Want Another Parent to Homeschool Your Child? Welcome to Georgia’s Homeschool Schools
By Naomi Nix
Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, told The 74 that Georgia has too little regulation of homeschooling to ensure a positive academic experience for every child.
“There should be some sort of accountability to make sure these kids are making progress,” she said.
But Freitag has seen definite benefits for her son.
“If you are in a classroom with 20 kids, there is an assignment and that’s what the assignment is,” she told The 74. “With Mrs. Stilman, she can tailor that assignment to really let him fly with his strengths.”
A popular choice, for many reasons
These days, a much more diverse set of families is choosing to homeschool, and for many different reasons — failure of a child to thrive in a traditional classroom setting, dissatisfaction with the Common Core State Standards, a desire to flee the violence and underperformance of neighborhood schools.
“The rate of growth has been pretty phenomenal,” said Robert Kunzman, an education professor at Indiana University and managing director of the International Center for Home Education Research. “One of the generally accepted notions is that the movement has been broadening and diversifying in a general way, whereas, probably 15 years ago, conservative Christian homeschoolers were clearly the largest subgroup. And that may still be the case. I think there are a lot of different kinds of folks with different reasons [who are] homeschooling now.”
Five states — New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts — are classified as high-regulation states because they have additional requirements, such as a formal instruction plan including a syllabus and textbooks, home visits from certified teachers, curriculum approval by public school administrators, or state monitoring for academic progress.
In Georgia, parents have to notify the state of their intent to provide their child with a “basic education” that includes math, English language arts, science, social studies, and reading, and make sure their child is taught for 180 days for at least 4½ hours a day. Parents, or the tutors they hire, need only a GED to homeschool.
Parents must also have their child assessed using a national test of their choosing every three years and write an annual progress report for each subject area, and they must retain those results and reports. But they don’t have to submit any documentation to their local school district or the state beyond an annual declaration of intent to homeschool.
(The 74: How Do You Monitor Homeschooling Parents? Welcome to the Wild West of Education Regulation)
“I think parents can be generally trusted,” said Daniel Beasley, a staff attorney for the association. “We think parents should be given broad freedom to tailor an education approach that meets the educational needs of each child.”
Different definitions of ‘school’
Toco Hills founder Stilman would agree. She started homeschooling more than 15 years ago, after her son came home from his private school with poor grades and complaints that he wasn’t happy in class. After sitting in on one of his classes and not liking what she saw, she dropped out of law school and began teaching him herself.
Later, she spent several years training in the Montessori method of teaching, which favors letting students discover concepts through experimentation over direct instruction, and turned her training and experience into a full-fledged business.
Most weeks, about four children come to her home at various times for one-on-one teaching, which might include a chemistry experiment in her makeshift home lab, private reading time, or an art project on the American presidents. Stilman opposes the Common Core and encourages kids to research and develop their own independent learning habits.
Most of the time, she said, the families she works with choose another option once their child reaches high school, and those students often go on to college.
“Any child I tutor, they are completely prepared,” said Stilman.
While Stilman’s operation works very much like a tutoring service, Tammy Bester’s is more like a school.
Bester, a certified teacher herself, began homeschooling her daughter after health complications caused the girl to suffer academically in second grade. Bester then founded Canton Homeschool Resources in Canton, Ga., to offer her daughter and other children in kindergarten through 12th grade a Christian and secular education in a small setting.
Most of Bester’s 100 students take classes — all taught by certified teachers — two or three days a week and complete assignments at home during the rest of the week. The school administers the required exams and sends report cards home to parents.
Class sizes are kept between about 8 and 15 students. Most of the elementary grades are taught separately, but students in different grades may take electives together.
Bester and her teachers design the curriculum year to year, based on the needs of their student body. They often draw from popular Christian-based educational materials published by A Beka and BJU Press, as well as secular sources. Though the school is Christian, teachers stay away from controversial topics such as evolution and instead direct students to seek counsel from their parents, according to Bester.
After having to repeat the second grade, Bester’s daughter is now in eighth grade and surpassing grade level at Canton Homeschool Resources, Bester said.
“Every kid has different needs,” she said. “It’s just [about] finding what works best for each child individually.”
Originally published at www.the74million.org.
