Home Schooling and ISTEP

[blue adept]

People can ask for preferential treatment all they want. We just have to become better as a society at not giving in.

The problem I see Matt, is that there are far more Christians and Muslims, therefore, the chance of there being more extreme, er, nuts, is that much higher. the real problem with all of these extremists is that they don't follow the basic tenets of their religion. All of the major religions[ barring Islam] teach that you should avoid or leave other people alone. Islam will attack you if you are what they consider an infidel,[ie this means you atheists] but are taught to leave Christians and Jews alone. This all changes when you throw the nuts in. In this country however, we are supposed to let everyone have their own view, unimpeded. The Christians, cannot leave well enough alone.[well the nutty ones anyway.]

[NeverAgo]

I want to stir away from the derailing of this thread. I know I'm rekindling a old thread but it recently caught my attention. I have been obtaining information for my own records when I stumbled across this. I have to disagree with the OP and also this section of the letter one wrote:

While she has no problem with parents who home school their children, she does realize that Indiana has some of the most liberal homeschooling standards in the country. She believes that homeschooled students should be required to take the ISTEP test to verify that they are receiving a proper education. Those students who fail the exam should be required to attend school.

This is fine and all but, who holds the schools accountable? No one really. You can say that they are held accountable but the reality is they are not. They get an overall score through the abundance of scores. What about those one or two children that are left behind year after year? How would forcing a child to attend a public school be fair? Some children simply freak out on test. How could you tell by one test? Some homeschool students are special needs. This ideal is flawed.

OP is asking for something that is unnecessary. I feel she is trying to police our society. Many parents do very well with homeschooling. There is no reason that the state of Indiana should be able to come into the homes of homeschool parents and start barking orders. After all these are these people that are not trusted with their education. The system does not always work. I'm not saying every system is bad but many have flaws. I am a product of a flawed system. I have struggled to gain the education that I currently have. I had little help from Public education. I would agree if someone said "All you need to know is what you learned in Kindergarten." I graduated High School and knew nothing. When I first stepped into college I was unprepared. It made me so terrified and nervous of failing that I quit for 8 years. After studying on my own. I decided to return. The system had failed me.

I had a friend whom was homeschooled all his life. He obtained a degree 4 years after I dropped out of college the first time. After talking to him and several of his peers I was amazed at the education they had obtained. It was as if they had attended private school. They had all this attention and experiences I would had only dreamed about. I'm a huge supporter of Homeschooling. To the point that I think state funds should be diverted to parents so that they can make proper curriculum purchases. After all their doing the same job that their tenured teachers fail to do.