4 Day School Week in Some Parts of the Country

[Aristotle]

Lokrian, I'm sick of listing, over and over, all the costs of public education that amount to BILLIONS of dollars.

If you are just going to ignore them over and over, there is nothing I can do about it. All I can do is file it away that you ignore all evidence and examples that are contrary to your argument.

1) The "lost wages" of the person who stays home is neithher relevant nor applicable. At least one parent should be home. That is the default condition. As already explained, for the majority of homeschooling families, no second income was given up in order to homeschool. The fact that you continue to insist this is a real cost of homeschooling demonstrates extreme ignorance on your part and a refusal to accept reality. I have no idea what has caused your conception of the American family to be so warped that you cannot comprehend the fact that one parent working and one parent at home is the ideal arrangement.

2) Even if you DID factor in the above, public education would still slaughter it in cost. The average per-pupil costs quoted already do not include the costs of buildings, land, and all the other stuff I have listed numerous times which add up to billions of dollars per state.

There is a certain level of stubbornness that is just completely intolerable. I'm not talking about disagreement, I'm talking about someone who tenaciously refuses to give up the ship even when its simultaneously on fire and sunk. Trying to have a discussion with such a person is just an unproductive waste of time.

[Lokrian]

Originally posted by Gadiantor
One person teaching 2.5 kids is WAY more efficient than one person teaching 25 when it comes to the amount of time that it takes to teach them. The fact that home school kids outperform public school kids despite spending less time in class and less time on homework proves that.

There are a lot of things to account for the increased performance including the fact that the kids obviously come from well educated families if their parents feel comfortable teaching. An accurate look at even that aspect would be hard to come by. These kids would probably be high performing if they went to public school as well. It's like skimming the cream and going, "look, more cream here than in the whole big barrel!"

Originally posted by Gadiantor
If you're looking for economic efficiency, it would be FAR more efficient to home school ALL children. Then no money would need to be spent on all the things we've mentioned that public schools require.

You guys could be right about this, but I am not seeing it. I think the public school infrastructure is something that simply has to be there to support the teaching staff. Besides that, there are too many people who flat could not teach their kids for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with money.

Originally posted by Gadiantor
You don't seem to understand why more people don't home school since this is the case. The answer is because public school is paid for by tax dollars. I'm already paying for my kids to go to public school through taxes, so I don't see $6,000 per kid coming out of my paycheck. If I home school the costs are coming out of my pocket. From an individual perspective home schooling is more expensive.

I actually addressed this before. If it were that much of a savings, since schools get their funding by attendance, your taxes would drop if more people home schooled.

Originally posted by Gadiantor
That being the case, whether to home school or not shouldn't be a financial decision. Money is a factor in everything, but after looking at the site you provided I'm convinced that any family could easily home school for less than $500 more a year than what they already spend on educational related family things. If $500 a year is stopping someone from home schooling they obviously aren't very passionate about it in the first place.

True on all counts I think, but here again we were talking about whether or not more money might be necessary for public schools, not what the motives are to home school. This is why this has been confusing to me. I have never argued against home schooling, I simply remain unconvinced it would save people money throughout society in the long run, even if it were at all feasible, which I don't think it is to begin with.

Originally posted by Gadiantor
You COULD come up with expenses to add to the list to get to $6,000, but it doesn't pass the common sense test. If you're going to factor in lost salary you also need to factor in the savings that come from having one parent at home full time. In some cases people are actually LOSING money by have both parents work because of what they pay in extra taxes, child care, dining out more often, extra travel costs, and future therapy for the kids because they were raised by other people (ok, that last one is speculation ).

If someone did that thorough of a study, I would be much more convinced that your estimations were true.

Originally posted by Gadiantor
A family is not a business. You can't apply the rules of the accounting world to a family decision to home school. The value of having your children get a superior education and to spend more time with them far exceeds any income from having both parents work.

When discussing efficiency and school reform, I think discussing the way you go about getting a statistic that has to do with money is really pretty important.

Don't wear yourself out arguing with me. I already seem to have worn Ari out. It seems we've all said all there is to say. All I am saying is I don't buy this statistic on its face. It's loaded. Obviously it hardly matters if I buy it if it is convincing to you or him.

My appologies to Ari again for the annoyance.

[Gadiantor]

Originally posted by Lokrian
There are a lot of things to account for the increased performance including the fact that the kids obviously come from well educated families if their parents feel comfortable teaching. An accurate look at even that aspect would be hard to come by. These kids would probably be high performing if they went to public school as well.

I'm sure they would do well in public school, but they'd be doing it by spending more time in class and doing more homework.

