By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
It remains a question if home-schooling will ever reach proportions that pose a serious challenge to the public school system in the United States. There is no doubt that dissatisfaction with the public schools continues to grow. In some cases it is the left-wing bias of the curriculum that parents object to, in others the ineffectiveness of the public schools and the unsafe atmosphere.
But many parents are unsure of whether they can do the job of educating their children at home, especially at the middle school and high school level, when parents begin to doubt their ability to handle certain more challenging subject matter. There is also the question of finding a way to provide their children access to the sports and extracurricular activities that are an important part of the high school experience.
None of those challenges have gone away. Yet recent reports indicate that more and more parents are finding a way to make home-schooling work for them.
Julia Lawrence reports in the June 21 edition of the website Education News (educationnews.org) that the number of children being home-schooled in the United States has increased “by 75 percent since 1999” and that even though “currently the percentage of home-schooled children is only 4 percent of all schoolchildren nationwide, the number of primary school kids whose parents choose to forgo traditional education is growing seven times faster than the number of kids enrolling in K-12 every year.”
These are not numbers that can be easily dismissed.
What about the concerns over the quality of the education home-schoolers provide their children? Lawrence informs us that we can “put those fears to rest”; that there is now a solid record of “consistently high placement of home-schooled kids on standardized assessment exams.”
Lawrence offers specifics: “Home-schooling statistics show that those who are independently educated typically score between the 65th and 89th percentile on such exams, while those attending traditional schools average on the 50th percentile. Furthermore, the achievement gaps, long plaguing school systems around the country, aren’t present in the home-schooling environment. There’s no difference in achievement between sexes, income levels, or race/ethnicity.”
There’s more. Writes Lawrence, “Recent studies laud home-schoolers’ academic success, noting their significantly higher ACT-Composite scores as high schoolers and higher grade point averages as college students. Yet surprisingly, the average expenditure for the education of a home-schooled child per year is $500 to $600, compared to an average expenditure of $10,000 per child, per year, for public school students.”
The colleges are noticing these results: According to Lawrence, “College recruiters from the best schools in the United States aren’t slow to recognize home-schoolers’ achievements. Those from non-traditional education environments matriculate in colleges and attain a four-year degree at much higher rates than their counterparts from public and even private schools. Home-schoolers are actively recruited by schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University, and Duke.”
What of the concern over the “socialization” of home-schoolers? It turns out to be unwarranted. Lawrence cites a study by the National Home Education Research Institute, which discovered that home-schooled kids tend to be more socially engaged than their peers and to demonstrate “healthy social, psychological, and emotional development, and success into adulthood.”
An article in the New York Post on July 28 is likely to lead some parents who have not considered home-schooling before now, to reconsider. Post reporter Susan Edelman informs us of widespread changing of scores on Regents examinations (statewide end-of-year tests in New York state) by teachers for the purpose of enhancing the success rates of the students at their schools. It is a practice called “scrubbing.” Edelman reports that “the failing scores of five students who took the Regents exam in January at Automotive High School were switched to passing scores of 65 or higher on their transcripts, the city Department of Education has confirmed.”
Edelman offers several other examples of scrubbing this past semester in New York City.
The plot thickens. According to Edelman, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is not alarmed by the practice. De Blasio has given $31 million to certain New York City schools with poor graduation rates in an attempt to improve their performance. De Blasio has labeled these schools “Renewal” schools. He has promised $163 million more next school year. Automotive High School is one of these “Renewal” schools. The implication of Edelman’s story is that de Blasio was willing to look the other way on the “scrubbing” at Automotive in order to enhance the image of his educational project.
The administrator behind the scrubbing at Automotive was Principal Caterina Lafergola, whom, writes Edelman, “de Blasio kept in place despite years of failing to revive Automotive HS.” A junior at Automotive who received a grade of 64 on her Biology Regents exam told Edelman that he spoke to a guidance counselor and Principal Lafergola, asking if there was a way “I could get that one point” needed to pass the exam. He told Edelman that “all he had to do was sign his name on a list of about 20 classmates, most with scores of 64 and some with 63.” His score was raised to 72. “They found the points,” he said.
It may surprise you to hear that not every parent is pleased with the re-scoring of their children’s grades. “It’s not beneficial for him,” said one mother. “It’s going to hurt him in the long run.” She said her son “spent most of the school year at a suspension site,” after he was removed from Automotive “for fighting and accidentally jabbing a teacher who was trying to break it up with a pencil.”
Is there another side to this question of “scrubbing” of exams? It is easy to be suspicious of any program that is initiated by de Blasio. He is as committed a secular leftist as any politician on the stage these days. But without actually seeing the tests that were re-scored it is difficult to charge anyone with dishonesty. Anyone who has spent any time teaching knows that it is not always true that the “tough” grader is a fair grader. Sometimes the tough grader can be an unfair grader, applying standards that are different from every other teacher on the staff.
That does not make the demanding grader wrong; not necessarily. He may be a lone proponent of high standards among a collection of faculty members willing to settle for mediocrity. It could be. But it also could be that he is an eccentric with an axe to grind, looking to make a point and unfairly damaging his students’ records in the process.
The bottom line: Parents need to get the facts on their side before lodging a complaint and a request for a re-scoring of their children’s test scores. But “getting the facts on their side” means just that. It does not mean acquiescing if they feel their children’s examinations have been scored unfairly. Such things happen, even if you are suspicious of what happened with Bill de Blasio’s “Renewal” schools.
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
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