Smrt Lernins

I haven’t been blogging much and when I do, it hasn’t been all that related to homeschooling.

This isn’t because we haven’t been homeschooling. We have been. It’s primarily that I am simply exhausted from the daily task of pulling a decent amount of work out of Captain Science right now. It’s like pulling teeth. We have maximum “tween” attitude and minimum actual effort being applied towards his school work. It’s also wildly inconsistent. The essay he wrote today had the depth I would expect from a 7 year old. The previous essay, about Theodore Roosevelt, was great. I don’t know if it’s that he thinks he has to be completely interested in and invested in the topic for it to be worth his while, or if he simply can’t be bothered to try, because eh, what’s the worst that can happen?

I do have things I want to write about. I don’t want any advice on things to do to motivate Captain Science (I am resourceful and intelligent; he’s just having one of those phases where nothing is going to make much difference). I really kind of need a vacation from my life for a couple of days.

As an aside, as Captain S trudges away at another version of his essay, Babypie is stark nekkid and trying to convince Badge the Beagle to poop directly into one of the tiny blue poo-scooper bags (without success, thankfully).

Patchfire asks, “Some homeschooling advocates have complaints against colleges that require additional information and/or standardized testing from homeschooled students that they do not require from students that have attended accredited institutions. Essentially, the colleges wish to corroborate the parent-issued transcript. To clarify, the colleges are not requiring stated minimum scores or higher scores from homeschooled students; they merely want evidence of the testing. Is this discrimination?”

No.

Come on, really? People are calling this discrimination? Parents are mad that colleges won’t just believe what they say about their student’s achievement without any sort of corroborating paperwork or testing to back it up? Really?

These colleges aren’t making homeschooling parents (or students) jump through extra hoops. They aren’t asking for this stuff to punish homeschoolers or give them grief or because they get a laugh off of them. It’s not even because they think homeschooling parents are inherently dishonest. They just have no way to know from family to family what the standards are for any given subject, how rigorously or extensively any subject is taught and tested.

Public schools must meet certain standards — whether you think they’re high enough or too high, there ARE standards set for them that they must meet in order to keep accreditation. Private schools must also meet certain standards to keep accreditation. Accreditation is how those institutions receive external validation of their academics. Coming from an accredited school certainly doesn’t mean that a student is smarter or better educated, but it does generally mean that the student meets a minimum expected level of proficiency in certain subjects. It’s as simple as that. When public institutions make it up as they go along (“it” being grades, testing, whatever), they tend to get busted for it — hard and publicly. Haven’t you seen news segments on school systems being caught messing with standardized testing or failing standards and losing accreditation?

Standards can vary wildly from parent to parent, however, and educational method/philosophy to method/philosophy. There is no overseeing board for all homeschooling parents. There is no Department of Homeschool Education that sets minimum standards for performance. Parents aren’t assessed yearly under threat of funding revocation if their students aren’t demonstrating certain skills or testing to certain levels. Individual parents aren’t accredited. Because there isn’t a process by which parent-teachers can become accredited as individuals, they are asked by some schools to provide some other example of external validation of their academics. This isn’t asking something extra; it’s just asking the parent directly for what a larger institution would be expected to provide on behalf of the student: a means of demonstrating the means by which the student came by a set of grades.

If you’re sitting around feeling oppressed because the college won’t just take your word for it on a transcript, it’s time to suck it up and get over yourself. Your word isn’t infallible. Why on earth should the college treat it as such? Not all parents are honest with themselves about their students’ abilities. Public schools (and private schools) may not provide an ideal education for all/most/some (take your pick) children, but those types of institutions do have to answer to at least some sort of higher authority and adhere to a specified minimum set of standards — at least if they want to remain accredited, which most of them do — two things that many homeschooled parents do not have to do.

You chose to take/keep your child out of “the system.” Well, most colleges are part of “the system.” They will set expectations based on that system. If your child wants to be a part of that system, they’ll have to demonstrate they have met the standards set by that system. It’s great if they scored well on their SAT/ACT, but that’s only a part of the admissions process. Transcripts are another big part of it, and if the student (homeschooler or otherwise) doesn’t come from an accredited school/program, that student should expect that have to demonstrate that his/her abilities and knowledge are at least at a level that one would expect from an accredited program.

One of the costs of homeschooling is that sometimes you might be expected to provide a little extra proof for the grades you give your child, especially when that child is using those grades to apply to college. It’s not even a particularly high cost of homeschooling. Providing proof that your kid took the occasional standardized test isn’t a particularly difficult thing to do, either. Put on your big girl panties and deal.