Tag: Homeschool

Commentary: The Hidden Benefits of Homeschool

Michigan Star Staff

These days, it’s almost common knowledge that homeschooled students have a better academic education, do better in college and careers, and are regarded as “smarter” than students from public schools. Homeschooling families typically gravitate toward this educational lifestyle to avoid the public school environment, to prioritize their faith and family values, to adjust to a more flexible and forgiving lifestyle, and to offer their children a better childhood than that found in public schools. Yes to all! These are wonderful reasons to choose homeschooling and should be widely shared and celebrated.

When my parents chose to homeschool me and my siblings, though, they had no idea how deep the effects would be. Academics is only one aspect of homeschooling. The family-centric, homeschool lifestyle offered us benefits that continue to shape my adult life and the life of my own family. Everyone should know the often completely hidden perks that homeschooling provides children long after they finish their high school coursework.

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Commentary: The Inspiring Front Lines of the Modern Homeschool Revolution

Michigan Star Staff
Home School Family

When she was a young girl, Sandra Day O’Connor began her education at home. Her early years of schooling on an Arizona ranch were sitting at the kitchen table with her mother, learning to read, and taking long nature walks.

I read this, and this scene of serenity, this future Supreme Court Justice, beginning her education at home, formed an image in my mind of what might be possible.

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Commentary: Eight Resources to Get People Started in Homeschool

Michigan Star Staff
Homeschool

If you’re feeling unqualified to homeschool, you’re not alone. The question of what and how to teach stressed me out early on in my homeschooling journey.

I found that having a good curriculum did a great deal to reduce my fears of not being qualified to teach. I wanted to strike a balance between bookwork, memorization, and fun interactive activities. I wanted to make sure to impart to my kids the basic body of knowledge necessary for a good education, yet I didn’t want to burn them out with endless worksheets.

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Commentary: Dual Enrollment Is a Homeschool Resource

Michigan Star Staff
Mom and daughter learning

This year marks the completion of high school for two of my children. Navigating the high school years has been both exciting and challenging. By the time our children had reached high school age, two things were apparent. First, homeschooling had allowed my kids to find and pursue their special interests—ones that had future career potential.

Second, while mastery of most subjects had been relatively easy, math and science were a bit more difficult. Despite overall higher testing outcomes within the homeschool community, there is a documented math gap for many homeschoolers. In other words, most homeschoolers score slightly lower than their non-homeschooled peers in math and science. (This is understandable, of course: I don’t know many mothers qualified to teach high-level math or science, and most of us don’t want our kitchens being turned into chemistry labs.)

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Commentary: Compulsory Schooling Laws Have Got to Go

Michigan Star Staff

When Massachusetts passed the nation’s first compulsory school attendance law in 1852, parents were mandated to send their children to school under a legal threat of force. Today, that threat remains stronger than ever.

Prior to that law, and those that followed in all other US states over the subsequent decades, cities and towns were compelled to provide schooling for those who wanted it, but parents were under no obligation to use those schools. Many didn’t, choosing instead to send their children to private schools, church or charity schools, “dame schools” in their neighbor’s kitchen, apprenticeships for older children and teens, or to homeschool.

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Commentary: Homesteading in Modern Day America

Admin

Six years ago my husband and I moved our family of 10 to a five-acre hobby farm and a new lifestyle. Prior to this, we’d been living in an 1,100-square-foot brick home built in the 1940s near the boundary of St. Louis. I loved that house. It had a breakfast nook and an enclosed sunporch we referred to as the “Three Season Room.” When we bought it, I was five months pregnant with our first child. Over the next 11 years, we had a total of eight children­—four of them in that very home as I was attended by a midwife. By the time our youngest kids, a set of identical twins, were born, it was clear we could no longer live in that house. We’d outgrown it.

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Commentary: The Other Back to School Story

RealClearWire

Back to school stories this year will focus, naturally, on the Covid-19 pandemic’s toll on students and families and on remedying these difficulties.

But another story is being shortchanged: it’s about how parents sought new options for their children like homeschooling, small learning pods, and micro-schools, with civic entrepreneurs and their partners creating new organizations or expanding existing ones to meet this demand.

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Reps Tom Emmer and Tim Walberg Secure Survivors Benefits for Homeschoolers After Social Security Originally Denied Them Because of Their School Choice

Corinne Murdock

Congressman Tom Emmer (R-MN-06), alongside Congressman Tim Walberg (R-MI-07), secured survivors benefits for homeschooled children. Prior to this, Minnesota and Michigan blocked homeschoolers over 17 and 18 respectively from attaining benefits.
According to the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), both states were cutting off Social Security Administration (SSA) survivors benefits to homeschoolers due to “lack of proof” of their status as full-time students. In both states’ eyes, the students didn’t meet state compulsory education laws. 

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Commentary: Enemies of Homeschooling Are Scared – and They Should Be

Michigan Star Staff

Nearly every family with kids has gotten a taste of homeschooling over the past two months. In an attempt to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, at least 124,000 schools have closed for over 55 million children in the U.S. At the same time, opponents of homeschooling launched several unfounded attacks on the practice. For example, The Washington Post ran an opinion piece claiming “homeschooling during the coronavirus will set back a generation of children,” and a Salon article said that “homeschooling as a result of the pandemic will likely worsen education for students and pose serious problems to the economy and nation’s social well-being.”

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Commentary: We Are All Homeschoolers Now

Michigan Star Staff

What does education look like in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic?

At the K-12 level, you’ve got problems. At the collegiate level, you’ve got existential problems.

School is out for the year in most locales. More innovative districts are retooling like crazy and trying to do online classes. Parents are looking for cheap or free resources to do the job and keep their kids occupied during our enforced isolation.

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Commentary: Coronavirus May Lead to ‘Mass Homeschooling’

Michigan Star Staff

As fears of coronavirus mount around the globe, cities and countries are taking action to prevent the new respiratory virus strain from spreading. While the virus has not yet hit hard in the United States, government officials and health agencies have enacted response plans, corporations are halting travel abroad, and education leaders are grappling with what a widespread domestic outbreak of the virus could mean for schoolchildren.

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