Permitting Christian extremists to homeschool their children is legalized child abuse. Obviously something should be done about it.

Why does Andrew think there is a problem with the homeschooling regulations?  Home schooled students out score public schooled students on all standardized test repeatedly.  Home schooled students win at bees (spelling, geography, etc) most of the time.
Homeschoolers see this as "if it ain't broke, why fix it?"  Current homeschooling regulations in all states mirror recommendations for public schooled students, why should the standards for homeschooling be higher if our students are doing better?

Of course there should some process in place to make sure that kids aren't being abused, that homeschooling isn't just an excuse for truancy, etc.

At the same time, given that homeschoolers regularly outperform other students on standardized tests, it's completely unclear why they should all, as a general matter, have to prove that they're doing academically well. If you're worried about academic performance, the far more obvious thing to require is that public school students take an academic test to prove they're doing as well as homeschoolers. 

Well, that's a bit facetious, but this post is frankly absurdist.  Requiring consent from 12-year-olds?  Requiring state approval of textbooks?  (That doesn't happen for private schools, and moreover it's part of living in a liberal democracy that some parents might be able to teach their kids about religions that you don't believe in, for the same reason that Christian fundamentalists can't enlist the state to prevent you from raising your kids as Buddhists or atheists or whatever.)  Requiring 4 tests a year rather than 1 (and this coming from someone who otherwise seems suspicious of forcing all education to be reduced to standardized tests)? 

I for one, was homeschooled for 7th and 8th grade. My mom and dad were both graduates of Boston University, and they were overqualified for the job, excepting the fact that they weren't - and still aren't - teachers. The reason for the homeschooling was that my father's work in computer software would take him all over the world, and both my parents agreed that it would be beneficial for me to join them on their travels. I, having been homeschooled, have to vehemently disagree with the standardized testing and consent. I found myself ahead of the game coming into the public school system, but I think that was my personal ability rather than my parent's pushing. I think that it should be the parents getting tested rather than the kids. If the children aren't doing well at the tests, then who is to blame? The parents. If they aren't qualified, we should find out before rather at the expense of the child's education.

I'd honestly like to see some statistics that show that homeschooled children "regularly outperform" schooled children on standardized tests, because that sounds very close to what I hear from people in private schools. 

Furthermore, I know that this varies from state to state but for those who claim to be knowledgable in terms of testing should be familiar with the concept of "benchmarking."  In the state where I teach, students are tested four times in the course of the year--a benchmark test is given for three out of the four quarters and then you have either a state test or a final exam depending on the course.  The benchmarks serve to provide analysis of how well students are performing in the content areas and the data is analyzed by teachers and administrators so that students who need remediation are identified, or so that entire weak content areas are identified. 

Not that I like standardized testing.  I know few teachers who enjoy SOLs and SOL testing; however, it is the reality for now, as is the lengthy preparation for the tests.  But to get up in arms about someone requesting you be tested four times each year because "students are tested only once" is not only misleading, it's false.

In my state (Arkansas), benchmark tests occur once per year, in April, for grades 3 through 8.  High schoolers take a few more specialized tests once (such as an end-of-course exam in Algebra).  It's not fair to accuse me of saying something "false" just because I was talking about my own state rather than yours. 

As for homeschoolers' test results, see this article: http://www.edweek.org/rc/issues/home-schooling/  Now, it's totally fair to point out that if someone wants to make a broad generalization that homeschooling is "better" than public or private schools, then studies of homeschooling are not necessarily helpful -- it's too hard to figure out whether homeschoolers just tend to be from more privileged and stable families in the first place or whether the homeschooling is literally improving their performance.  You can't do a randomized study here. 

But I'm not making that claim (note that I said I was being facetious).  All I'm saying is that there's NO reason whatsoever to take this attitude of suspicion as if homeschoolers -- in general -- are failing academically compared to public school students.  

Disclaimer: I haven't read the original article in its entirety.  While I appreciate Mr. Cantrell's concerns about homeschooled students receiving false information (boy, do I), the idea of making homeschooling more like standard public schools is NOT an appropriate response. 

Standardized tests are currently used not as sources of normative data, but as assessments of formative education - which is not what they're intended for and makes them a colossal waste of time.

