Homeschooling Badly: We don't give grades in our school!

Sorry I'm running a bit late this week.  The baby is working on erupting two or three top incisors, the wild swings in temperature/pressure are wreaking havoc with my migraines and I keep breaking out in eczema patches.  Plus, it's January so the wonderful break I had for nearly of month of no doctor's visits for the baby is over.

I've been upfront about the fact that I am a traditionally schooled pre K - 12 graduate who jumped into a traditional college and then went back to the trenches of 9-12 education as a teacher.  From that perspective, I'm going to lay out why parent-teachers need to figure out a way to give coherent and comprehensive grades to their students by the end of elementary school at the latest.

I'm going to expound on two reasons that home-schooling parents opt-out of grading their kids for conscious or unconscious reasons.   Grading is a tricky task that requires a lot of practice.  Teachers have to create grading criteria - and that's not as simple as it seems.   The easiest set-up I can think of would be a text-book based system like the Maxwell Family uses.  Even there, the parent-teacher has to make some choices.  Do the classwork assignments count toward the final grade?  How about quizzes?  Are different categories of assignments weighted differently?  Grading independent study or project-based learning courses is even harder.   What does an "A" assignment look like in creative writing or paleontology or mandolin lessons compared to a "B" or a "C"?

The first issue can be overcome when parent-teachers learn how to pre-determine what each grade category looks like for each course.  I don't have a good solution for the second issue because grading your own child accurately is so much harder than grading a random student.  When I taught, I felt bad when a student failed my class - but I also had at least 80 other students who had passed that exact same class so student failures didn't feel like a personal reflection on my teaching. By comparison, when my son has a slight delay in his gross motor, fine motor or speech skills, I feel like I've failed somehow as a parent.  The feeling passes quickly - but the feeling alone is an intense enough experience that I know that Jack's better off having an unrelated professional determine his "Ages and Stages" skill level.  Even with my teaching experience, I would be tempted to justify passing him in skills - mainly by giving him points for other skills - to avoid feeling bad.

Why do we grade students?  Grading students describes their performance against an age-appropriate standard, helps students learn how much procrastination they can get away with, and gives students practice with managing emotional responses to negative outcomes.

In a traditional school, students are surrounded by peers within a few years of age of them.  Students generally get a feel for how they compare to their peers within each subject simply by comparing how much effort it takes and by seeing what grades other students get.  When a student transferred into our school from another district, students were pretty accurate in their personal assessment of their skills in language arts, science, math and social studies.  Students who transferred in from home schooling were a more mixed bag.  Some students were very aware of which areas they had received little or no instruction in; other students believed that they were above average in a subject - but after testing and placement in a class it became clear that the student was working at markedly below grade level.    Why is this important?  Throughout life, people need to be able to assess their strengths and weaknesses compared to other people in their lives.  As a teacher, I was middling-to-average at dealing with chronically angry students while above average in working with severely anxious students.  When I had a chronically angry student, I would get support and tips from the teacher across the hall who was great with that student group - and I'd give her support and tips when dealing with anxious students.

Grading helps students learn time-management skills.  For traditionally schooled students, the number of subjects they take in a day increases markedly from early elementary through junior high.  As the number of classes scale upward, the students learn how to deal with conflicts like a project due the day after a math exam.  Students learn the benefits of planning ahead and working at a pace that works for them.  On the flip side, students learn about the drawbacks of finishing a paper at 2AM and being exhausted the next day.  Chronic procrastination makes it much more difficult for students to earn "A" grades; few students can complete a high-school level project at the level of required difficulty if they don't start the project until the night before.

Finally, grading helps students learn how to manage the disappointment that comes from a poor grade - which I'll define as any grade lower than the one they wanted to get.   That feeling of disappointment is intense and students learn how to release that emotion and continue moving towards a goal.  After all, the vast majority of jobs involve periodic reviews by supervisors and some reviews include times where the supervisor gives the person a lower review than the person thought they were going to get.  That sucks - but knowing how to manage negative feelings helps the person to move away from the feelings and into planning on how to improve their performance.