Originally posted by Lokrian
You guys could be right about this, but I am not seeing it. I think the public school infrastructure is something that simply has to be there to support the teaching staff. Besides that, there are too many people who flat could not teach their kids for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with money.

This is exactly why we will never see significant tax savings because of people home schooling. There will never be a large enough percentage of people home schooling to have a significant impact on public school attendance. Of course if public schools continue their downward spiral this could change, so I really shouldn't say never...

Originally posted by Lokrian
True on all counts I think, but here again we were talking about whether or not more money might be necessary for public schools, not what the motives are to home school. This is why this has been confusing to me. I have never argued against home schooling, I simply remain unconvinced it would save people money throughout society in the long run, even if it were at all feasible, which I don't think it is to begin with.

I don't know how you CAN'T see how much money society would save. It seems so obvious. Looking at the list of costs that you provided actually solidified that fact in my mind.

Originally posted by Lokrian
If someone did that thorough of a study, I would be much more convinced that your estimations were true.

It has been studied and books written on it. Read this. One of the main reasons families think they need two incomes is to live in better neighborhoods with better schools. If they home school the "better school" argument is gone, and they can live in a lower cost neighborhood. My personal experience is that there are good schools in lower middle class neighborhoods. Parents trying to send their kids to the "best" school is causing them to bite off more than they can chew. The author of the book sees the "trap" as the second income not providing enough money to make it worth it, but once the family moves into a neighborhood beyond their single income capability they can't afford to give up the second job. The answer seems simple to me...move to a neighborhood you can afford.

This page explains the same thing I've been trying to point out. A second income doesn't always mean more money. Add to this all the benefits of having one parent at home for the family that you can't put a dollar figure on and having a two-income family isn't an attractive option.

There have been people to look at this issue, but it gets sparse media attention because you're basically telling a majority of people that the hard work they are doing really isn't getting them as far ahead as they think.

Originally posted by Lokrian
When discussing efficiency and school reform, I think discussing the way you go about getting a statistic that has to do with money is really pretty important.

It is important, but the costs need to come from the methods that are used. Instead of trying to compare the costs of public school and home schooling the effort should be applying the successful techniques that home schools use to public schools.

The goal should be to use proven techniques to provide education, not number crunch possible costs of home schooling. Home schooling will always be cheaper, but that doesn't get rid of the need for public schools.

We will always need public schools because not everyone can home school. We need to provide a basic education for everyone so that fewer people become a drain on society because they are uneducated.

Education costs are out of control, and reform needs to come by examining where public dollars are going and cutting costs. Administration costs need to drop dramatically, and schools need to be held accountable for every dollar. If a school is spending more and doing less the administration needs to be held accountable. Schools that do more with less money need to be rewarded.

The public education systems need to be overhauled, and lessons can be learned from home schooling, but those lessons have nothing to do with potential lost income because one parent quits working so that they can home school.

[Aristotle]

Sad.

One-Fifth of High School Seniors Fail California Exit Exam

Nearly 100,000 California 12th graders — or about 20% of this year's senior class — have failed the state's graduation exam, potentially jeopardizing their chances of earning diplomas, according to the most definitive report on the mandatory test released today.

...

The exit exam, which has come under criticism by some educators, legislators and civil rights advocates, is geared to an 8th grade level in math and to ninth- and 10th grade levels in English.

[Lokrian]

Heya Gad.

I understand that from the standpoint of the kids time spent it is more efficient. I am talkng about the efficient use of adult time in teaching. One adult per 2.5 students or 1 adult per 25 or so... At the risk of being a little agist, who cares how efficiently the little rascals' time is being spent? :S They'll be back home drawing on the walls with crayon soon enough.

I see your point about the problem with trying to homeschool to cut taxes though.

I agree with everything in your entire post after the point at which you again try to imply homeschooling is cheaper, I can only say that I come to a similar conclusion at the end of your post from the back door.

There are lessons to be learned from homeschooling, but the lessons have nothing to do with the potential cost effectiveness of a parent quitting work to teach their own kids for free and eating the extra expense and lost income.

To be brutally honest, I have lost interest in the whole economic efficiency of home schooling aspect of this thread. I am looking for a stat that is more detailed than the one given and that makes at least a yeoman's attempt at accounting for the stay at home parent's time. If and when it comes along I will be convinced. If not, I will remain sceptical of it. Is it really that big of a deal?

Maybe now we can trundle off to something more interesting than my obsession with this one stat. At the beginning it was a throw away comment, and yet it seems to me to have dominated way more time and space than it was ever worth.

A big chunk of your post relates to the whole "white flight" concept, or at least it reminds me of it. If it's true, and it seems to me to be true, it's a sort of interesting karma. I enjoyed reading that portion of your post quite a lot.

