Letter to California Supreme Court
March 25, 2008
 
Your Honors,
 
I am writing because I have become aware of some very disturbing news regarding Home Schooling coming from the California Court of Appeals.  We lived in California with our children for about 2 ½ years.  With the exception of one very poor teacher, we had a very good experience with the elementary school system there.  But the middle and high school in our San Francisco suburb was a very different story.  There were regular stabbings there and gangs ruled much of what went on.  Education took a back seat to a great deal of very ugly socialization.  We moved back East to a small community before our children had to endure this horrible experience.  If we could not have gotten away, I believe we would have spared our children the dangers of the public school by home schooling them (or sending them to a private school if we could have afforded it).  To think that this option has been taken away seems to over step so many private citizen boundaries for me, and endangers children needlessly.  The complaints against home schooling seem to becoming from people with a different agenda than educating the next generation in the basics needed to think and function well in society.
 
I support tracking progress of kids being home schooled in the areas of reading, writing, math, science, and history to weed out the homes where kids are not being educated in the traditional areas of education and are not being prepared to lead productive lives.  I also support monitoring public schools in the same manor.  Teacher's whose students are not learning should also not be allowed to teach.  Parents should not be held to a higher standard of teaching than the local public school is providing.  But the national statistics on home schoolers speak for themselves.  As a whole they far out shine their public school counter parts.  They have great track records in post secondary schools as well - colleges are begging for home schooled kids because they are so much better equipped to learn in general. 
 
I find it hard to believe this whole non-certification thing has gotten so out of hand.  As far as I know, there is no question as to how wonderful home schooling works in general.  Limiting home schooling, which is producing superior students and citizens is a self serving, childish, foolish, short sighted action at best.  Besides producing better prepared students, the tax payers are getting a great deal - that's 200,000 students in California that they don't have to pay for.  Home schooling is a win for the tax payer, a win for the society as there are better educated students, a win for the parents as they can better guide their kids and keep them on track, and a big win for the students who don't have to waste time with petty bullying and general B.S. that goes on in school, and can focus on healthy relationships with healthy boundaries and getting a top notch education.  Many of our founding father's were home schooled, including some Presidents of the US.  I don’t believe their had teaching certificates either, but they did fine. 
 
As for my direct experience with home schooling, I'm an engineer.  I don't have a teaching certificate, but I successfully taught my children at home for a time.  There are many valid reasons to homeschool.  Our daughter had been the top in her 4th grade class.  She had started school late, so when we moved, her teacher, the guidance counselor, the principal agreed with us that she should skip a grade and get caught up with her age appropriate peers.  We didn’t count on the effects of the move on our daughter.  There were many complications that arose.  Not the least of which was a horrible 5th grade teacher.  We didn’t know how bad she was until 3 years later when our youngest son encountered her.  By 8th grade our daughter was failing or in danger of failing most of her classes, her 8th grade friends were either cutting classes, getting stoned, getting pregnant, shop lifting, or stealing cars or some combination of the mix.  So much for the safe country setting to get an education.  We pulled her for the first part of high school to help stabilize her and get her feet back on the ground.  After an initial anger on her part, she settled in and really got focused.  We told her that once her academics were back on course she could return to public school.  Many people [my mother-in-law/teacher, and my two sister-in-law/teachers, and many teacher acquaintances – and you think you have it bad with the NEA! – at least you don’t have to do holiday dinners with them]  gave us the line we heard over and over that she wouldn’t get the appropriate amount of socialization – ya, well, we saw who she was socializing with, and zero was the appropriate amount of socializing with those bums in our opinion.
 
We became part of a home schooler’s group where our daughter (and son) learned sign language, forestry, and ecology (I taught this 6 week program to 40 students of all ages simultaneously – we had 4 field trips – to the Rachael Carson Estuary Reserve, a marine shell fish grower/harvesting company, a Salmon reintroduction program in a major Eastern River – along with fish ladder window into the river bottom, and a hike up a small mountain which provide views of the city. My program culminated with a science fair complete with a local news paper reporter).  We also learned about the Renaissance as her class mates were doing, but then we went to a Renaissance Fair and Experienced it.  The public school couldn’t go on such a trip.  She had a lead part in the play the group did about immigrants coming through Elis Island.  It was performed for about 200 people.  We learned about scientific method by harvesting our small garden.  We measured rain fall, calculated comparative rain fall with hose watering, learned to use the university computer and data to access the National Atmospheric and Oceanic data to determine what our local rain fall was and compare it to what we measured, we drew pictures of the bugs and animals we found and used the university Agricultural library to identify them and learn ways to control the pests.  We worked on charts, measurement and math by measuring, weighing and identifying all our produce.  Then we learned about charts and graphs by listing what we found in many different ways.  She learned so much and gained back the confidence she had before our move.  And Socialization?  She had great socialization with other kids who were learning and going places in life – rather than with the stoners she was hanging out with in public school.
 
