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Am I the only one thinking that home schooling is the wrong solution to the underlying problem? The problem is that the public education sector has been - for

Am I the only one thinking that home schooling is the wrong solution to the underlying problem? The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding. Teachers are quitting left and right, and schools are in a terrible state. Instead of fixing THAT problem, now people homeschool. Ok; I guess. At least homeschooling is something that the individual can control, public funding not so much. But it boggles my mind how people can assume, with a straight face, that they are equipped to educate their child alone - something which is normally a profession for which you have to study O(years) (and even then most people aren’t really good at). What gives parents this confidence? And what gives parents the right to squander the future of their children on a whim? I have two kids, would consider myself very well educated (have a PhD, etc), and I habe absolutely 0 confidence in myself schooling my kids. Finally, public schooling is obviously an attempt at leveling the playing field between children from different backgrounds. By removing your kid from that, I think it further contributes to the segregation of our society.

traject_ 3y ago
> But it boggles my mind how people can assume, with a straight face, that they are equipped to educate their child alone - something which is normally a profession for which you have to study O(years) (and even then most people aren’t really good at). The key assumption here is that the expertise and years of studying translates to desirable outcomes. The large expansion of homeschooling suggesting by the article suggests a great rise in people who no longer believe that the expertise promoted by teaching schools is actually relevant to teach their children. After all, mass public schooling is only about a century old and default human experience in many ways has always been closer to what we call homeschooling.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >The large expansion of homeschooling suggesting by the article suggests a great rise in people who no longer believe that the expertise promoted by teaching schools is actually relevant to teach their children. "Believe" is the important word there. Are these people removing children from school because they actually can do a better job, or because the TV told them a school somewhere had a litterbox for a furry student?
  - WoodEye 3y ago
    > "Believe" is the important word there. Are these people removing children from school because they actually can do a better job, or because the TV told them a school somewhere had a litterbox for a furry student? Does it matter why they pulled their kid out to homeschool if the outcome is better?
marcusverus 3y ago
> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding. Public school spending in the US is up almost 50% in the last 30 years.[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-pupil-in-public-schools-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...
- haizhung 3y ago
  Thanks for the data! It seems that adjusted for inflation, it still is an overall net decrease (11,500$ in 1990 equals about 27,000$ today).
  - jdminhbg 3y ago
    No, look at the chart again, it's denominated in constant 2021 dollars, i.e., adjusted for inflation. Public school spending has increased.
  - hagy 3y ago
    The data is already adjusted for inflation as indicated in the y-axis label, "Expenditure in constant 2020-21 U.S. dollars".
- cwoolfe 3y ago
  I agree that funding isn't necessarily the problem. We live in a wealthy county and have more to spend per pupil. Unfortunately that doesn't translate to higher test scores. The extra dollars go to administrative positions in the central office which may or may not translate to better academic performance.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Where's all that money going? Surely not to teachers who are chronically underpaid and have 30+ students per class. It's not buying school supplies, which our teachers often have to pay for out of pocket or hold bake sales to fund. Is it all going to football fields, useless technology spending, and 5 levels of non-teaching administration staff?
bloaf 3y ago
The evidence is weak, but currently leans towards "parents can and actually do a better job than the professionals." This includes parents with low incomes, and includes parents with low educational achievement. You categorize this as contributing to segregation, but I say that it contributes to diversity. Public school is a hugely homogenizing force and the homogeneity it targets is not necessarily good. I think it is good for society to have a set of people who were raised in an environment with fundamentally different experiences and priorities. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator/202109/the-research-homeschooling https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator... https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/ https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/