It seems that it all boils down to focusing on increasing discipline and finding ways to put more teachers in the classroom per student. If this results in a net less money spent per child, hooray! If not, well, that's what needs to be done regardless, or else people just need to resign themselves to the fact that nothing is ever perfect. There is a lot being said in generalities about expenses that are out of control. I'd like to see specific examples of what is considered too much money for this or that, and ideas on how to reduce that specific cost, because if there is no way to reduce that cost, then vouchers and market pressures and all this become moot. If there's an aspect of this subject that I would happily admit absolute ignorance about, that would be it.

Thanks for the reply!

[Gadiantor]

Originally posted by Lokrian
I understand that from the standpoint of the kids time spent it is more efficient. I am talkng about the efficient use of adult time in teaching. One adult per 2.5 students or 1 adult per 25 or so... At the risk of being a little agist, who cares how efficiently the little rascals' time is being spent? :S They'll be back home drawing on the walls with crayon soon enough.

I like where the rest of the discussion was left, but I have to respond to this.

You are implying that adults have better things to do with their time than to spend it with children. Obviously not everyone can be a teacher, or the other roles in society wouldn't get done. There is definitely a balance to be found, but I can tell you I'd gladly give up my military career (which has been very successful so far) to spend all of my time with my children. My wife is the lucky one who gets to do that, though there are days when she'd trade with me . Being a parent IS being a teacher (and a nurse, and a psychologist, and a cook, and a dozen other things). If there are two parents in the family and one is able to devote all of their time to the kids they are lucky (as my family is). I feel bad for families who aren't able to be in that situation, and I am dumbfounded by those who choose not to be.

BL: There is no more noble pursuit than teaching children. We should all treasure any opportunity we have to devote our time to teaching/raising children.

[Lokrian]

I didn't mean to imply any such thing. I'd take offense except the rest of your post was so sentimental I don't have the heart.

I was just making a lame joke, Gad.

[Marah]

Originally posted by Lokrian
To be brutally honest, I have lost interest in the whole economic efficiency of home schooling aspect of this thread. I am looking for a stat that is more detailed than the one given and that makes at least a yeoman's attempt at accounting for the stay at home parent's time. If and when it comes along I will be convinced. If not, I will remain sceptical of it. Is it really that big of a deal?

*sigh* Out of lurkdom I come to answer this since I can give you personal experience.

If you want to give me a salary and figure out how much it would cost me to homeschool my kids, we'll go with it. I have four children and spend about 3 hours each day in hands-on teaching them. That's not the sum-total of their education as they also attend various homeschool classes and field trips weekly but that's the average amount of time -I- spend physically going over material and getting it into their noggins.

If I teach 3 hours a day, five days a week, I teach 15 hours per week. I'm required to teach 180 days/36 weeks, so that's 540 hours per year. At a very nice and fictitious hourly wage of $20 (nearly twice as much as I was making as a typist but entirely appropriate since I'm working 1/2 the time), that's $10,800 annually for 540 hours of work. Add in the $200 I spent on curriculum and supplies for my four kids this year and you're up to an even $11,000 for costs. Now divide that by four to get the cost per child and you get $2,750 per child annually.

Does that help, Lokrian? Of course it's entirely hypothetical since I was already a stay-at-home parent before bringing my kids home from school. I didn't lose a salary.

[Lokrian]

Originally posted by Marah
*sigh* Out of lurkdom I come to answer this since I can give you personal experience.

If you have the patience to prattle with me, feel free. I was mostly just not wanting to hash over the same points we had all gone through already.

It's a good start. I would want to know how this whole sharing of the load seems to work. You say they go on field trips and to home school classes? Also, don't you do prep work for them, or was that included in the "hands on" estimate you gave? I know all the teachers in my family grade at home and do their lesson plans and whatnot. I don't think any of them have a clue what their per hour pay would be! heh...

It seems to me folks can spend as much or as little as they like on home schooling. When I talk about what I would really want, it would be something I imagine that would have to be done professionally. something that splits things into the income levels of the households and which ones did and did not quit a job to do it. I think even with home schooling there are admin costs born by the state to insure the kids are getting a proper education.

How far into the educational process do you plan taking them? High school, or are you already there? This is more or less just nosiness on my part by the way... A lot of the time I am pretty pointless... Er, I don't have a point that is.

It's just a sort of aside comment, but you must be doing something right because one of the articles I've read recently seemed to suggest that few people care to stick with home schooling past 3 children. I have no idea where that stat comes from either! The fact you are pulling it off with 4 puts you well ahead of the efficiency curve I think.