Many concerns regarding academic failure within the United States regarding the inability to rival other countries, has greatly increased yearly due to the lack of clear support for teachers and students within the Traditional School Calendar. With the implementation of the Year – Round or “Balanced Calendar”, students have been given the opportunity to close those unnecessary gaps between school years and begin to even out “in-school” time throughout the year. Many parents and teachers consider this division of time conflicting when dealing with scheduling of community programs or additional summer employment opportunities, along with the cost becoming too great to keep students within the walls of the school for longer periods of time. Realities have become quite clear regarding the educational uplift other countries receive due to the consistent nature in which they implement strategic learning opportunities. The benefits and opportunities behind keeping children on a more regular schedule will greatly out-weigh the extensive summer break in terms of the student’s acceleration process, cost to local schools, districts support, family time, student and teacher attendance as well as the academic gap that continues to plague the United States today.
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It was Theodore Roosevelt who said, "To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society." Similarly, many parents share this sentiment when it comes to public schools, believing that the moral relativism, violence, and peer pressure found inside their gates provide an inadequate setting to properly intermingle their children. As homeschooling rapidly gains popularity, studies demonstrate an increase of seven to fifteen percent annually and nearly two million children worldwide learning from home. However, along with the rapid growth, many questions about inadequate socialization are often brought up as a means to disqualify homeschooling as a viable alternative form of education. Although public schools provide more socialized environments for children, homeschooling allows opportunities for students to learn to interact with groups beyond their peers, achieve academic excellence with individualized learning, and allow for students to build strong family ties and foundations.
ABSTRACT: Home schooling is a controversial topic among educators. The issues that follow a child throughout their educational and social lives, are elevated when a child has been home schooled. There is no social environment for the child to learn to develop basic social skills; most home schooling environments are made up of a child, perhaps accompanied by a sibling, and the parent teaching the information given. There is no room for a developed personality that is constant with a child of equal age and grade in a normal schooling environment. Other problems include the quality of the teacher, lack of practice for standardized testing, bias grades, inconstant laws on home schooling from state to state, the overall education of a home schooled child, and the quality of the teacher.
Homeschooling has been the victim of much criticism since it originated. However, time has shown that children who are homeschooled are successful; people are beginning to change their views that the only effective education can be done in a classroom. Stereotypes are being broken and families that do not fit the typical homeschool persona are starting to homeschool. The public may stereotype homeschoolers as either societal dropouts or those with high religious moral convictions that want to isolate their children from society. While some do homeschool for spiritual reasons, the majority of homeschoolers today represent a range of backgrounds, motivations and family situations.
People choose to homeschool for a var... ... middle of paper ... ...s and traditional school graduates. Journal of College Admission, Spring 2004, p17. Klicka, Chris (2002) Socialization: homeschoolers are in the real world. Issue Analysis, Home School Legal Defense Association. Retrieved April 10, 2005 from www.hslda.org.
National Center for Education Statistics. 1 October 2009. 10 November 2011. . "Once Upon a University, A Handbook for Student Parents." n.d.
Home School Legal Defense Association. Web. 7 Sept. 2010. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/ http://www.washhomeschool.org/homeschooling/whoQualify.html
Rosenberg, Russell, and Michael Monaco. "Should High School Students Have a Later Start to the School Day?." American Teacher. Nov/Dec 2012: 3. SIRS Issues Researcher.