Whether homeschooling or expensive private schools, maybe its more about the parents than the kids

 

I noticed a story in the Seattle Times the other day about the rise of homeschooling during the pandemic, and naturally a photo of an upper-income white mother (the “teacher”) and her two healthy-looking children (the “students”) in front of their nice suburban home was included. One wonders about the “rigor” of homeschooling, and whether parents—who in most states are not required to show proof of such—are qualified to teach.  Homeschoolers supposedly do “better” on “verbal” testing, but what evidence there is shows that they do worse in math, which makes sense because most parents are not equipped to teach math beyond simple adding and subtracting.

Finding nonbiased, factual information about homeschooling is virtually impossible to find. Googling pros and cons of homeschooling shows this interminably. Defenses of homeschooling is rampant, while actual legitimate studies are virtually nonexistent, which means that you will get pages and pages extolling the virtues of homeschooling, and when you do find something questioning things like, you know, cheating, phony “transcripts” and report cards which some websites brag about producing a nice-looking fake one for your kid, and the lack of standardize tests taken in properly supervised settings. 

Only a tiny percentage of college students are homeschooled (how colleges administer their admissions seems completely arbitrary), but the claim (based not on actual data) is that a slightly higher percentage of them graduate. While it may be true to assume that homeschoolers who actually get into college are more motivated to learn in the first place, the information about this is produced by biased sources whose “data” is of the “self-reporting” kind in which data is weighted toward whatever the data takers wants “proven.”

For example, CBS News reported on “research” done by a Michael Cogan, identified as the “director of institutional research and analysis at the University of St. Thomas,” and this “study” has been oft-quoted by homeschool defenders. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that this is where the higher college graduation numbers came from, and such claims that they have a slightly higher ACT scores than non-homeschoolers, that they allegedly earned more college-level credits prior to attending college, and that they had higher GPAs while in college.

There are, however, three caveats that lead one to question the validity of this “research”: it was conducted among students at “an unnamed medium-sized university in the upper Midwest”—thus cannot be independently verified—that 68 percent of homeschooled students were Roman Catholic (and all those Catholic schools they can attend and sit through Mass every morning to be properly indoctrinated, like I did), and that this was reported in 2010 and thus may be “out-of-date” information.

A 2019 report on the website ThoughtCo that pretends to be unbiased but is clearly pro homeschooling somehow managed to undermine its own arguments by acknowledging the generally true accusations of a lack of valid information about homeschooling, since most states do not keep complete records about homeschooled students or even how many there are, as well acknowledging the fact that most of the data about homeschooling is disseminated by the Home School Legal Defense Association, a clearly biased, right-wing, “Christian” advocacy group. It also admits that most data on homeschooling is self-reporting, and that in fact most homeschoolers do not participate in such studies, which as noted before suggests that only the “best” students are motivated to report, thus giving homeschooling an artificially “positive” slant.

In an interview in the Harvard Gazette, law professor Elizabeth Bartholet noted the lack of oversight in most states in regard to homeschooling, and suggested that while corporeal punishment is illegal in public schools, it is certainly a danger at home for students with trouble learning. She also noted the danger of right-wing and “Christian” ideologues teaching their children extremist views that are contrary to a civil society that recognizes differences. Bartholet also noted that the homeschool lobby is politically strong because its victims—children—have no voice; it is a adult-driven political enterprise.

State requirements on homeschooling vary wildly. The state of Washington is actually an exception to the rule: a parent must submit a test to prove that they are qualified to teach, meet with a state-certified teacher one hour a week, must teach a list of state-mandated coursework for a minimum of 180 days a year, students must take standardize tests overseen by a state-approved person, and a state-certified teacher must confirm level of educational progress. It almost doesn’t “pay” to homeschool unless you have some contrary agenda.

But most states are not so stringent in their requirements, and it goes all the way down to states like Texas, where parents only have to announce that the intention to homeschool, and are left to their own self-reporting devices. Accusations of fraud are of course rampant in such a “system,” with high school dropouts with “F” grades liable to turn up listed as “homeschooled” and receiving faked transcripts and diplomas which the state recognizes as “legitimate.” The Houston Chronicle reported that “Texas’ lax documentation and hands-off practices make it impossible to know how many students are actually being taught at home” and schools are using the “bad practice” of arbitrarily not reporting dropouts and classifying them as “homeschooled.”

But regardless of the “pros and cons” of homeschooling, as “virtual learning” during the pandemic has shown us, many students are ill-served by homeschooling, whether from lack of motivation, lack of an environment conducive to learning (such as “competition” with peers or attention from teachers) or parents who either don’t care or were poor students themselves and no help to their children’s learning.

So what is the other option if you don’t think public schools are good enough? Expensive private schools? Obviously some are more (or less) expensive than others. Take for example Seattle’s Northwest School, which apparently has a couple of “campuses”—the original location…

 

…and the new one with “state-of-the-art” classrooms and a “smarter” urban footprint:

 

I haven’t actually seen much going at the latter Pike Street location of late; maybe they are doing “virtual” learning. According to information posted on-line, academic tuition for the Northwest School is of over $46,000 a year, and an additional $19,000 for room and board. Only 15 percent receive any kind of financial assistance; the only comment I found on the socio-economic level of the students was on Quora, with someone mentioning that locally the school was only for “the most privileged families.” The rather high acceptance rate suggests that if you got the money, you’re in. Although its student body is claimed to be “diverse,” this of course is deceptive and only means that a large percentage of the students are Asian, many from outside the country. The student-teacher ratio is 9 to 1, and the average class size is 16, which of course means there is plenty of teacher attention to go around.  

The school claims to offer college-ready courses, although as its original name implied, it is one of those “arts and humanities” alternative-type schools, which tries hard not to make “slower” students feel overwhelmed compared to “smarter” peers. For example, “traditional” studies in subjects like math are afforded “non-traditional” teaching methods for slow learners:

We are aware of the diverse learning styles of our students. Within each course, instruction is targeted to meet the needs of individual learners. We do not separate courses as honors level or regular level. We believe all students deserve the most rigorous math course. We strategically target the use of technology and combine its use with traditional paper and pencil problem-solving techniques to help students learn, apply and visualize concepts…We use a variety of teaching strategies, including lecture, partner work, collaborative groups, discovery, flipped classroom models and projects in the pursuit of our goal of providing all students with the best possible mathematics education.

Obviously crowded public schools are limited in that regard, but what else does $46,000 in tuition (not counting room and board) pay for? One thing I noticed about the list of colleges and universities that graduates from this school went on to seemed to omit any mention of Ivy League institutions. Stanford is listed, however; it is interesting to note that Northwest School is more than twice as expensive to attend than, say, a public school like the University of Washington, and barely less expensive than a private college like Stanford. Are you really getting more “bang” for your buck sending a kid to Northwest School than if you send them to a public school just to avoid going to school with the less “desirable” students?

Whatever the reality is, it is more about the parent than the school, and parents don’t always seem to have the right “answers” to the question of what is “best” for their children.