Care to comment on this HS bashing thread?

[mzteris]

6. There are a lot of "poor people"

who homeschool. They make it work.

Remember, you're not restricted to learning between the hours of 8 and 3. Some have school at night! Some tag team because the parents work separate shifts. Or grandma helps out watching the kids while mom works and oversees that the work assigned is completed. Or not. Hs'ing takes many many forms. And it's done by all types of people from all walks of life. I'm here to tell you that there was only two "very well off people" in our entire hs group. The rest of us were middle or lower middle class for the most part, with a couple of barely scraping by.

It's a misconception that hs'ing is only for the well off.

Charter schools - in their original intent - are marvelous things. The for-profit - which were in the minority - is killing the charter movement in the long run. It comes down to state and local law and who decides who gets to found a charter and the rules under which it operates. If the state is lax, then the program is going to be detrimental.

My younger son attended two marvelous - independent, locally founded, and run charter programs. That's the way they were intended. Small, local, experimental - or doing things the public schools were not capable of, or inclined, to do.

No doubt it's turned into "big business" for some - which is a damn shame. Because a good charter, run well, can positively impact not only the kids who attend, but the entire community. For example, the 2nd school my son attended was (also) a Spanish immersion program because the Public schools didn't think it was a "good idea". Four years after it's inception - and waiting lists a mile long - and a demand by the citizens for more, they instituted Spanish immersion programs in every district in the city, and started developing middle school programs (which my son now attends. Though quite frankly, I wish they had extended the charter to upper grades and he could have stayed there because the Charter did a superior job of teaching than what the Public school has designed. )