Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Curriculum Corruption--UPDATE

Homeschooling is sounding better and better. Who knew there was such a thing as multicultural math?

UPDATE: The Anchoress has a great wrap-up post, and says this about homeschooling:

Dept of I Would Seriously Consider This: if my kids were still school age, because it seems more seriously scholastic, oddly enough. I wouldn’t suggest doing away with public schools because - believe it or not - not all parents may be depended upon to see to their kids edumacation, but the indoctrination techniques of some teachers and dubious field trips might definitely sway me toward home schooling.
She links to this fantastic article about homeschooling. It has great stats on homeschooled kids and is worth reading from beginning to end.
This increased growth, interestingly enough, has not come at the expense of student performance -- quite the opposite. Comparisons in achievement tests of homeschooled students to national averages for all students show that homeschooled children are well above the national average in every subject and at every grade level in the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and in Tests of Achievement and Proficiency. Anecdotal evidence (in addition to that reported above) provides further support. In the 2002 National Geographic Bee, four of the 10 finalists were homeschooled, including the winner. In the 2003 National Spelling Bee, homeschooled children took two of the top seven spots. Remember, only 3 percent of America's schoolchildren are homeschooled.
I think I've made my decision.

3 comments:

David Foster said...

See also our discussion of science teaching at ChicagoBoyz.

Anonymous said...

Melissa, please, please check out The Anchoress's last post. I am still sitting here cying. Truly inspirational. Amazing! Beautiful!

Anonymous said...

There's a Raza Boy charter school here in the Los Angeles barrio that teaches math in Mesoamerican base-20 system, uncontaminated by Gringo Colonialism.

I always wonder if they'll eventually start cutting out hearts to Huitzlipochtli and Tezcatlipoca's Flowery Way on top of their multiculturally-justified pyramid next to the ballcourt?

(Well, one of the big-name Raza Boy activists out here IS actually named Smoking-Mirror-Spotty-Cat, i.e. "Tezcatlipoca Ocelotl".)