There are a couple of people I know at work, different in philosophies, politics, religious outlooks. They each home-school their children. As different as those two people are, if their children were in the same classroom, they'd have different reasons for questioning the curriculum and how it would affect their children. As it is, they each know exactly what's important to teach their children, so it's easy for them to set a course of study and measure whether goals are being met.
Put that together with the stories this week about the state's assessment of school systems, and the outcome for Allen County:
A report the Indiana State Board of Education released today puts schools and districts in one of five categories, from best to worst: “exemplary,” “commendable,” “academic progress,” “academic watch” and “academic probation.”
East Allen County Schools and Fort Wayne Community Schools, the county's two largest districts, were placed on academic watch. Northwest Allen County Schools and Southwest Allen County Schools, the two smallest, received exemplary status.
A home-schooling unit is the least diverse educational environment you can imagine: one set of parents who are in agreement over what they want their children to have in order to cope with the world as they see it. Move up a couple of notches, and the main value of a small private school becomes apparent. The school has an explicit agenda and attracts parents who subscribe to it, and outside forces are not a factor.
So it should be no great shock that the county's two biggest school systems did the worst on statewide assessments and the two smallest did the best. The bigger a school system, the more diverse it is and the more constituencies to answer to: taxpayers and citizens and competing parent groups and teachers and administrators and minority interest groups, all before it even begins to juggle state and federal demands. The smaller school district has a much better handle on what it wants to do for its more homogeneous student body and thus is better able to handle outside influences.
The home-schoolers know, above all other educators, what they want to teach and why they want to teach it. There used to be a consensus on what public education was supposed to teach and why. But are we even having that conversation these days? Is the purpose of public schooling to teach basic skills? To enable students to think clearly? To inculcate them in the culture they are a part of? To make them become efficient economic units who can compete in a world economy? To understand their parents' histories or to overcome their parents' prejudices?
Convince me that the state and federal governments have even asked those questions, and I'll take their efforts to monitor students' "progress" more seriously. Progress toward what, exactly?