Testing to keep homeschooled students "on track" with publicly educated peers will tend to hold many homeschoolers back (as it does with many students in public schools) and reinforce the lockstep model that is in place in most schools. This plan wouldn't allow for individualization, differentiation, or the idea that learning is a continuum (i.e. different students comprehend different concepts at different rates and times).  In addition, it makes no accommodation for the fact that the human brain retains knowledge that it needs at the time when it is needed.

I don't homeschool.  I do have some interest, but for various reasons I don't think it's the best fit for for my family and me.  The beauty of homeschooling is that it's tailor-made for the students - individualized to maximize the learning that takes place and to take advantage of children's natural curiosity & engagement with the world.  If anything (and I do think we're moving s-l-o-w-l-y in this direction thanks to disruptive educational technologies), public schools should work to be more like homeschool environments rather than the other way around.

There are good home-school teachers and bad home-school teachers.  There are good public school systems and bad public school systems.  The current hodge-podge of state and local responsibility for both home-schooling and public schools does not work well.  Curricula and reasonable standardized tests should be determined at the federal level, and applied to both public school and home-school situations.

By the way, "teaching by the test" is not necessarily bad although the current "system" could be improved. Censoring textbooks should be unnecessary--in fact using one textbook
(or preferably, online program) nationwide should be sufficient. (Third grade math is third grade math.)

While there are various good reasons for providing home-schooling (illness, schools unavailable), it does seem that some home-schoolers try to "protect" their children from concepts that don't fit in with their philosophical beliefs instead of providing guidance for the child who will eventually face society-at-large.

It is ridiculous though to require a home-schooled child to sign a release.

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.”
–Leonardo da Vinci
*****************************************
I adore this quote.  Read it, let it sink in, reminisce about the days spent in a school with stinky carpets, hard desks & chairs and a teacher who's greatest care was when she would be able to take her next smoke break.  Do you remember pouring over books that you had no interest in just because a report was due on Friday?  How about the excitement you used to feel about learning, before you were told not to work ahead and that you needed to slow down because there were other children in the class who did not work as quickly as you did?  Sound like an environment that fosters "desire"?

The American school systems are failing because of people like Clay Burell.  Why would anyone follow a person who is part of the problem?  Why would anyone follow a person who is so self-important that he is not willing to admit his own shortcomings? 

Clay, you sound like another hateful leftist who's secret goal is to force your own beliefs onto others.  You should be spending your time trying to fix the disaster of a school system of which you are a part!

I'm a freelance writer and wrote a mainstream media article not long ago on homeschooling. A few observations from the research I did for that:

I interviewed several homeschoolers who go with the more common, organized model -- they have schedules and a daily calendar, use curricula that they've chosen thoughtfully, network and get together with other homeschoolers, etc.

I also interviewed an "unschooling" family who are really pleased with their decision. But it turns out that the more-organized homeschoolers are very disapproving of the unschooling family (they all are in my city and thus all know each other). The "unschooling" mom told me herself that her son, at 11, isn't reading yet, and the other homeschoolers said that family's kids are completely unsocialized and dysfunctional. One pursues some outside activities, but the other does nothing whatsoever but play video games.

You get the picture. Just some food for thought.

I also interviewed a family who homeschooled their only child grades K-3. Then their work situation changed and they needed to put her in public school. They were scared ****less. They got some reassurance from families they knew and took the leap. Well, the child loved school, and the whole family discovered that she had been missing out on a lot, though they were very happy with the education itself that she had gotten through homeschooling. The family was terrified of the school playground -- which turned out to be no problem and a lot of fun. They also had some phobia that the daughter might someday have to perform before an audience in any way, shape or form. Needless to say, this happens regularly in public school, and the daughter became a musician and loves to perform.

Meanwhile, I also lurked on a homeschoolers' listserve to learn more about it. I was amply impressed with the homeschoolers I interviewed, except for the unschooler. But I did keep noticing this mom on the homeschoolers' listserve who thinks that it's ALWAYS proper, in every place where one might either use "who" or "whom," to use "whom." (As in, a mom whom has a severe misunderstanding about grammar, whom thinks that the word "who" is always in error.) Without other adult input to check/balance that, I kept wondering how her kids' writing was going to turn out...

Also, BTW, I have a couple of friend who are parents of children with autism and activists in that area. They tell me that one reason so many winners of those contests that require prodigious memorization skills are homeschooled is that a lot of them are on the autism spectrum, and a lot of parents of children with autism do choose to homeschool. So it's correlation, but not necessarily causation.

