This news from the Goldwater Institute’s Matt Ladner about the basic civic illiteracy of Arizona high school students is depressing, especially a week before our nation’s birthday. A simple 10-question quiz failed by the overwhelming majority of students.

Apparently, charter school kids did better than other public school kids, and private schoolers did even better. No group did well, though. I have to wonder: What about homeschoolers? (Maybe there weren’t enough of them to tally the results.)

The big people in my life insist that basic civic literacy is absolutely crucial for the Republic to survive in the future. You know, my future? Let’s pay attention, people.

Anyway, here are the 10 questions, taken directly from the U.S. Citizenship exam: Continue Reading »

1 Comment »

Forgive me if I act a little sleepy today. I stayed up past my bedtime last night to watch the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. And after that, I was too excited to go to sleep. When I’m old enough, I want to be on ESPN and national TV, too — competing for the top prize as spelling champion. Think I can do it?

For now, I look forward to rooting for Tim Ruiter in 2010. The homeschooler from Centreville, Virginia, finished as runner-up this time around. (Next year, maybe Colorado spellers will advance farther, too.)

I like Tim’s attitude. He told the Washington Post:

Tim said that he plans to be back next year and that he’ll take only a short break — “I’ll go to bed” — before he resumes word study. “I’m glad that she won, because this was her last year,” he said.

Continue Reading »

No Comments »

My friends in the Education Policy Center received the following notice in an email message, and wanted to let you know about the opportunity:

VOLUNTEER SPEECH AND DEBATE JUDGES NEEDED

April 15-18, 2009
Region 3 Invitational Speech and Debate Tournament
First United Methodist Church
420 N. Nevada Avenue
Colorado Springs, CO 80903 Continue Reading »

No Comments »

A week ago I told you what a big school choice week it was going to be at the Colorado State Capitol. And it was. Ed News Colorado has a short video recap of Thursday’s charter school rally.

It was left to one of my friends at the Education Policy Center – namely Marya DeGrow – to cover Friday’s Homeschool Day at the Capitol. Several legislators showed up to show their support and appreciation.

Marya handed out hundreds of flyers about her new, exciting paper Colorado’s Homeschool Law Turns Twenty (PDF). And she let me be an honorary homeschooler for a day!

Maybe you don’t have time to sit down and read the whole paper, or maybe you need to be persuaded why the paper is so important. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

This week brings a couple of big days for supporters of school choice. First of all, bet you didn’t know that it’s 2009 Colorado Charter Schools Week, celebrating the 15th anniversary of charter schools in Colorado. The big day to commemorate the occasion is this Thursday, April 2 – as charter school families and supporters rally at 11:30 am at the State Capitol.

Public charter schools represent an important educational option that has established itself in our state. If you want to keep track of charter school issues here, you absolutely have to bookmark two sites: the Colorado Charters blog and the new A Parent’s Voice.

The very next day – Friday, April 3 – is the annual Homeschool Day at the Capitol, with a chance to meet elected state representatives and senators, to participate in two workshops, and to join in a noon rally. And younger homeschooled kids can participate in the Future Statesmen Program, which sounds pretty neat to me.

Show up at the Homeschool Day at the Capitol, and you might just meet one of my Education Policy Center friends there with information on the new, exciting paper Colorado’s Homeschool Law Turns Twenty (PDF) – a real call to vigilance.

If you don’t visit the State Capitol very often, but you’re a real supporter of school choice here in Colorado, this week provides a couple very good excuses to get down there.

1 Comment »

It’s easy for those who have secured the benefits of educational freedom to take them for granted. That’s especially true in the case of homeschooling, as parents in New Hampshire have responded to a bill that would restrict their rights:

The legislation has angered many home schoolers who showed up in record numbers when the bill was being debated in Concord. “There were about a thousand home schoolers there. It was a record-breaking crowd, never been that many home schoolers,” the [Home School Legal Defense Association's Mike] Donnelly notes. “In fact some of the people at the state house said that they’ve never seen such a large crowd inside ever.”

It’s encouraging to see so many Granite State homeschoolers rallying to action. If what’s going on across the country doesn’t wake up and make Colorado homeschoolers vigilant, then maybe a refreshing and comprehensive look at the history of securing parental rights in this arena will.

My Education Policy Center friend Marya DeGrow has written a simply awesome new issue paper called Colorado’s Homeschool Law Turns Twenty: The Battle Should Never Be Forgotten (PDF). Two decades ago, after numerous legal battles and legislative battles and struggles with local and state education officials, Colorado parents finally won the legislative right to teach their kids at home.

Marya herself was homeschooled, and her mom Judy Gelner was one of Colorado’s pioneers for educational freedom. So if you want to understand how the movement unfolded, the arguments that defined the debate, the key people who advanced the cause, how the state’s homeschooling law has developed into its current form, and why ongoing vigilance is needed to preserve the right, then this paper – thoroughly researched, but with a personal touch – is a must-read.

I gave up part of an afternoon with my Legos to read Marya’s report, if that tells you anything.

1 Comment »

It’s now official. The latest Issue Paper in the *Innovative Colorado School District Series, written by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow, has been released: Douglas County’s Home-Grown Teachers: The Learning Center Waiver Program (PDF).

The Independence Institute website explains what the paper is all about better than I can:

Seeking a creative solution to shortages in various teaching positions, Douglas County School District received a waiver from the state of Colorado to license and train its own teachers through the Learning Center. The district currently is able to license teachers in areas such as math, science, and world languages; to provide special education endorsements to teachers in other specialties; and to equip unlicensed professionals with the basic skills to teach more highly specialized courses to high schoolers. The waiver is scheduled to be renewed at the end of 2008, contingent on Douglas County meeting certain performance goals.