I also home schooled my youngest son - he had a tremendous amount of restless energy due to the allergy meds he was on.  Because we home schooled I could let him run around in the yard or wrestle with the dog every hour to work out that restlessness so we could focus on learning the other 50 minutes of the hour.  In public school he was perceived as a problem child and was made to stand at his desk or in the corner (in 5th grade, note the same horrible 5th grade teacher my daughter had when we moved) with a dunce hat on and be ridiculed by the teacher and the class.  My son who used to sing joyfully and "play" the piano when he came home from school, turned into a sullen and weepy boy after enduring this teacher for a few months.  The school would not step in and reprimand the teacher, so we chose to home school our son that year. 
 
Should my son have to endure this because I didn't have a teaching certificate?  I should hope not.  Should my daughter have “fallen through the cracks” and become a single mother and drop out like many of the kids she was hanging around with just because I didn’t have a teaching certificate?  I should hope not. 
 
Math and science are my strong points so my kids learned more science and math under my tutelage by far than they did in public school.  And they learned more English and history than their public school counter parts as well.  My kids also learned first hand about history on trips to Boston and to visit a replica of Captain Cook's ship, as well as local history from our very old town cemetery and history from the county archives and a deed search we did on our property.  We also learned parts of speech, paragraph construction and essay writing.  I did not leave a subject until they got it.  Therefore there were no paralyzing gaps in their education which would hamper there future learning as so many of their public school class mates suffered. 
 
Our public high school claims to have very strict academic standards.  When my daughter re-entered public school after being home schooled the principal and academic directors of the high school told us that they would most likely not accept the work she had done and told us she would have to repeat the grade.  Although skeptical at first, they were highly impressed with the quality and depth of work my daughter had done at home once they looked at her portfolio.  This looking down their noses at home schoolers is particularly hard to swallow when 37 percent of the number of kids who graduated from my oldest son’s 8th grade class didn’t graduate from his high school senior class.  [The school refuses to publish drop out rates.  I believe this is because they have been written up as one of the best school systems in the country in teaching text books.  When we have pushed for drop out rates we are told, “It’s hard to get a good number on that because so many kids end up coming back later or going to adult ed.  We simply took the number who graduated from my son’s 8th grade and took a percentage with those who graduated with him in high school .  During this period our town was in a growth spurt, so the actual drop-out/non-graduate-regular-public-high-school rate is probably a little higher.  So, even if some kids are not learning in home school, it is still much better than public schools where in addition to not learning the basics, what they are learning is how to lie, cheat and steal.  And where they have easy access to drugs – the big not so secret “secret problem” in our school.
 
When my youngest son, who had been tested in 3rd grade to be at the 6th grade math level and as having a high IQ, but difficulty processing some info – most likely due to an early childhood car accident/brain injury, was in danger of failing high school I left engineering and began substitute teaching  in part to better keep an eye on him.  I substitute taught in the public schools, mostly math and science.  Although I have no teaching degree, many of my students told me they wished I was their teacher because I, “Explained it much better”.  When my daughter was back in high school for about a year she was given an English assignment to tell who her favorite and least favorite teacher was and why.  She wrote that "My mom was my favorite teacher because she made me learn.  My mom was my least favorite teacher because she made me learn."  I can live with that - I was not trying to be her buddy, but to recover her from where the public school had miserably failed her. 
 
Parents are in it for the long haul.  The majority of those who home school have made great sacrifices to do so, and do a great job at it.  This law of requiring a teaching certificate is foolish on so many practical levels.  Monitor progress in the basics, yes, I am for that as there are some parents who do there children a disservice, but far and above the experience is beneficial to the student.  I wish I could say that of all of our tax payer funded public schools.  Please consider this matter carefully and do not be swayed by the screaming mobs on either side.  I believe the evidence overwhelmingly supports the merit of home schooling.  I believe promoting home schooling is one of the greatest legacies you could leave the future of California and our nation.   If you thoroughly consider the evidence I believe you find a preponderance of evidence in favor of home schooling and a hollow, self serving augment against it.  May you have the courage to vote as the evidence dictates and not as certain segments of society try to dictate as they endeavor to thrust their beliefs on our most vulnerable citizens – our kids.
 
Sincerely,
Rebecca Pringle-Gleske