Homeschoolers, Do you need more guidelines.

The Chicago Tribune featured a story recently called Few guidelines exist in regard to home-schooling students. The story tells about a woman and her husband who took her brother from her mom for educational neglect...i.e. homeschooling.

The article is very one sided, and the mother gets no chance to defend herself. Nevertheless, the writer takes this news of another homeschool experience gone bad to denigrate homeschoolers as a whole. "State law requires parents who home-school to keep daily attendance records and teach 180 days a year, but it fails to provide for any means of enforcement or specify what subjects must be taught. Indiana, where about 23,000 children are home-schooled, is one of about 30 states that has little say over home-schooled students. "
Scope and Sequence is not what homeschoolers need to teach their kids effectively. (Although letting homeschooled parents know what local kids are learning could he helpful) They need to be able to educate and be educated in a way that brings out their natural skills and gifts.

In the reporters defense, they do throw in comments that homeschoolers feel regulation is not needed... but they don't back it up with facts at all.

The facts are that Homeschoolers as a whole do not need nearly as much regulation as public schooled kids. What is needed are better neglect and abuse protections as a whole. Reading statistics on homeschooling shows that our kids tend to do better academically. The statistics will also show that public schooled kids are in greater danger of violence and premature sex... Studies also show that ratios for abused children are similar for homeschooled and public schooled kids.

Articles like this, I have to say, violently puts me on the defensive. I know very few homeschoolers who don't educate to the level that I do or greater. As for us, one child uses a local middle school program on Thursdays, they both do fine arts and history on Monday, and my youngest child uses www.time4learning.com as her main Homeschool Curriculum One search on the internet for homeschool curriculums will show you that many such companies exist. They would not exist if homeschoolers were not using them.

read my recent homeschooling articles entitled
How to Buy Homeschool Planning Software
How to Develop Homeschool Schedules
and How to get Homeschool Information