 

I usually make a practice of NEVER correcting spelling or grammar in online discussion, for various reasons, but in case this person is a homeschooler, it's spelled PORING:

Do you remember pouring over books that you had no interest in just because a report was due on Friday

http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/0236.html

You can’t pour over a book unless you want to soak it. Pour means “to make a liquid flow, as from a container.” Pore means “to read or study intently.”    1

Also, I would hope that no one who thinks it's appropriate to call someone "hateful" solely because you disagree with his opinion is teaching chidlren at all, either at home or in a classroom.

Thank you, Carolyn--interesting post.

First/1st is a style call; neither usage is right or wrong.

(I'm a product of public school too. In neither case does that prove anything. But my public-schooled kids do know their homonyms.)

Your venomous bias against conservative Christian homeschoolers is much more concerning than the problems you aim to correct.

Or course, these same conservative Christians spew forth this kind of anger as well, so I suppose your attack is in response to something personal.  That's understandable.

Some of us might be making assumptions here.  For example, do most homeschooled children truly outperform in-school children?  There apparently haven't been studies of this.

Also, some people "automatically" think of Evangelical Christians when they hear the term "homeschooled".

We now have technology to organize and present curricula and exercises online, so why not require the homeschooling parent to use this resource. (Naturally, the parent could supplement this material, as can parents of in-school children.)  Take the subject of evolution, the homeschooling parent could say something like "We don't believe in evolution but you are required to learn the basic principles and you'll be tested on it".

If the writer of this headline went to public schools, which I assume the fact, then no wonder people want to homeschool.

What this article fails to address is the fact that many, many children in public schools are failing.  Bring those same children home, and quite often, they begin to make progress and catch up. My child is one of them. Public schools aren't right for every child; they can't and won't address all learning styles, they can't address all learning disabilities.  Yes, an IEP or a 504 is a legally binding agreement, but I know of many examples where they are only given lip service.  Before you take on the homeschooling minority, why don't you take on fixing the public school system so it works for EVERY child. Then maybe there won't be so many families who homeschool.

Clay and Katie, it's a TYPO (the word "to" is left out).

It's ridiculous and discredits the attacker to single out a typo as evidence of lack of education. 

Since we all have lapses, including me, I generally maintain a policy of never picking on errors in online posts.

However, in discussions of homeschooling, the question of the quality of the homeschooler's own education is in the spotlight -- put there by the homeschoolers themselves -- along with the fact that there may be little to no educational input from other adults.

For that reason, I mentioned the homeschooler who always used "whom," rightly AND wrongly (or I should say "the homeschooler whom always used "whom"), and also pointed out the pour/pore error by a homeschool advocate here. Both of those are clear-cut lapses in literacy. (The pour/pore confusion is common; the "whom" misunderstanding is one I haven't seen before in a long career as a copy editor.)

Sorry, I assumed it was a typo. In either case, it's not a legitimate target.

But those who are out there in public touting their superiority to classroom teachers and bashing public education are opening themselves up to legitimate criticism when they reveal their own lapses in education. Using that to further bash public education doesn't hold up, as it leaves the question wide open as to whether they're instructing their own children effectively.)

The ideas cited are awful, because they do nothing to preserve a "right to education."

If homeschooled students are moved to public school for failure to progress at a specified (arbitrary) rate, where do the public school students who also fail to progress at this rate go? Would you get to bring them back home?

If a public school is using a curriculum that has been repeatedly described by educational authorities as one of the worst, least effective programs (let's say, as in our schools, Everyday Math), can parents declare it unacceptable and refuse to use it?

If homeschool students have to hew to a particular version of history, do parents get to correct the standard distortions of history -- including those distortions caused by omissions -- found in a typical high school program?
If not, then these suggestions seem to me simply motivated by anti-homeschool paranoia, and not a desire to defend a "right to education." 
And when the pendulum swings Republican again, do you really want the state setting the education agenda at such a micro-managing level?
If you lived in Texas, you might want to pull your kids from school to *protect* them from Creationism and Intelligent Design, which school boards there push ardently.
I'm a left-winger myself, but I am not anxious to give the state rights that could so easily be turned against me. 
And yes, obviously, I'm a homeschooler. I also have a PhD and work as an independent scholar and a project manager in educational publishing. I, too, have met that one whacko family that even other homeschoolers agree should not be homeschooling, but I am not willing to give up my rights and those of the hundreds of other normal homeschoolers I know so that crazy family's kids are forced into school -- and continue to suffer from having crappy parents anyway. 

