[ranbato]

Didn't homeschool here but started a charter school instead. Some of our neighbors did homeschool and I have mixed feelings about it. Some did very well, some not so well; but of course the same can be said of all of the kids in the area no matter which way they went.

A few things I'll note:

  - educational spending has almost zero correlation with outcomes
  - the number one indicator of educational success is parental involvement
  - homeschooling and charter schools tend to attract the outliers from both ends.  The smart who are underserved where they are and the kids with problems whose parents are involved enough to search for solutions.
  - the real losers are those whose parents can't or won't get involved and who aren't succeeding on their own

In the current educational environment, teachers are often viewed as babysitters whose job is to educate children "correctly" and parents are only there to ensure that "correctly" matches their expectations. In the "good old days" when parents and teachers beat children regularly, at least they were unified in their expectations that children would listen to and obey teachers and not disrupt class. Now it is more common to see underpaid teachers without any support confronted by angry parents when their children misbehave and fail to actually learn.

[porridgeraisin]

> parental involvement

This is the _most_ important thing. Parents keeping a laser eye on their kids' performance in school, and having their own standards that the school must live up to, regardless of what commitees and boards and suits and academics and "experts" say. Even if it's just a standard for math competence. If the school isn't up to the mark, either pull up the school for it, or switch schools, or after school classes if it's an isolated problem. Many would be surprised at how many parents either can't(common in first generation educated) or won't do this.

> Spending has no correlation with success

In a setting where more spending is for more labour (when the labour is not done by parents/family) this is not true. Primary schools giving individual attention to students for example will do better than those with 100 students a class. But in most cases, more spending leads to more unnecessary flashy stuff. So in the real world, what you are saying is true.

Charter schools like yours are also sorely needed in america where math standards are absolutely woeful compared to RoW.

[oceansky]

I am really really skeptical of the first bullet point.

[el_benhameen]

Yeah I think the context matters a lot there. I’m assuming it means “on a state by state basis”, which is true. But within my state, at least, family income, outside spending, and property tax revenues correlate very strongly with outcomes.

[rootusrootus]

I've seen that too, but to my understanding it is less about the money and more about the parent participation. Wealthy school districts don't have any problem with finding volunteers for all sorts of activities, because one of the parents is frequently a stay-at-home parent.

[el_benhameen]

This is true, but it’s also true that the money buys all of those extra activities and services. At my kids’ school, the garden program, music program, arts program, and teachers aides are all funded by the PTA. The field trips are funded by the students families so must be calibrated to their budgets. There are also volunteers associated with all of those programs, but they wouldn’t exist without the money.

A few (much wealthier) towns over, the district wide PTA raises millions of dollars yearly to support additional programs and facilities, and the district can offer higher salaries because of the larger tax base. Again, lots of parent involvement, but there’s also more to be involved in.

[arjie]

Do you have a blog or any work where you talk about what you did to start a charter school?