“A parent’s right to choose”
Take a look at this story. It may or may not be familiar to you, but sadly, it is taking place for families in the Commonwealth every single day.
Dylan Owens-Wargo wasn’t enamored, to say the least, with his mom’s plans to send him to Fishburne Military School for eighth grade.
“I told her I was going to run away if she made me go to Fishburne,” said Owens-Wargo, whose mother, Heather Owens, for her part felt she had no choice but to pull Dylan out of the Waynesboro public-school system.
“He had just stopped caring. He either wasn’t doing his homework, or he wasn’t turning it in, trying to be cool like the other kids. I didn’t give him a choice. This was our only option,” said Owens, who was rolling the dice in more ways than one. Because Heather Owens isn’t the archetype for a private-school mom. She is in fact a single mother and small-business owner who takes on extra clients at her Natural Beauty Studios in Downtown Waynesboro to help pay the $15,000 annual expenses for tuition, books and uniforms for Dylan to be able to attend Fishburne.
“It’s really, really hard on me. I take clients sometimes 7 o’clock in the morning, sometimes 10 o’clock at night. Whatever it takes. There are days when I’m not sure how I’m going to accomplish it. But it falls into place,” Owens said.
The VEA- leading the fight against any efforts for to give parents educational choices- wants us to believe that more funding for the existing public school system would have helped Dylan (and all kids for that matter) in his public school. They maintain the position that success can be determined by the amount of taxayer funding spent in a status-quo public school system.
Instead of admitting that some students desperately need a different learning environment, they throw around accusations and make the same argument that the state needs to better fund public schools. (Of course they won’t tell you that because of mandated re-benchmarking every two years they will ALWAYS be able to say that schools aren’t fully funded, but that’s another story…)
How about we focus on simply funding education? Not limiting education simply to the same-old “public school” model. If our commitment to Virginia families is education, why should it matter what form that education takes? Why must it be a one-size-fits-all big-box model?
Chris Graham, Executive Editor of The New Dominion Magazine (and the Augusta Free Press), takes an in-depth look at the debate over school choice in Virginia in “A parent’s right to choose.“ Mr. Graham examines the many issues in the debate- and shares Dylan and his mother’s story about their choice.
He notes, in the comments section:
Honestly, if I had a child getting ready to go to school today, I would do everything I could to avoid the status-quo public-school system in favor of having them in an environment where actual learning was the emphasis.
With 25 percent of American schoolchildren not graduating from high school on time, I say it’s high time for us to try to do something to improve the quality of K-12 education – and now.
We agree. Virginia’s families deserve nothing less.
Monday School Choice Headlines
Last week it was DC parents… this week, another survey shows that Kentucky voters strongly support school choice.
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at Teachers Unions versus Students in:
And we have talked before about school choice being much broader than a debate of public versus private, but about creating a wide range of options that allow families to find educational options that will best meet their children’s unique learning needs. In Colorado, school choice legislation is allowing that.
“Choice in education is the key”
The Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) has this editorial from Florida up on their website today.
The editorial, “Choice in education is the key,” concludes:
Students perform best when they and their parents are able to select the schools they will attend. They may be traditional public schools for most, charter schools for some and private or homeschools for others.
The growth in the number of legitimate options in education is encouraging and should be promoted both locally and nationwide.
We agree, and hope that Virginia legislators will work to encourage more options in education for students here in the Commonwealth.
“Why we need choice”
For the first time, the issue of school choice is making its way into debates and headlines in a presidential campaign.
While Senator Obama has taken the side of the teachers unions with his opposition to choice, Senator McCain has embraced the issue of school choice, saying in one debate that ”we have to give the same choice,” to children that “Senator Obama and Mrs. Obama had and Cindy and I had.”
In the New York Times, Lance T. Izumi, a senior fellow in California studies and the senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, considers the positions of Senator McCain and Senator Obama in this article, “Why we need choice,” from October 22.
He writes:
So whose view is better public policy? Mr. Obama, the utilitarian, or Mr. McCain, the rights crusader? In Professor Viteritti’s opinion, “choice constitutes good public policy because it is fair, not because its effects are measurable by academicians who would not dream of sharing the decision about where to send their own children to school.” Indeed, parents who make the choice not to send their children to public schools do so for a wide variety of reasons not limited simply to concerns about academic performance and future job prospects.
This summer, I attended a large gathering of liberal/progressive home-schoolers. When I asked parents why they decided to home-school their children, I got many different answers. Some said that they were worried about the violence and bullying in their public schools. Others said that they disliked the standardization of many public schools and the testing and other curriculum requirements that they felt hindered their children’s learning. Unlike Mr. Obama’s narrow measure of choice, these people chose home-schooling for the equity reason that it was their right and it was in the best interests of their individual child.
Shouldn’t we put the power of education in the hands of families and not the government? You can read the rest of the article online here.
