Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by eherot 3133 days ago
"Communities with a large number of parents who feel that education is their responsibility tend to still do a good job of educating their kids in their public schools. "

Arguably, many of these parents educate their kids completely independent of the public schools they send their kids to five days a week, and the school's job is just to provide that all-important piece of paper at the end.
1 comments
markshead 3133 days ago
That is possible, but in smaller communities where everyone knows each other, I see teachers and parents working together to help their kids succeed. I don't want to discount the value of a good teacher, but I think it is very unfair measure someone's teaching ability based on their ability to overcome poor parenting.

As far as the important piece of paper, I think that is something of a myth as far as college admissions go. I've heard a lot of parents say that they need their kids to graduate from a public school so they can go to college.

All the college admission requirements I've seen are the same for public school graduates and kids who graduated from a non-accredited program. It mostly comes down to your ACT and SAT score.

link
analog31 3133 days ago
At least in my locale, the necessity of a high school diploma has been easily overcome. Colleges know how to deal with this. I know at least a couple of families that have home-schooled their kids. One of those kids is now on a full ride scholarship at the state university, studying biochemistry.
link
watwut 3133 days ago
Colleges are also full of students from public schools. America has plenty of good public schools (but also bad ones). America tend to be country of large differences and it shows in school results too.

Homeschooling parents love to use worst poorest least performing public school as a norm and best performing home schooled students as a norm.

link
analog31 3133 days ago
Definitely true. And I have to disclose that my familiarity with homeschool kids is biased: They are all drawn from a particular demographic (educated parents) and from a particular activity (classical music), because my kids happen to participate in that activity as well.
link