Education Controversies: Charter School Encroachment - Good News or Bad?
Some parents have exercised their right to home-school their children for religious reasons. Not every family is comfortable with the secular nature of public school or the non-sectarian approach of many religious based private institutions. Nor need they be comfortable. For such families, home-school is invaluable for educating their child in and from a particular world view, which in this case is a biblical or religious perspective.
Education choices are growing and expanding from clean divisions between public, private, and home-school to a somewhat nebulous and uncertain differentiation between public and charter schools and even public and home-school programs. Public education is reaching out, and while this is fine for some families who have chosen the home-school option, for others it is cause for suspicion and alarm.
As some public schools continue to under-perform, some families, instead of private home-school, are opting to place their children into charter school supervised home-school models instead. Some families are moving from home-school to charter school oversight. While this may or may not be a threat to the home-school project, the fact is that some religious families are making this transition, and sometimes without fully understanding the consequences of the choice.
Moving from a home-school model to a charter school supervised home-school model means loss of control. To be clear, a charter school still receives public money. So, although a charter school is operated "privately," it is still subject to the same governmental regulations regarding enforced secularization of the classroom and curriculum. While this is no problem for parents who choose home-school for secular reasons, the fact is that many parents dedicated to the home-school project are anything but secular and certainly do not want a secular and non-sectarian education for their child.
If religion and morality in education is a concern, and they have determined the choice of home-school for your child, then consider the following before enrolling in a charter school oversight model. Charter schools, because they receive government money, prohibit religious content, determine what curriculum to teach and how to teach it, demand standardized testing, and, in the end, place the parent(s) under the supervision of a "professional" teacher. In short, be aware of the possible consequences of allowing a charter school to supervise your home-school program. Such supervision may, for you, not only be unneeded but unwelcome. Consider what matters most to you and your child, what you want home-school to be, and to that vision stay true.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, author, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of almost 3 decades reside with their 8 children in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. because "our current system of education has broken its promise..." Learning By Grace, Inc. delivers Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children in the United States and throughout the world.
Rothschild has authored a number of books about education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Daily Education News Blog contains feature stories on alternatives in education.