Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall
This may be the answer to the failing government schools. It is obvious that we cannot continue with continued poor performances demonstrated by the annual proficiency scores.
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https://frontline.news/post/globalists-panic-as-homeschooling-explodes-across-us
Globalists panic as homeschooling explodes across US
Media push for homeschool regulation to ensure parents are ‘moral’, ‘safe’
Posted by Yudi Sherman
November 05, 2023|
11:24 AM
Globalist spokesmen in media and government are voicing concern over a huge boom in homeschooling across the United States that has the trend becoming more mainstream.
An analysis from the Washington Post last week found that the number of homeschooled children in the US has jumped from 1.5 million in 2019 to as many as 2.7 million this year — some estimates say 3.7 million — suggesting that many children did not return to schools when they reopened during the pandemic.
The analysis — which looked at 60% of the school-aged population in 7,000 school districts across 32 states and Washington, D.C. — found that homeschooling defies political, geographical and economic borders.
For example, while Republican Florida has the largest homeschool population with 154,000 homeschooled children, Democratic New York is showing the fastest growth with nearly 52,000 children homeschooled, more than double since 2017. New York City boroughs Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx saw the highest growth rates with the homeschool population in some districts surging over 300% in the last six years.
The trend is also gaining popularity even in areas with high academic achievement. Last year over 60,000 children were homeschooled in districts which ranked in the country’s top fifth for scholastic aptitude.
Florida’s Hillsborough County has become the nation’s homeschool “capital” with 10,680 homeschoolers in the district.
“Today, Hillsborough home-schoolers inhabit a scholastic and extracurricular ecosystem that is in many ways indistinguishable from that of a public or private school,” reports the Washington Post. “Home-schooled kids play competitive sports. They put on full-scale productions of ‘Mary Poppins’ and ‘Les Miserables.’ They have high school graduation ceremonies, as well as a prom and homecoming dance.”
But Hillsborough officials are displeased with the trend.
“It’s a tremendous imbalance,” said Hillsborough County School Board member Lynn Gray, who says she worries about homeschoolers’ “academic preparation and lack of exposure to diverse points of view.”
“I can tell you right now: Many of these parents don’t have any understanding of education,” she said. “The price will be very big to us, and to society. But that won’t show up for a few years.”
But studies show that homeschoolers outperform their state-educated counterparts in nearly all areas. Standardized tests reveal that homeschoolers on average score over 30 percentage points higher than public schoolers in core studies such as reading, language and math. SAT test results show that homeschooled children score higher than state-educated children by as many as 70 points in critical reading and 48 points in writing. They are also more likely to achieve higher GPAs.
Minority children who attend homeschool also show higher results than their counterparts. Black homeschooled students, for example, have been shown to outscore Black public schooled students by 23–42 percentage points. According to government figures, 41% of homeschoolers are Black, Asian, Hispanic, and others (i.e. not White/non-Hispanic).
Most homeschoolers also report being excited about life and satisfied with their work, joined by a minority of public schoolers.
As school districts lose students to the homeschool method, governments and teachers’ unions are looking for ways to show more impressive numbers and boost enrollment. The Oregon State Board of Education, for example, has dropped essential skills and standardized testing requirements, which it said was necessary to fight racism. This decision was ardently backed by the Oregon Education Association, the state’s 40,000-strong teachers’ union, which stands to lose members if graduation and enrollment rates falter.
Following the decision, Oregon public high schools boasted an 81.3% graduation rate last year despite only 43% of students being proficient in English and less than 31% being proficient in math.
The picture is bleaker in Baltimore where standardized test scores for 2021 revealed that 85% of students are not proficient in math and four out of ten public high school students earn lower than a 1.0 GPA. At one public high school, students were found to read at an elementary school or kindergarten level.
But higher academic achievement among homeschoolers — including minority children — has not stopped media operatives from painting homeschool as a racist initiative.
“It may seem harmless, but the insidious racism of the American religious right’s obsession with homeschooling speaks volumes, writes @AntheaButler,” MSNBC tweeted.
Last month comedian John Oliver dedicated a segment on Last Week Tonight to slamming homeschools. Without data to show that homeschooled children are disadvantaged, Oliver argued that homeschools should be regulated by the state to ensure that homeschooling parents are “moral” and “safe” for their children.
Oliver is joined by other media figures in his opposition to homeschooling.
“Imagine putting ‘homeschool mom’ in your bio and not understanding you’ve just ruined the lives of five innocent children,” tweeted MSNBC host Joe Scarborough last year.
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