Preparing Single Income Sons: Chapter Two

Chapter Two - "What is his earning potential?" - is where Steve walk adults who are home schooling children through the three characteristics that determine how much income a person will generate as an adult: vocation, education and skill level.

Frankly, I needed to pause and suspend my disbelief to finish the chapter.  This is not a book marketed for children or pre-teens.  This isn't a book for teenagers or even young adults.  This book is marketed for adults who are actively home schooling one or more child.  These people KNOW what leads to a well-paying job and what does not already.

The first characteristic that Steve leads off with is "vocation" - and his anecdotes give more insight into his mind than anything else.

A man's vocation is generally what we think determines how much money he makes. If you meet a visitor at church and find out he is a doctor or a lawyer, you will likely think, "Here is someone with few financial difficulties." On the other hand, when we think of firemen, pastors, policemen, and school teachers, we don't picture them making huge salaries. (pg. 21)

When someone tells me their job, I don't immediately think about the person's financial status - but Steven Maxwell does.   Truthfully, it's none of my damn business.   Plus, there's such a huge range in amount of educational debt, personal debt, personal financial obligations and amount of salary that a lawyer might be struggling financially while a pastor is doing fine.  My extended family has raised families of between 3-9 children on careers like nursing, fire fighting, teaching, social work, and engineering; it's more about planning and budgeting to use the money a household has.

Every family has that person who makes statements that sound deep - but the ideas are patently obvious to adults who can think for more than 10 seconds.  Steve Maxwell is in that class:

It seems like every son wants to be a fireman, policeman, or bulldozer operator at some point in his young life. Then as he matures, other jobs catch his interest. Just because a person is interested in a profession doesn't mean it is right for him. (pg. 21)

So deep! 

I planned to be a ballerina when I was in kindergarten. The fact that I couldn't put my heels down to the grounds due to severely tight calf muscles from cerebral palsy was (in my assessment) a benefit; I was already on my toes all the time.

What did I want to be next?  I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, a teacher, a naturalist, and a microbiologist.  Oddly enough, I've worked as three out of the four of those (if I can count work in cellular biology as microbiology) and all four if I can count the hundreds of nature walks I took campers on as a "naturalist". 

Yeah, we all have crazy career ideas - but listening to the career interests of kids can help parents and teachers figure out what a kid wants in a career. Key points for me turned out to be "likes providing education", "deals with science", and "has relatively high daily autonomy within a structured organization".

Let's take a look at how Steve handles a vocational interest of one of his sons:

Christopher, my second oldest son, was near the point of making a commitment to a vocation. He was very interested in pursuing EMT credentials to become an emergency medical technician. I wondered if his engrossment was mostly do to an excitement factor connected with EMT work. In addition, Christopher has a very strong leading toward raising a family someday. Christopher and I discussed and prayed about his vocation decision. We also discussed the fact that EMTs have to work odd shifts, and it is very common for a man and woman to be paired up. Having to work alone with a woman all day or night can lead to unhealthy temptation. The odd shifts also bring added difficulty to a family and would disrupt a daily schedule. Over time, Christopher could see the raising a family and being an EMT might bring problems to his marriage and family that would be prudent to avoid. ... I was pleased the Christopher saw the wisdom of pursuing a different career, even though it might be less exciting.

Please don't misunderstand me. Through my illustration, I am not saying a Christian can't have an EMT type job. I am saying that it is wise to count cost beforehand. (pg.22)

An overarching theme in the Maxwell publications is that Steven Maxwell hates the idea of paying anyone else to educate his children - regardless of the outcome for the kids.   Although he doesn't state this theme here, I doubt he was excited about the idea of Christopher paying around $2,500 for classes, textbooks and exams to become an EMT.

Maxwell does make important points about the drawbacks of working as an EMT.  The shifts that a EMT works change drastically from week to week.   Christopher would be exposed to a working partner who was not a member of the Maxwell Family; I know Steve dresses the situation up as a potential source of "temptation" - but Christopher's world might be more upended by a Christian male colleague who just talks with him on a regular basis about life.