I regret that so far it is not illegal to parent while stupid, but I'm not sure that is a law I would want to pass.
And dear God, give the error correction a rest, on all sides. These aren't education White Papers -- they are comments posted to a blog in between wiping butts and loading the dishwasher. People typing really fast are going to make mistakes, including mental lapses with homophones. 
I dare say the explosion of excessive apostrophes, the common error of "loose" for "lose," the failure to understand what the conditional tense is, and on and on, is as at least common among public schoolers as it is among homeschoolers and private schoolers -- or so a cursory examination of menus, signage, community newspapers, etc., would suggest. They can't *all* have been written by the tiny proportion of homeschoolers in the population. 
Another anecdote: I taught Sunday school in a Kindergarten classroom where in a series of words representing each letter of the alphabet, raisin was spelled "raisen." All year long. Never corrected. In fact, not corrected the next year. Whatever will become of those children whose sole educational input came from that woman?!
But perhaps it is unfair to make blanket statements -- let alone public policy recommendations -- based on those kinds of anecdotes.

Two of the many reasons for teaching children (whether in the home or in the school) are:
1  Communicating facts that enable them to move forward, and
2  Enabling them to think "critically".

Just because there are standards does not mean that these standards cannot be exceeded. Testing benchmarks is logical.

We have the technology to communicate these standards and to test these benchmarks for all children--whether they are educated in the classroom or at the kitchen table.  Why not use them?

I'm not anti-homeschooling and am personally unsure exactly how it should be regulated.

However. From interviewing homeschoolers, reading a couple of homeschoolers' listserves for a few months and such, I see a lot of excessive fear, to the point of paranoia, of public school and sometimes school at all. Homeschoolers sometimes get slapped with that when their kids get older and start demanding to go to school.

I think it's valid to point out how exaggerated those fears are, and I also have a problem with the fervent anti-public-education sentiment that exists strongly among homeschoolers.

Shaun, you're missing my point. I'm not saying homeschoolers are any less literate than other parents, obviously (straw man). My point is that when someone is proclaiming him/herself the only person qualified to educate his/her kids, he/she is putting him/herself out there as a superior educator with superior skills. That puts his/her education lapses in the spotlight.

The ones I cited are not the kind of errors that are due to typing fast or being busy. (The "whom" person repeated the error in many online posts for weeks.) 

A lot of educated people aren't great spellers. In a traditional school setting -- or a homeschool setting that's structured so that the students have input from different teachers and sources -- other teachers will offset one teacher's deficiency, plus students learn how to check for themselves. My point is that when you get the "only *I* will be my child's teacher," any deficiencies are magnified hugely -- that would certainly be true of me. It's magnified even more when that person is bashing other teachers and other educational settings.

I am very glad to see this discussion happening here. Everyone seemed to understand better when the analysis was on the Taliban's religious 'schools.' It is relevant to ask if people are hearing that the earth is flat, that a fetus can sing showtunes, that other races and gays are agents of 'the devil,' or that beings are flying around watching humans. Rev. Bookburn - Radio Volta

Clay -- thanks for your nice response. I wish there was a way that an otherwise non-abusive family could be brought to heel -- in or outside of a school system -- but I can't imagine what it is, especially since real physical abuse is so often missed or unexamined with kids already "in the system."

The family I know is a constant source of distress for their public school and homeschooling friends. If only the mistaken use of "whom" and "pour" were the problems they were facing!

Caroline -- I wish I could explain this well in a blog comment, but in short, comparisons between homeschoolers and school teachers are apples and oranges, all the way. The skill sets overlap slightly, but not all that much. The idea that by homeschooling--or even complaining about public schools--someone is proclaiming himself or herself 1) the only person qualified to educate his/her children and 2) superior to all other educators in all other situations is equally a straw man, and it assumes that "qualifications" means "qualified to teach in a classroom" rather than "qualified to be the primary supervisor of one's own child's education."

If grammar/usage lapses disqualify someone from teaching, public, private, and charter schools are in a heap of trouble.