If it’s true that this means a way for schools to get more skilled and effective teachers in our classrooms to help kids learn better, then more power to Douglas County. And I hope other school districts pick up on it, too.

Anyway, the paper is kind of long. As usual, the Independence Institute also has created a podcast to give you a flavor of the topic. This time, author Ben DeGrow interviews Learning Center executive director Mike Lynch about the waiver program:

This story first made the Denver news way back in May 2006, as Douglas County made its case for waivers to the State Board of Education. Ben wrote an op-ed back then. The story may reappear in the news next month when the school district is scheduled to go before the State Board to get the waiver renewed. Stay tuned. I’ll do my best to help keep you informed about that.

*The Innovative Colorado School District Series also includes the following papers (note: all links are PDFs):

• The Ignacio Market Driven Compensation Plan and Why It Fell Short (2005)
• Delta County School District Has VISION for School Choice (2005)
• Contract Schools Bring Innovative New Choices to Denver Public Schools (2005)
• Denver’s ProComp and Teacher Compensation Reform in Colorado (2007)

1 Comment »

A couple months ago I told you about the state of Florida’s amazing success in improving early reading test scores. Here were the main things to which former Gov. Jeb Bush attributed the successful gains:

Raising standards, measuring progress, grading school performance, providing educational options and targeting resources to reward success and reverse failure are all tools that are transforming schools and raising student achievement….

I also believe we need to better apply free-market principles to the way we deliver education in order to improve the entire system. We should expand educational options so all parents can make the best choices for their children. Teachers and principals should be paid based on performance. Educators that teach subjects with a shortage of teachers, teach in low-performing schools or carry increased responsibilities should be paid more. We should also give merit pay to teachers based on student learning gains and other objective measures….

But blogger Charlie Barone says, hey, wait a minute, let’s take a closer look at Delaware, too. It seems that the First State has shown remarkable improvement, as well. As Matt Ladner points out, some of the same success story themes emerge that have come from Florida:

It turns out that Delaware is discretely a haven for parental choice. Delaware has the nation’s 7th ranked charter school law according to the Center for Education Reform, and active inter and intra district choice programs. Add all of those up, and 15.5% of all K-12 students in Delaware are exercising choice through public options.

Delaware also has a large number of students attending private schools, and a little less than 2% home-schooling. Combine those, and you get over 20 percent of students exercising private choice.

If you add it all together, 35.7% of Delaware students are attending schools other than their assigned district school.

It just goes to show- standards and parental choice are two great tastes that taste great together.

I don’t know anyone who has ever been to Delaware, but it sounds like good things are going on there. I hope Colorado lawmakers are paying attention. The same sort of authentic, systemic reform that took place in a large Republican state like Florida also took place in a small Democratic state like Delaware. Are we paying attention to what works?

4 Comments »

One option more and more parents take for their kids is homeschooling. Thousands of Colorado kids are being educated at home by their parents. Despite a great diversity in the families that undertake home education and the different kinds of programs used, there’s still a tendency among some to have stereotyped conceptions of what a “typical” homeschool family looks like.

People who want to pigeonhole homeschoolers into a box really ought to read this Pajamas Media column by Kansas parent and writer Tony Woodlief. A key excerpt:

Given preconceptions about this practice, I should note that we are not anti-government wingnuts living on a compound. We like literature, and nice wines, and Celeste would stab me in the heart with a spoon if I gave her one of those head bonnets the Amish women wear. We are not, in other words, stereotypical home-schooling parents. But neither are most actual home-schooling parents.

Even though Ma and Pa Ingalls sent their children off to the little schoolhouse in Walnut Grove, we’ve decided to start our own. In the eyes of Kansas authorities that’s exactly what we’ve done; regulations require us to establish a school and name it. Ours is the Woodlief Homestead School. I wanted to go with something like: “The School of Revolutionary Resistance,” but Celeste said that was just inviting trouble.

The reason we’ve broken with tradition, or perhaps reverted to a deeper tradition, is not because we oppose sex education, or because we think their egos are too tender for public schools. It’s because we can do a superior job of educating our children. We want to cultivate in them an intellectual breadth and curiosity that public schools no longer offer.

We know that kids benefit from having an array of educational choices, but sometimes we don’t realize the diversity within an option or the variety of reasons that lead parents to the particular choice. The Woodlief Homestead School will have different structures and emphases than many of their counterparts, but they’re working toward a similar end. The author effectively makes a point that many still need to get:

Folks in our neck of the woods embrace the proper goal, which is not supporting public schools, but supporting public education — the education of the public, which is only ever you and me and our neighbors. The goal is educated children, after all, not allegiance to some institution or ideology.

Based on the individual needs of the child, there are many ways to reach that goal. Home-based education is an option that just happens to work for many.

No Comments »

For those who educate their children at home, and for all those who support the rights of homeschoolers, recent news from California comes as a relief. A little more than five months ago a state appeals court issued a ruling that many worried would have the effect of shutting down homeschooling in California. Supporters in other states rallied to their defense, in part from fear that the dangerous precedent would have a ripple effect in their own backyards.

Last Friday brought a happier ending to this saga:

In a decision widely praised, a California appeals court this morning affirmed the right of parents who don’t have a teaching credential to educate their children at home.

A three-judge panel overturned a lower-court order in February that had created an uproar among home-schooling parents when it required that they be credentialed. An estimated 166,000 California children are home schooled.

The Second District appellate court in Los Angeles ruled that individual parents, like private schools, are exempt from the requirement that those who teach children be credentialed by the state.

This court decision (follow the link to read the actual ruling) is truly a victory for parental rights and personal liberties. The growing voice of the homeschooling community certainly was heard, now more clearly protected by a strong legal foundation.

Any time educational freedom either grows or fends off a repressive attack, there is reason to celebrate. This latest decision is such an occasion.

No Comments »