The "temptation" factor hides another tricky point: I'm not certain that Christopher Maxwell could keep up in an EMS class.    These classes are heavy on medical terminology and the Maxwell home school structure lacks advanced sciences like chemistry or human anatomy physiology.    He'd be under a much heavier academic load than he'd ever been before - and some people can't do it.

My last concern - and it's the least important one - is that EMTs do not make much money.  This isn't the end of the world; some take second jobs while others get advanced training to facilitate career moves from low-paying entry level jobs with private ambulance services to being employed by government entities or through hospital systems.   For the Maxwell Family, all of these options would be considered second-rate and a rejection of the ideal of owning a home-based business.

I included this last quote from the "vocation" section because I find the thesis hilarious
.

A child may also express interest in a career that Christians should not even consider such as owning a nightclub, movie rental store, abortion facility, or liquor store. It is possible his spiritual maturity is insufficient to realize something is wrong. That is where a parent can help him see God's will more clearly. Take him directly to Scripture to support your claims. The versus you use would make excellent Bible study topics for you and your son. (pg. 23)

If a family has strong feelings against alcohol, x-rated movies, or abortion and lives their lives to make those beliefs clear, why would one of their kids all of a sudden declare that they want to be a strip-club owner?  Steven Maxwell is categorically against movies, television, the vast majority of books, professional sports, participating in team sports, most precious jewelry and recreational vehicles.  How likely is it that one of his kids would seriously declare that they wanted to be an actor, a bookstore owner, or a scheduling manager for a local stadium?  I grew up in a family that was highly involved in the pro-life movement; none of my siblings or cousins ever spontaneously opined that they really, really wanted to do abortions when they grew up. 

The Bible isn't a great career study book.  It's solid enough for things like moral precepts - but your kid should be pretty clear on moral job choices LONG before their teenage years.

Steven's second characteristic for income is education.  The gist of the section is that only parents or students can be trusted to educate themselves.  Outside educational programs will lead students astray.  It's not a new idea and it's not terribly interesting so I'm going to skip the main section and move into the bits where he jumps completely off the rails:

Remember Steve, mentioned in Chapter One? That is me. If I had wanted a larger income, should I have pursued a master's degree? Yes, if I was to believe the commercials on the radio. However, that was not God's leading and not consistent with my abilities. Would I have made more money had I earned a master's? Only the Lord knows for sure, but with my limited math and science abilities, I doubt I would have justified the higher wages that a master's degree would have brought. As a result, I might have been discouraged, and the company employing me would not have felt they were getting their money's worth. (pg.24)

Oh, my goodness!  The Steve in the first chapter who is an electrical engineer whose eldest son out earned him is the author?  Who have thought it?  There are SO many electrical engineers who home school their kids then write a book about it.

Whether an advanced degree is useful depends on the discipline that the person works in,  the career path that are interested in, and the amount of experience the person has.  Right now, the average income for an electrical engineer in Michigan with a bachelor's degree is around $55,000 while a master's degree job averages $79,000 a year.  Generally, bachelor's degree science jobs have relatively little autonomy while master's degree jobs tend to expect more independent work.  Master's degrees are also the lowest expected degree for people who want to do managerial level work. 

I think Steve is trying to appeal to the anti-intellectual element of CP/QF life - but declaring that he's bad at math and science beggars belief.   The starting mathematics course for a bachelor's degree in engineering is calculus 1 - and progresses through calculus 2, calculus 3 and  differential equations.  Steve may not be the best math guy of the engineers he graduated with - but he's easily in the top 2-3% of all Americans.   

On a purely picky note - I've never heard a radio ad that promotes a Master's degree program in engineering.  That's a horrible way to attract potential candidates. 

