Originally posted by Lokrian
Because it makes the statistic more or less useless. The supposed cost of home schooling is $500 roughly, when what really has been sacrificed is substantially more than that. There's no useful information in the comparison if they are taking the cost of paying teachers into the school acount but simply assuming the home school parent's labor is worthless.
I disagree with this completely. It does not make the statistic useless in any way. There is no way to compare what you might have with what you've decided to do, and again, you would have to assume that all families are two income families. Statistic are compiled by what is true for a family not by guessing and assuming. The fact that you want to throw it out based on something so nebulous makes me suspicious of your whole argument. It is not assumed that it is worthless becuase the figures for homeschool children are LOWER than the figures for a non-home schooled child. That argues strongly in the favor of the parent who decided to home school.

Originally posted by Lokrian

Put another way, you can well imagine what the cost per child would be in public education if the teacher/student ration were increased to 1/5, or 1/3, or even 1/1 for those families who only have one child at home being home schooled.
Rather, you just make an argument on why the home schooled children might be way better off. How do you compare 1/30 with 1/1 or even 1/5?


Originally posted by Lokrian

It's one thing to stress parental responsibility. It's another to blame parents in general without accurate understanding of which parents are guilty of what, when where how and why. A lot of people curse statistics just in general. I think they are invaluable, but you have to know how to use them. The statistic I am talking about there, as I said, appears entirely opaque to me. It has no real, discernible meaning whatsoever. It simply fails to give enough useful information.
It seems to me that you conviniently turn to statistics when they support your argument, and you're just as quick to throw out statistics for whatever reason you can dream up when it doesn't support your argument. That, to me, makes statistics completely useless in discussing anything with you. When you say "You have to know how to use them.", what you're really saying is "Use them the way I deem you should use them."

When you get to be a parent and do in-depth research because your child is directly affected by these statistics and the problems in the school system, then you can help determine what the problem is. When you've seem the time taken away from your child by a teacher because another parent doesn't believe their child should be disciplined by the teacher, then you can tell me how I may or may not point out that parental responsibility is a HUGE problem. You speak as if you're the only one who knows anything about this issue, and another person's evaluation is useless. That makes for extremely poor conversation. Unless you can prove to me that my assessments about parental involvement are wrong, don't post that it is inaccurate or that I have no knowledge of what the parental problems are. There are plenty of studies and plenty of stories that indicate that they are not inaccurate at all. Ask a teacher how many times they've discussed a problem with a parent and the parent completely denies that his/her child has done any wrong. Then you may have some clue why parental uninvolvement is a HUGE issue, not only for parents who are involved but also for the teachers who suffer the consequences and take the blame.

There are plenty of single moms working and going to school who are more interested in what their children are doing and plenty of two parent families who don't know what the hell is going on with their child. It's not even a matter of staying at home with a child. It's a matter of disciplining your child and knowing what's going on.