- sega_sai 3y ago
  Thank you for providing the links, but I don't buy that. The first link cites three papers: Almasoud, S., & Fowler, S. R. (2016). The difference in the academic achievements of homeschooled and non-homeschooled students. Home School Researcher, 32(1), 1-4. Cogan, M. F. (2010). Exploring academic outcomes of homeschooled students. Journal of College Admission, 208, 18-25. Coleman, R. E. (2014). The homeschool math gap: The data. Coalition for Responsible Home Education. Two of these are journals are devoted to home education (so personally I'm not assigning much weight to that). The Cogan reference seem legit, but is based on 70 home-schooled students admitted to one specific "medium-sized private university".
owenpalmer 3y ago
> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding. Lack of funding isn't always the problem. As jawns mentioned, there's a lot of reasons to remove your kids from public school. > I have two kids, would consider myself very well educated (have a PhD, etc), and I habe absolutely 0 confidence in myself schooling my kids. Interesting. I'm surprised you feel this way while acknowledging that most educated teachers "aren't really good at it". Perhaps you aren't qualified to teach your kids, and that's okay. At least you have the self-awareness to know they need help from someone else. > public schooling is obviously an attempt at leveling the playing field between children from different backgrounds. Yep. But it can also stifle the growth of overachievers.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  > But it can also stifle the growth of overachievers. Or give gifted kids resources their parents cannot afford or that their parents would find offensive
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MattGaiser 3y ago
> something which is normally a profession for which you have to study O(years) (and even then most people aren’t really good at). What gives parents this confidence? And what gives parents the right to squander the future of their children on a whim? You have to consider capacity. It is a parent educating 1-2 children vs a teacher educating 30+. So while the teacher has a lot more training on how, a lot of the how is how to do it in bulk. Would an individual focused on solving any particular problem outperform a PhD trying to solve 30 at once? I don't think that is unreasonable. Someone who hasn't picked up a book on software development yet has a reasonable chance of beating me (professional software developer) if I work on 30 projects at once. If you have the means, you can also buy a lot of teaching a la carte. When faced with similar resource and time constraints, teacher is going to win. But the gap in those is huge.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dbjacobs 3y ago
We let our 3 kids choose between homeschool and private school. As a result they tended to bounce back and forth between the systems depending on their priorities. By the time they reached 4th grade I was mostly a coach when they chose homeschooling. I would let them know the things they needed to learn and help them find curriculum. And when they got stuck on something they would come to me for help, but in general they were responsible for themselves. Mostly they would only do schoolwork for 3 hours a day or so. They had no problems reintegrating into regular school when they chose to do so. Our youngest stayed on the homeschool track the longest (from 7th grade because they got involved in competitive Call of Duty. So they ended up doing the homeschool->community college->GaTech track. > But it boggles my mind how people can assume, with a straight face, that they are equipped to educate their child alone - something which is normally a profession for which you have to study O(years) (and even then most people aren’t really good at). What gives parents this confidence? And what gives parents the right to squander the future of their children on a whim? There are awesome resources to educate you kid on just about anything. The real distinguishing attribute on whether a parent can be a good educator is whether their children can spin them up emotionally. If a parent can't stay calm when their child is pushing their buttons homeschooling probably won't work. And then secondarily, a parent should know when they are over their head and need to bring in assistance. Not every parent is equipped to help their children learn calculus and other advanced courses.
- HuwFulcher 3y ago
  This is a fascinating insight, thanks for sharing. How did you get your children to the point where they could do self directed study?
mikrotikker 3y ago
