BevK November 26th, 2007
School choice takes its toll on a small school system in Montana. Well, at least this article makes it seem like homeschooling is part of the reason for declining enrollment in the Big Sandy school system.
The article ends with this:
This spring, just 21 seniors will graduate. In another three years, that number is expected to shrink to eight.
Optimism swells as class sizes begin to grow, starting with second grade. As she finishes her school lunch, Heppner watches the kindergarten class of 18 march outside for recess.
“When you watch the kindergartners file out of the cafeteria, that’s huge,” she said. “There goes our future.”
The article is full of the problems that declining enrollment has brought. Because they are a public school, they are required to offer students certain classes. Sometimes that means a teacher teaching one student. Remember that this is Montana, so the population isn’t huge to begin with.
This is really a lament for the passing of traditions. There are solutions to the problem, but none of them include maintaining the traditional structure. I think we’ll see more of this happening especially in sparsely populated areas.
Read more…
BevK August 30th, 2007
Paul T. Mero has a valid point to make about why education vouchers for everyone is the only fair way to provide for education without giving preferential treatment to some.
My neighbor hates school vouchers because he does not believe that taxpayers should subsidize families choosing to send their children to private schools. He often says, “Utah families already have school choice. They can send their kids to public, private, or homeschools. Why should I pay for the personal choices of families to send their children to private schools?”
To which I respond that my wife and I pay large amounts of state income taxes each year to subsidize the education of neighbor children even though we homeschool our own.
“Yes, but that’s your choice,” he replies. Well, no, that’s not my choice alone. By law my taxes go to support public education, not homeschools. When you think about it, neighbor, my wife and I are actually the better education citizens–we don’t burden taxpayers with our children’s education, and we willingly pay for the public education of children in other families.
“Fine. But I don’t think that we should subsidize private school education,” he retorts. But it’s OK to subsidize public school education? “That’s different!” How? “We have an obligation to give every child a good education. And, besides, paying for public education is not a subsidy.”
That is what homeschoolers and private schoolers do. They pay for their own children’s education and pay for their neighbors children to go to public school. Vouchers would be in a set amount. So, even if a parent chose a $20,000 a year school to send his children to, that school wouldn’t be get $20,000 in a voucher. The parent would have to supplement the voucher amount.
I don’t see the problem in that.
BevK April 2nd, 2007
Unschooling or free schooling or democratic schooling. Read the article down to what the students have to say, which is where it gets interesting.
The music room sits empty on a recent gray morning at Clearwater School in Bothell. Four girls play cards in the “play” room nearby, and a half-dozen teenagers hang out in the “quiet” room across the way.
The crowd is in the computer room, where 20 students — about a third of this small, private school — are engrossed in strategy and shoot-’em-up video games.
That makes some of their parents uncomfortable, but it shows Clearwater is serious about giving students freedom to choose how to spend their time.
Just as children learn to talk without formal instruction, Clearwater students learn to read and write and solve math problems the same way. There are no tests at Clearwater. No assignments. No classes unless students organize them.