Perhaps you interviewed homeschoolers in a very isolated area. Where I live homeschoolers are all over the place in the community, taking piano lessons, going to scouts, playing baseball and soccer. That is, when they are not going to co-op to learn Spanish or French from a native speaker, taking science from a working naturalist, art from a working artist, creative writing from a children's author.

That's just my little co-op, of course; we are one of the smaller ones in my metro area. I can't think of a family I know who has the "I am the only qualified person" attitude -- and I get around in the various homeschooling groups here.

If pointing out the errors of homeschoolers doesn't tend towards either making generalizations or public policy suggestions, what does it mean to "put it in the spotlight"? If it's offered as just a random isolated instance that has no greater meaning, why bring it up at all? (Read: I am not convinced that your point is merely that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.)

I am sorry that some of you have had such negative experiences with homeschoolers. I was just joking recently with some (public schooling) friends that there is one very busy, awful homeschool family making the rounds -- everyone seems to have met this inbred, Unibomber Jr., holy roller family of urban legend. ("No, really, they lived next door to my mother's best friend.") Please consider that the most extreme cases--or the most radicalized homeschoolers--are the ones you're going to hear about and remember.

I would also suggest that when people you don't know are always online debating your right to exist or your need to kowtow to state education authorities, a little paranoia might not be misplaced.

No Intelligent Design?  But I thought keeping that evil evolution pseudo-science away from the little darlings was the reason Good Christian Parents homeschooled their children!

I think parents should have choice regardless of whether you and I agree that Christian extremists damage their children with their teachings.  I am public school educated and anxious now that we are nitpicking grammar because mine is terrible!  If it represented the whole of my education then I'm in big trouble.

There are already laws in place in all states for the reporting and regulating of child abuse.

Standardized tests are just aweful. It's a tool for a lazy system.
If the governemnt wants to check how well a student or a school is doing, send someone who understand teaching and learning to analize the school for a month. To see if the methods used in each school are working for its students.

Standardized tests test nothing.

My parents are well qualified to home school.  Many are not. Perhaps parents who wish to home school should be required to take a general knowledge test.  I the parents fail the test, they can not home school their kids.

It is not likely that anyone could do a worse job at educating young people than a system that puts thirty kids in a room and calls indoctrination education. Many home schoolers begin as unprepared as parents begin being parents, but after a few months the joy and orientation of learning begins.  Government (the need to install fear so indoctrination is easier) has no place in home schooling. And no, I'm not worried about the Elders of Zion or Creationism. Indeed most Private religious schools "teach" the 6000 year old earth rubbish.

I pulled my 4th grader out of public school recently and have been homeschooling him myself. Or more accurately, I utilize a curriculum that has him doing math and english essentially on his own.  It's "self-directed." We do Spanish and Latin together a couple of times a week, and we take trips to the nature and science museum to tackle entire units of history, geography or astronomy/science in one day.

I'll bet lots of people would think this is inadequate, or certainly unconventional.  But, guess what?  This kid, who was failing math, has progressed two grade levels in a matter of mere months.  I give him some standardized tests just to keep track of his progress myself.

In essence, academically he is outperforming his peers back at school.  I'd also note that he could not speak Spanish at all, and they'd been teaching Spanish at school since kindergarten.  Now, even doing it a couple of days a week, we communicate in whole sentences.

If you do some research through the Home School Legal Defense Association, you will find great info on how home schooled kids perform on AP college placement exams.

I don't think the academics are the problem with homeschooling.  The religious indoctrination might be concerning, but essentially if grown-up Americans have the right to believe whatever crazy stuff they want to believe, doesn't it stand to reason that they have the right to teach their children these things also?  Even if you don't agree?

I'd also add that my local homeschooling support/meet up group contains NO christian fundamentalists that I'm aware of. Maybe they all belong to some other group, I don't know. But I've met only nice, educated, middle class parents who simply want to keep their kids at home for various reasons.  My son and I have a great time together, we're really loving homeschooling!

Hmm, I know lots of unschoolers. I think they are fabulous parents. Homeschoolers talk a lot about how scary it is when a kid doesn't start to read at the usual time. (They might not be telling many outsiders about their fears.) But the kids who start reading really late often catch up to grade level and then surpass it, within months. (Sorry, no hard data, but LOTS of anecdotes.)