At least in my country the homeschooling is ballooning as parents don't want the LGBT stuff and DQST forced on their kids but also don't want to be accussed of being a bigot when they raise issue with it.
- Server6 3y ago
  Guy, this is a made up problem.
  - legitjhol 3y ago
    [dead]
  - mikrotikker 3y ago
    I don't have kids so I don't know but I know lots of people with kids and it is concerning enough to them that they homeschooling or pod learn. Even a lesbian couple with adopted and biological children are freaking out about it.
pokstad 3y ago
Funding is not the issue. Private schools pay their teachers less and have higher success rates. Public schools are still teaching in a style suited for the Industrial Revolution. They also are a jobs program, so they can’t change to accommodate students if it hurts the employees.
- Server6 3y ago
  Private schools have higher success rates because the kids are of a higher socioeconomic class. The teachers don't have to do the job of a social worker/parent. In other words private schools don't need to hire the best teachers, therefore they don't have to pay the best salaries.
  - gunapologist99 3y ago
    > The teachers don't have to do the job of a social worker/parent. Right, so home-schooling just brings that full circle.
    - Server6 3y ago
      Not really. I'd argue raising a successful child "takes a village" with parents/teachers/community being legs of a stool. If any one of these legs is weak outcomes will be poor and they really aren't interchangeable. Parents aren't teachers and teachers aren't parents. I'd argue that one of main problems with education right now is the dereliction of duty on the parents part, expecting the schools to pick up the slack - which they really cant' do.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    So I think you hit the nail on the head for why public schools are generally awful. It’s precisely because they’re public. The public is full of dysfunctional families and homes with severe issues and people with terrible values. The kids bring these problems to school and the school has to spend considerable resources on them. And we’re supposed to want to surround our kids with this? Unfortunately I know first hand having had to go to these schools until my parents finally realized their worldview was damaging their children. Saying that, public schools in communities of stable homes with caring parents with good values tend to be just fine. They still have to deal with issues a private school won’t tolerate but they’re mainly functional.
bequanna 3y ago
> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding. Not everyone agrees that is the problem. Bullying and indoctrination are two examples that many people cite as reasons they choose to homeschool.
qup 3y ago
How good were you at your profession when you got your bachelor's? How good were your "average" classmates? I can teach my (hypothetical) child better than the "average" teaching-degree graduate. You're selling yourself short if you don't think you can, too, with a focused effort. My friend group is like 20ish elementary school teachers (US). They are all great people, but they are quite variable in competence. Some are very good, and some can't move beyond the basics in Kindergarten. What I'm saying is, you're placing way too much faith in the teachers. Last I heard, in Florida, they were accepting "spouses of active duty military" for teaching positions without further qualification because they're so hard up.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >How good were you at your profession when you got your bachelor's? Rather a lot better than before I got it.
  - qup 3y ago
    Which adds absolutely no information in this context. Well played.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Doesn't it? You seem to be suggesting that because a new grad isn't that great at a job, a complete lay person would be able to do it just as well. And anyways, Florida may be a steaming pile of shit, but most teachers in the US have Master's degrees.
ARandomerDude 3y ago
Homeschool done right (TM) isn’t you teaching by yourself though. Teach your kids to read well at an early age, get a good math curriculum, and feed them high quality books written by people who know way more about each subject than you do. Self-learning and reflecting on what you read are two of the most important parts of learning. Too often, schools pay lip service to these ideas, then spoon feed information to students.
ngngngng 3y ago
If funding is truly the underlying problem, why does Utah have some of the best K-12 outcomes in the country while being dead last in per pupil spending?
mlrtime 3y ago
>The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding I'm late and this probably won't be read, but I disagree. There is no strong correlation between funding and public education "success". The only thing that correlates is parents involvement in education. This isn't something you can realistically spend your way out of. (It's been tried).

traject_ 3y ago

> But it boggles my mind how people can assume, with a straight face, that they are equipped to educate their child alone - something which is normally a profession for which you have to study O(years) (and even then most people aren’t really good at). The key assumption here is that the expertise and years of studying translates to desirable outcomes. The large expansion of homeschooling suggesting by the article suggests a great rise in people who no longer believe that the expertise promoted by teaching schools is actually relevant to teach their children. After all, mass public schooling is only about a century old and default human experience in many ways has always been closer to what we call homeschooling.

mrguyorama 3y ago
>The large expansion of homeschooling suggesting by the article suggests a great rise in people who no longer believe that the expertise promoted by teaching schools is actually relevant to teach their children. "Believe" is the important word there. Are these people removing children from school because they actually can do a better job, or because the TV told them a school somewhere had a litterbox for a furry student?
- WoodEye 3y ago
  > "Believe" is the important word there. Are these people removing children from school because they actually can do a better job, or because the TV told them a school somewhere had a litterbox for a furry student? Does it matter why they pulled their kid out to homeschool if the outcome is better?

marcusverus 3y ago

> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding. Public school spending in the US is up almost 50% in the last 30 years.[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-pupil-in-public-schools-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/203118/expenditures-per-...

haizhung 3y ago
Thanks for the data! It seems that adjusted for inflation, it still is an overall net decrease (11,500$ in 1990 equals about 27,000$ today).
- jdminhbg 3y ago
  No, look at the chart again, it's denominated in constant 2021 dollars, i.e., adjusted for inflation. Public school spending has increased.
- hagy 3y ago
  The data is already adjusted for inflation as indicated in the y-axis label, "Expenditure in constant 2020-21 U.S. dollars".
cwoolfe 3y ago
I agree that funding isn't necessarily the problem. We live in a wealthy county and have more to spend per pupil. Unfortunately that doesn't translate to higher test scores. The extra dollars go to administrative positions in the central office which may or may not translate to better academic performance.
ryandrake 3y ago
Where's all that money going? Surely not to teachers who are chronically underpaid and have 30+ students per class. It's not buying school supplies, which our teachers often have to pay for out of pocket or hold bake sales to fund. Is it all going to football fields, useless technology spending, and 5 levels of non-teaching administration staff?

bloaf 3y ago

The evidence is weak, but currently leans towards "parents can and actually do a better job than the professionals." This includes parents with low incomes, and includes parents with low educational achievement. You categorize this as contributing to segregation, but I say that it contributes to diversity. Public school is a hugely homogenizing force and the homogeneity it targets is not necessarily good. I think it is good for society to have a set of people who were raised in an environment with fundamentally different experiences and priorities. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator/202109/the-research-homeschooling https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-translator... https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/ https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/

sega_sai 3y ago
Thank you for providing the links, but I don't buy that. The first link cites three papers: Almasoud, S., & Fowler, S. R. (2016). The difference in the academic achievements of homeschooled and non-homeschooled students. Home School Researcher, 32(1), 1-4. Cogan, M. F. (2010). Exploring academic outcomes of homeschooled students. Journal of College Admission, 208, 18-25. Coleman, R. E. (2014). The homeschool math gap: The data. Coalition for Responsible Home Education. Two of these are journals are devoted to home education (so personally I'm not assigning much weight to that). The Cogan reference seem legit, but is based on 70 home-schooled students admitted to one specific "medium-sized private university".

owenpalmer 3y ago

> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding. Lack of funding isn't always the problem. As jawns mentioned, there's a lot of reasons to remove your kids from public school. > I have two kids, would consider myself very well educated (have a PhD, etc), and I habe absolutely 0 confidence in myself schooling my kids. Interesting. I'm surprised you feel this way while acknowledging that most educated teachers "aren't really good at it". Perhaps you aren't qualified to teach your kids, and that's okay. At least you have the self-awareness to know they need help from someone else. > public schooling is obviously an attempt at leveling the playing field between children from different backgrounds. Yep. But it can also stifle the growth of overachievers.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
> But it can also stifle the growth of overachievers. Or give gifted kids resources their parents cannot afford or that their parents would find offensive

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

MattGaiser 3y ago

> something which is normally a profession for which you have to study O(years) (and even then most people aren’t really good at). What gives parents this confidence? And what gives parents the right to squander the future of their children on a whim? You have to consider capacity. It is a parent educating 1-2 children vs a teacher educating 30+. So while the teacher has a lot more training on how, a lot of the how is how to do it in bulk. Would an individual focused on solving any particular problem outperform a PhD trying to solve 30 at once? I don't think that is unreasonable. Someone who hasn't picked up a book on software development yet has a reasonable chance of beating me (professional software developer) if I work on 30 projects at once. If you have the means, you can also buy a lot of teaching a la carte. When faced with similar resource and time constraints, teacher is going to win. But the gap in those is huge.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dbjacobs 3y ago

We let our 3 kids choose between homeschool and private school. As a result they tended to bounce back and forth between the systems depending on their priorities. By the time they reached 4th grade I was mostly a coach when they chose homeschooling. I would let them know the things they needed to learn and help them find curriculum. And when they got stuck on something they would come to me for help, but in general they were responsible for themselves. Mostly they would only do schoolwork for 3 hours a day or so. They had no problems reintegrating into regular school when they chose to do so. Our youngest stayed on the homeschool track the longest (from 7th grade because they got involved in competitive Call of Duty. So they ended up doing the homeschool->community college->GaTech track. > But it boggles my mind how people can assume, with a straight face, that they are equipped to educate their child alone - something which is normally a profession for which you have to study O(years) (and even then most people aren’t really good at). What gives parents this confidence? And what gives parents the right to squander the future of their children on a whim? There are awesome resources to educate you kid on just about anything. The real distinguishing attribute on whether a parent can be a good educator is whether their children can spin them up emotionally. If a parent can't stay calm when their child is pushing their buttons homeschooling probably won't work. And then secondarily, a parent should know when they are over their head and need to bring in assistance. Not every parent is equipped to help their children learn calculus and other advanced courses.

