4 ms·

Is there no obligation to attend school in these states?

pixelatedindex 1y ago
Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought in America there’s no obligation to attend school ever, because you can just be homeschooled and then take the GED? I think it’s dumb but I don’t know for sure.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  It's complicated. There's a broad requirement that you receive a K-12 education. There's also a huge amount of pushback against most things that would infringe personal freedoms, so "I'm handling that myself, go away" is permitted but the exact details vary between states. At least where I grew up if you drop out and don't file all the necessary homeschooling paperwork the police will visit you.
- swiftcoder 1y ago
  It's a sort of a grey area, and varies a lot by state and which way the political winds are blowing. Miss too many days of government school because your family are poor and you had to help your parents put bread on the table? The truancy officer may show up to arrest you. Announce you are homeschooling your kids to avoid liberal indoctrination? Sending your kids to work in a factory? A-ok in a number of states.
danudey 1y ago
Put the 14-year-olds on shift after school, put the adults on shift during the day. The teenagers won't have time to do homework but the schools aren't funded well enough to ensure a quality education anyway.
- seneca 1y ago
  > the schools aren't funded well enough to ensure a quality education anyway The US spends more per pupil than every other OECD country except for Luxembourg, and exceeds the average by over 50%. If US schools aren't funded well enough, essentially no one is.
  - steve_adams_86 1y ago
    Bizarre; why are their outcomes relatively poor?
    - soco 1y ago
      Wild guess: maybe most of the spending goes to the school football team?
      - monkpit 1y ago
        It doesn’t work that way
  - monkpit 1y ago
    Educational spending in the US is individual to the state, and even more locally within school districts within states, so it makes no sense to look at it from a national average
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    > The US spends more per pupil than every other OECD country except for Luxembourg, and exceeds the average by over 50%. Not accurate in the context you're saying it. You're probably conflating US K-12 spending (low) with post-secondary spending (high)? https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp... https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...
    - swiftcoder 1y ago
      > US K-12 spending (low) Your source there still puts US K-12 spending in the top-5 worldwide. The allocation of said spending clearly isn't optimal, but there is plenty of money at a high-level
aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 1y ago
That’s an interesting topic. In most states, homeschooling is almost meaningless because there are no required assessments to demonstrate student proficiency in any subject. And 11 states don’t even require a parent to simply notify the state that they’ve pulled their kid out of school.
- seneca 1y ago
  And yet home-schooled students widely outperform government-schooled students, both during homeschooling and in college GPAs.
  - brohee 1y ago
    Yeah, but it's not that simple, they certainly don't seem to outperform students of comparable socioeconomic background attending a more c https://gaither.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/new-ray-study-of-homeschooler-demographics-and-achievement/ https://gaither.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/new-ray-study-of-ho...
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    > And yet home-schooled students widely outperform government-schooled students, both during homeschooling and in college GPAs. I'd love to see your citations on that. Because my impression is that, precisely because of the lack of regulation in many states, homeschooling has bimodal outcomes. Some children turn out better (read: those of wealthy, educated parents with extra time to spend on educating) while some children turn out much worse than even the worst public schools (read: kids of religious/political-indoctrination parents and/or ones of limited socioeconomic means/time). At minimum, it seems pretty reasonable to have homeschooled kids take the same milestone tests as public school kids, in order to objectively measure if their teachers are doing the job well. You know, considering (a) it's a decision children aren't empowered to make for themselves, (b) there are a lot of crazy-as-fuck parents out there, and (c) it's something that will define the rest of kids' lives. "Oops, my bad" in the event of poor outcomes won't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Ref to start: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsZP9o7SlI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsZP9o7SlI

Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought in America there’s no obligation to attend school ever, because you can just be homeschooled and then take the GED? I think it’s dumb but I don’t know for sure.

fc417fc802 1y ago
It's complicated. There's a broad requirement that you receive a K-12 education. There's also a huge amount of pushback against most things that would infringe personal freedoms, so "I'm handling that myself, go away" is permitted but the exact details vary between states. At least where I grew up if you drop out and don't file all the necessary homeschooling paperwork the police will visit you.
swiftcoder 1y ago
It's a sort of a grey area, and varies a lot by state and which way the political winds are blowing. Miss too many days of government school because your family are poor and you had to help your parents put bread on the table? The truancy officer may show up to arrest you. Announce you are homeschooling your kids to avoid liberal indoctrination? Sending your kids to work in a factory? A-ok in a number of states.

danudey 1y ago

Put the 14-year-olds on shift after school, put the adults on shift during the day. The teenagers won't have time to do homework but the schools aren't funded well enough to ensure a quality education anyway.

seneca 1y ago
> the schools aren't funded well enough to ensure a quality education anyway The US spends more per pupil than every other OECD country except for Luxembourg, and exceeds the average by over 50%. If US schools aren't funded well enough, essentially no one is.
- steve_adams_86 1y ago
  Bizarre; why are their outcomes relatively poor?
  - soco 1y ago
    Wild guess: maybe most of the spending goes to the school football team?
    - monkpit 1y ago
      It doesn’t work that way
- monkpit 1y ago
  Educational spending in the US is individual to the state, and even more locally within school districts within states, so it makes no sense to look at it from a national average
- ethbr1 1y ago
  > The US spends more per pupil than every other OECD country except for Luxembourg, and exceeds the average by over 50%. Not accurate in the context you're saying it. You're probably conflating US K-12 spending (low) with post-secondary spending (high)? https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp... https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...
  - swiftcoder 1y ago
    > US K-12 spending (low) Your source there still puts US K-12 spending in the top-5 worldwide. The allocation of said spending clearly isn't optimal, but there is plenty of money at a high-level

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 1y ago

That’s an interesting topic. In most states, homeschooling is almost meaningless because there are no required assessments to demonstrate student proficiency in any subject. And 11 states don’t even require a parent to simply notify the state that they’ve pulled their kid out of school.

seneca 1y ago
And yet home-schooled students widely outperform government-schooled students, both during homeschooling and in college GPAs.
- brohee 1y ago
  Yeah, but it's not that simple, they certainly don't seem to outperform students of comparable socioeconomic background attending a more c https://gaither.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/new-ray-study-of-homeschooler-demographics-and-achievement/ https://gaither.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/new-ray-study-of-ho...
- ethbr1 1y ago
  > And yet home-schooled students widely outperform government-schooled students, both during homeschooling and in college GPAs. I'd love to see your citations on that. Because my impression is that, precisely because of the lack of regulation in many states, homeschooling has bimodal outcomes. Some children turn out better (read: those of wealthy, educated parents with extra time to spend on educating) while some children turn out much worse than even the worst public schools (read: kids of religious/political-indoctrination parents and/or ones of limited socioeconomic means/time). At minimum, it seems pretty reasonable to have homeschooled kids take the same milestone tests as public school kids, in order to objectively measure if their teachers are doing the job well. You know, considering (a) it's a decision children aren't empowered to make for themselves, (b) there are a lot of crazy-as-fuck parents out there, and (c) it's something that will define the rest of kids' lives. "Oops, my bad" in the event of poor outcomes won't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Ref to start: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsZP9o7SlI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsZP9o7SlI