“Home” Schooling
Over at Bacon’s Rebellion, Jim Bacon writes about his weekend experience visiting the home school expo held in Richmond.
I left with the notion that home schooling is the future of education in Virginia. While public schools are hamstrung by bureaucracy, home schoolers are experimenting and innovating like mad. Home schoolers are devising new curricula and new pedagogies. They’re embracing new technologies. They’re developing new models for sharing knowledge. And they’re availing themselves of community resources rather than recreating everything from libraries to sports facilities. Home schoolers have no need to invest in bricks and mortar. The community is their classroom.
As we have noted before, home schooling is one choice that benefits many families in Virginia and across the country. And it is a trend that is growing.
We need to continue to encourage options for families, including home schooling, in order for parents and students to determine the educational environment that will best meet their own needs.
The Choice to Homeschool
Ellissa Tiller is the founder of HomeschoolRichmond.com, Richmond Area Homeschoolers, and Richmond Preschool Homeschoolers, and the author of the op-ed “Home Schooling’s Success Entices” in last week’s Richmond Times Dispatch.
She writes:
SO WHY DO people choose to home school in Virginia today? Some parents want to provide a structure for positive socialization. Others do so to teach their particular set of values or beliefs. Still others enjoy the flexibility that home schooling brings to family life. However, most simply want to ensure that their children receive a high-quality education — and in this regard, home schooling has shown its efficacy. On standardized tests, homeschoolers outperform their peers from both private and government schools at every grade level, regardless of the educational level attained by their parents.
Educational choices are a good thing. Every parent should be able to make those important choices when it comes to their own children- whether they choose to home school, or attend public, private, charter or parochial schools.
“Leaving the learning at home”
One of the most important things about school choice is that it allows families to select an educational environment where their children feel safe and are best able to learn. This is why there is no one-size-fits-all solution. More options create more opportunities for families to find what works best for their own children.
For many families, the best option for their kids is home schooling. It is a trend growing in popularity around the country, and of note, more African American families are choosing this option to educate their own kids.
The Houston Chronicle looks at this trend in “Leaving the learning at home.”
Hubert Rowry’s memories of his public school education still haunt him.
As a black student growing up in Beaumont and Austin, Rowry, now 33, says he often felt isolated and ignored in school. White teachers seemed to give white students more attention than to black students, and that affected his learning and self-esteem, said the Cypress resident.
“So many things happened to me in terms of racism from teachers, principals and other students,” Rowry said. “I decided I’m not going to subject my kids to that.”
His three children, ages 8, 6 and 3, have never been in a traditional classroom. He and his wife, Chelsea, home school them.
Once seen by many blacks as something only whites do, home schooling has steadily gained momentum in the black community in the past eight years and is expected to continue to grow, say home school experts.
You can also listen to this NPR program from “Mocha Moms” who discussed the issue of home schooling.
More on “Old School Alternative”
SWAC Girl- mother and home school educator to her two (now grown) children- also comments on the News Virginian’s article, “Old School Alternative.”
“Two children and 16 years later, I would not trade it. My kids are healthy, happy, productive, and have a work ethic instilled in them by their parents. One has graduated from college; the other is currently attending college.Home school families have a strong sense of community and form life-long bonds and friendships that continue even after students have graduated from lower education. That is true of my children who continue to stay in touch with their childhood home school friends even while making new friends at college and work, and with parents who remain friends beyond the home school years.
Back to school … sometimes it’s just “back to the dining room.” Whichever it is … it’s “back to education” and it all works.”
All about options
One common misconception when people mention “school choice” is that it means only public or private schools. As we have mentioned before, we believe in educational choices- providing families as many different affordable options as possible for educating their children.
One area in education that is growing here in Virginia- and nationally- is home schooling. The News Virginian looks at home schooling in their article, “Old School Alternative.”
“About 2 million students nationwide are homeschooled, according to the National Home Education Research Institute based in Salem, Ore.
More than 400 students in Waynesboro, Staunton and Augusta and Nelson counties and more than 20,000 statewide were homeschooled in 2006-07, the latest school year for which state statistics were available. Five years earlier, there were 338 area homeschoolers and 16,542 statewide.”
Delegate Saxman, Chairman of School Choice Virginia, was interviewed for the article:
“It’s not us versus them,” said Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton, a former schoolteacher and a staunch school choice advocate. “It’s simply what do you like best? Are you a Coke or Pepsi fan? Are you a Virginia Tech or U.Va. fan? Certain things click better with kids; some kids are better tuned to certain environments, some do better in a classroom and some do not. So we’re just trying to figure out as many options as possible so that families can find what works for them.”
More information on home schooling:
PERFORMANCE: Homeschool students score 15 to 30 percentile points higher than public school students on standardized tests.
MINORITIES: Homeschooling is growing in popularity among minorities, who make up about 15 percent of the roughly 2 million homeschool students nationwide.
SOURCE: NATIONAL HOME EDUCATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE
