work designated for their grade levels. And both students can work at their own pace, uninhibited by the time constraints of public school. A particular advantage of the flexible hours for Laffoon-because she owns a small business in Fair Oaks-is that she can take her son to work and have him continue his lessons while she tends the shop.

The Charter Law frees charter schools from the state laws that require students to attend school. It was written as an experiment by the Department of Education to help appease the public's criticism of the public school system.

"They [Department of Education] want to find out what's working, what it is that allows students to perform better on standardized tests and to learn better," says Mars. "And so, with the Charter Law, those schools are allowed to break free from the constraints of the Education Code and to experiment in some way-modify a program, write a whole new program, let parents get involved, whatever kind of system that they want-to see what works."

So far, the general consensus among home-school parents and charter schools is that home-schooling is effective. Gardner and Laffoon see dramatic improvement in their children's learning abilities, and in their confidence levels.

But the Charter Law, now in its fourth year, was written to cover only five years, and at the end of that time the Department of Education will evaluate the success or failure of the home-school program.

Mars is confident that the home-school program will be allowed to continue. "All of our indications are that home-schooled students will score higher than the average student. We're going to lay our results right next to the public schools to see who's doing better. It's a standardized test. We can compare our results with our own school district, the state, the nation."

If, at the end of the five-year period, home-schooling is allowed to continue, most parents agree that certain problems will need to be addressed, such as the availability of extra-curricular activities and a broader range of electives-particularly when the student wants to take drafting but has no available resources for such a class.

One criticism that some have against home-schooling is the lack of socializing that a student receives by being taught at home. Gardner admits that the problem concerns her, though not nearly as much as her son's difficulty with the public school system. Laffoon, however, says that socializing with others his own age is not a problem for her son.

Gardner and Laffoon agree that home-school is not for everyone. "Home-schooling is becoming increasingly popular," says Laffoon, "but I personally think that a parent has to weigh themselves and their circumstances, and to weigh their child's circumstances. I don't think it's for all kids or all parents. It takes a lot of work, especially when you work, like I do."

Home-school is simply not an answer for many people who work, but there are other programs being done in local neighborhoods that imitate full-fledged home-school programs.

Kate Imus, who also owns a small business, and who became "disgusted" with public school, began a program at home for her daughters during school breaks. With a year-round schedule, Imus's daughters get three breaks a year: six weeks in the summer, three in the fall, and another three in the spring. During those breaks, Imus began to "home-school" her daughters for several hours, three times a week. Several neighbors heard about Imus's program and asked if their daughters could be included in the "mini-school." Imus now teaches seven students during regular school breaks.

"I started this because I was frustrated at how little time they [her daughters] spent in school. We had multi-track last year, which gave us just four weeks between sessions. But this year the parents voted for a year-round one-track. I couldn't deal with that six week break in the summer."

To combat what she sees as a major failure in the public school system, Imus began to continue her daughters' studies. "I do math that they've already had, and assign book reports. The kids get so many points for just being at school, and so many points for every single worksheet they finish if they get over a certain percentage correct. They get five points for every book report they turn in, though they can only do one a week. It keeps the kids reading, it keeps them writing, it keeps their math skills up, and it gives them a chance to be with other kids in a healthy environment."

Besides being upset with the school schedule, Imus became motivated to teach her interim school because she was frustrated with what her daughters were not being taught in public school. "My kids weren't being taught phonics. I had to at least teach my kids phonics, because they couldn't write because they couldn't spell, because they hadn't had phonics."

As with Gardner and Laffoon, Imus plans to continue her home-teaching. I really see a value in it. It doesn't take an enormous amount of time, and yet I think the time that the kids spend with it is better than watching TV.

Though Imus's program is different from a full home-school program, it is similar, and it based upon the same idea: Parents are frustrated with the public school system, and now many of them are doing something about it.