HuwFulcher 3y ago
This is a fascinating insight, thanks for sharing. How did you get your children to the point where they could do self directed study?

mikrotikker 3y ago

At least in my country the homeschooling is ballooning as parents don't want the LGBT stuff and DQST forced on their kids but also don't want to be accussed of being a bigot when they raise issue with it.

Server6 3y ago
Guy, this is a made up problem.
- legitjhol 3y ago
  [dead]
- mikrotikker 3y ago
  I don't have kids so I don't know but I know lots of people with kids and it is concerning enough to them that they homeschooling or pod learn. Even a lesbian couple with adopted and biological children are freaking out about it.

pokstad 3y ago

Funding is not the issue. Private schools pay their teachers less and have higher success rates. Public schools are still teaching in a style suited for the Industrial Revolution. They also are a jobs program, so they can’t change to accommodate students if it hurts the employees.

Server6 3y ago
Private schools have higher success rates because the kids are of a higher socioeconomic class. The teachers don't have to do the job of a social worker/parent. In other words private schools don't need to hire the best teachers, therefore they don't have to pay the best salaries.
- gunapologist99 3y ago
  > The teachers don't have to do the job of a social worker/parent. Right, so home-schooling just brings that full circle.
  - Server6 3y ago
    Not really. I'd argue raising a successful child "takes a village" with parents/teachers/community being legs of a stool. If any one of these legs is weak outcomes will be poor and they really aren't interchangeable. Parents aren't teachers and teachers aren't parents. I'd argue that one of main problems with education right now is the dereliction of duty on the parents part, expecting the schools to pick up the slack - which they really cant' do.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  So I think you hit the nail on the head for why public schools are generally awful. It’s precisely because they’re public. The public is full of dysfunctional families and homes with severe issues and people with terrible values. The kids bring these problems to school and the school has to spend considerable resources on them. And we’re supposed to want to surround our kids with this? Unfortunately I know first hand having had to go to these schools until my parents finally realized their worldview was damaging their children. Saying that, public schools in communities of stable homes with caring parents with good values tend to be just fine. They still have to deal with issues a private school won’t tolerate but they’re mainly functional.

bequanna 3y ago

> The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding. Not everyone agrees that is the problem. Bullying and indoctrination are two examples that many people cite as reasons they choose to homeschool.

qup 3y ago

How good were you at your profession when you got your bachelor's? How good were your "average" classmates? I can teach my (hypothetical) child better than the "average" teaching-degree graduate. You're selling yourself short if you don't think you can, too, with a focused effort. My friend group is like 20ish elementary school teachers (US). They are all great people, but they are quite variable in competence. Some are very good, and some can't move beyond the basics in Kindergarten. What I'm saying is, you're placing way too much faith in the teachers. Last I heard, in Florida, they were accepting "spouses of active duty military" for teaching positions without further qualification because they're so hard up.

thfuran 3y ago
>How good were you at your profession when you got your bachelor's? Rather a lot better than before I got it.
- qup 3y ago
  Which adds absolutely no information in this context. Well played.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Doesn't it? You seem to be suggesting that because a new grad isn't that great at a job, a complete lay person would be able to do it just as well. And anyways, Florida may be a steaming pile of shit, but most teachers in the US have Master's degrees.

ARandomerDude 3y ago

Homeschool done right (TM) isn’t you teaching by yourself though. Teach your kids to read well at an early age, get a good math curriculum, and feed them high quality books written by people who know way more about each subject than you do. Self-learning and reflecting on what you read are two of the most important parts of learning. Too often, schools pay lip service to these ideas, then spoon feed information to students.

ngngngng 3y ago

If funding is truly the underlying problem, why does Utah have some of the best K-12 outcomes in the country while being dead last in per pupil spending?

mlrtime 3y ago

>The problem is that the public education sector has been - for years - continuously squeezed dry of any funding I'm late and this probably won't be read, but I disagree. There is no strong correlation between funding and public education "success". The only thing that correlates is parents involvement in education. This isn't something you can realistically spend your way out of. (It's been tried).