You can't say that about a schooled child child who couldn't read at the 'normal' time. They develop so much baggage about being 'slow', it's really hard to feel good about themselves in relation to reading. That makes it very hard to catch up.

I think Andrew's proposal is a terrible idea. Do private schools get that twice a year testing requirement? What about Sudbury (that's the article that got me over here today), do those kids have to use curriculum and get tested?

My son is at a 'free school'. I wanted to protect him - from bullying, anti-gay playground talk, consumerist culture, teachers who diagnose black boys as ADHD way too often, academics pushed too early, and standardized testing. I'm quite progressive, but I have some sympathy for Christian parents who want to protect their kids. It's something we have in common.

I'm on a home-schoolers' email list called living math forum, where I've learned more about teaching math than I ever have anywhere else, from moms who have no certification and no qualifications other than their love and dedication. And that's after teaching for 20 years.

Change.org is supposed to be about making changes for the better. Interfering in people's families is not helpful. If you're worried about child abuse, there's a government agency called protective services. I object to using change.org as a platform for such a regressive idea. Can people propose anything and get it displayed as an 'action' here?

I think this is a really interesting issue to explore, because I have personal experiences with home-schooling and religious fundamentalism.

I attended a fundamentalist Christian academy from day-care through fourth grade, and then transitioned to home-schooling with my fundamentalist Christian mother when we could no longer afford private school. I took two standardized tests every year and my work was evaluated at the end of every semester by an administrator from my school district until I entered high school, which was when the standardized tests ended. My course load was similar to any student in public school, and I also had more free time to take up internships, explore new subjects at my own pace, and volunteer.

I took the SAT, two of the SAT II tests (Writing and Literature), and the ACT. My GPA: 3.9. I was subsequently accepted with an academic scholarship to a private liberal arts university. So you could say I had an overall positive experience homeschooling. I do appreciate the freedom it gave me to explore my identity and interests and how it required me to be actively involved in my education, and I think when done efficiently, creatively, and intellectually, home-schooling can be a great experience for everyone involved.

Having said that, until I entered high school I was pretty much subjected to a constant onslaught of Creationism and Fundamentalism - I was told they were facts, not theories or religious beliefs. I trusted these teachers at the private academy, and I trusted my mother, so of course I believed it. I was a child.

After I started high school I told my mother I didn't want to use Bob Jones textbooks anymore, and that since I was interested in going to college, I needed to take more outside courses. I began taking three or four courses each semester from a non-religious private school, and I enrolled part-time at my local community college. I subsequently struggled in my science courses because I had no idea what they were talking about. I was being told lies until ninth grade, and when I realized this it made me so angry. I became even more upset after I took a volunteer position at the COSI Science Center here in Ohio when I was in tenth grade. When another volunteer would reference some factoid about evolution, I often wouldn't know what they were talking about.

So that does sour my opinion toward home-schooling, but I don't regret my experiences and I don't think it is an inherently unwise or negligent educational choice. It can be incredibly beneficial. I think that instead of giving the children more tests, we should be evaluating the parents and the textbooks.

To all:

For what it's worth:

Some of you seem not to realize that I don't favor the types of regulations suggested in the petition. That's why I posted: I saw a lot of people signing it, and wished they weren't.

It's not my role, as I see it (and as an earlier post elicited many comments to the same effect), to censor any petitions that aren't hateful or just completely whacked. So I tried to diplomatically suggest via this post that maybe that petition isn't such a great idea.

If my wife and I have a child any time soon, I have half a mind to home-school myself - and not do it in a way that blindly follows political dictates from the education establishment about curriculum, time-frames, tests, and the whole nine yards.

(At the same time, if I'm still teaching in international schools when the kid reaches school age, s/he'd get free tuition to  a world-class education, so that would be hard to pass up.)

As for the jaw-dropping snark about grammar, besides the sensible "whatever," I'd love to start a grammar controversy over whether the elision of "Do We" in the title's question is indeed, as our grammar expert home-school parent claimed with all the certainty of a Creationist was a mistake, or wasn't. I don't think so, so it's an interesting question for this less righteous and more open English teacher. (Caroline read into it, the elision of "to," which to me wouldn't work for a question/interrogative form.) Any takers?

Beyond that, let me make clear for the millionth time that attacking pseudo-science is not attacking religion, and that Creationism/ID are not unique to Christianity. Judaism and Islam have their share of proponents also.

Let me also make clear that, again, as the many posts on Sudbury's somewhat "unschooling" approach to education that I've invited from guest-blogger Bruce Smith should attest (as well as the link to "unschooled Abby getting into Princeton in this post itself), I have no doubt that many home-schooled children have the best of all possible worlds.

If I didn't make that clear in the post itself (damn that diplomacy), I hope I have now.

I'm really enjoying the input in this thread. Thanks for that.

I'm not sure I understand what the real gripe is here. Is it that homeschooling is bad or is it that some parts of Christianty is bad?

Clay, here's what threw me, you said: "I was glad to see Andrew initiate the action". Also, I do think it's reasonable not to accept petitions you know aren't progressive change, although I see your point on that.

If I had a partner, or a friend who'd stay home with my son, I'd have homeschooled. We would have unschooled. It's possible for an unschooled child to be way behind on reading or math and then to catch up just fine. I mentioned reading in my first comment. There's an article about how quickly Sudbury students learned math called And 'Rithmetic, by Daniel Greenberg linked at my blog mathmamawrites.blogspot.com.

Also, I'd hate to use government approved texts for history. Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen, has some good information about what history texts get wrong. There's another book that explains why school history books get it so wrong. I don't remember the title (and had no luck with google). Clay, do you know the book I'm talking about? I remember that it talks about them being written by committee.

The wrong information isn't even the worst part. It's how boring they are. I thought I hated history when I got out of high school. Then, when I got to college, I took a women's studies course from a history prof. I was in awe. I love history.

School wrecks so much, it makes no sense to use schooly ideas to control those who leave. I want to be a part of making schools better, because there are plenty of people who would never, could never, homeschool. And because schools at their best (see The Power of Their Ideas, by Deborah Meier) can be laboratories for practicing democracy.

I've been following this and I have a few more thoughts on the matter.
First, is that an advanced degree and/or teaching certificate does not make you a teacher.  According to Merriam-Webster, a teacher is "one that teaches", with teach being defined as "to guide the studies of" and "to impart knowledge of".  The advanced degree and/or teaching certificate are pieces of paper that state that you have knowledge of things that were taught in the education program that you attended.  Does that mean that you had more history classes, science classes, math classes, english classes, spelling classes, etc. since those are the types of topics that are taught in school?  Or was the majority of the classes about the theories of teaching, classroom management skills, etc.?  I know when I got my advanced degree in accounting that college had only prepared me for the theory of what accounting was like.  I had to go out in the real world to obtain the skills necessary to actually become an accountant.
Second, I have been a teacher.  Anything that I have knowledge of can be imparted to others.  I taught my child to speak, what colors were called, how to order when at a restaurant, manners, etc.  I have also been fortunate enough to teach other kids things regarding nature and the natural world because I am a naturalist.  I've taught school groups, homeschool groups, co-ops, and summer camps how to identify animal tracks, how to identify plants, water cycles, seasons, etc.  Does it matter that I didn't have a teaching certificate?  Obviously not to the parents of the kids who paid for their kids to attend a class taught by me.
Third, I outsource teaching in my own homeschool.  I don't know that much about taekwondo, but I found someone who does.  I'm not much of an artist, but there are classes locally that my son loves to attend.  I'm not so good at identifying rocks, but my brother-in-law is amazing so he is helping my son.  My son has attended numerous classes at zoo, museums, nature centers, etc. all taught by people that didn't have teaching certificates.  Yet, he still managed to learn.
In summary, please realize that there is more learning going on in the world than that just taught by certified teachers.  Anyone can have knowledge of a topic and pass that information on, that person is the teacher and you would be their student.  The other part is that you, yourself, can always gain more knowledge.  And here's a hint: the authors of books are teachers; they have put their knowledge in a form which you can read and learn from.  And, no, most of them are not certified teachers either.

I am really surprised at the number of people who seem to be misinformed about homeschooling. It seems as if we are afraid to do something out of the box. Just because public or private school is traditional doesn't make it the best choice.

Homeschoolers and their parents for the most part do a great job and their children survive and maybe a bit more independently than students who follow the traditional tract.
AND WHY do we need so much government regulations?

Are they really our keeper?  I for one do not think they do the greatest job either. Please don't get me started....