Something else to consider is that those with higher degrees may experience difficulty in finding jobs. The workforce is like a pyramid and that the higher you climb the education ladder, the fewer jobs you'll find requiring those skills. That is why it is imperative that parents know God's direction for their child. Overconfidence may lead to disappointment when a degree does not bring the anticipated salary. In fact, I have heard people calling Christian radio talk shows complaining about how difficult it is to repay their student loan based on the amount of money they are currently making. They had expected a higher salary upon graduating with a degree. (pg. 24)

Steven is completely and totally backwards on how education affects the availability of jobs. 

My first job was as a utility worker at a grocery store.  This job was open to any person who was at least 16 years old and could legally work in the United States which means that about 73% of the US population could apply for that job.    Locally, it was in an area where many people didn't go to college so roughly 80% of locals could apply for that job.

When I graduated from college with a bachelor's degree, I could still apply and get the utility worker job - and I could also apply for jobs that require bachelor's degrees like a laboratory technician and a variety of teaching jobs.  Additional education credentials adds more jobs to a person's options.    The specific job of "high school teacher with a BA or BC certification" was much less frequent - but there were very few people who could apply for the job and even fewer who actually applied.  At the school I taught at, we were lucky to attract 20 applicants of which roughly 3-6 were interviewed.

Even his argument that the number of jobs that require a college degree are fewer is specious in certain locations.   In the county I grew up in, there are many, many more teaching jobs than there were utility worker jobs; school systems were the largest employer and "teacher" is the most common job within a school system while the number of jobs that are available to people with a high school diploma as their highest completed schooling is tiny.

People do need to be careful about how much money they take out in loans while attending college.  A good rule of thumb is that college students shouldn't take out more than they expect to earn during their first year out of college.  On the flip side, college graduates on average out-earn people without college degrees throughout their career - a basic fact that Steve ignores.

The last category is personal skill level.  That's a no-brainer - and thankfully, Steve restricts himself to a quick attack on a doctor he didn't like two decades ago:

When Joseph was a toddler, he developed a cough that wouldn't go away. We had just moved to Kansas, so we took him to a doctor we picked out of the telephone book. The physician was in his sixties and very personable. However, he had great difficulty looking in Joseph's throat as Joseph was not being very cooperative. After several attempts, he appeared to give up but said he'd seen enough to give us a prescription. Teri and I were confident he had not been successful in seeing Joseph's throat, and we felt he was guessing at a diagnosis. After a couple weeks with no improvement, we took Joseph to another doctor who promptly diagnosed and successfully treated him. Later we spoke with others who had tried the first doctor, and they too had opted for someone else.

Here was a doctor, with plenty of credentials and schooling, who should have been making a good salary. However, his skill level was poor. I don't know what his actual income might have been, but if the condition of his office and the lack of patients was any indication, the man was not making much money at all. (pg. 25)

Psst!  Let me give you a hint: the doctor had been practicing successfully for 25-30 years!  Let's assume that he was making enough money to get by. 

Honestly, I have far more questions about the Maxwell parents' choices at this point. 

• Steve had a job that presumably had coworkers.  Joseph's cough had reached a chronic point so surely making the appointment could wait 24 hours for Steve to ask someone who lived in the area for a recommendation for a pediatrician or family practitioner.
• It's not like the doctor needed to do a detailed throat inspection;  he was looking to see if the kid had post-nasal drip.  All he needed was to see the throat for just long enough to see if it was reddened.  
• Did the Maxwell parents fill the prescription?  The story is not clear about that point.....
• Every drug I've ever taken for a cough says that if the cough doesn't improve in between 3-7 days to call the doctor for a follow-up.  I feel terrible for poor toddler Joseph who has been hacking for around a month by the time his parents decided to find another doctor.

The next chapter is about a person's "real" earning potential.  I can't wait!

Homeschooling Badly: Kids Just Need to Know How To Learn!

As a licensed teacher, the thought of personally homeschooling my kids - or anyone's kids - is frankly terrifying.  I could probably make a high school science curriculum that was solid and possibly a forgivable junior high science curriculum - but I have no idea what an appropriate curriculum for third-grade math looks like or fifth-grade language arts.  What if my kid wants to learn Swahili?  Oh, God - what if my kid has a talent for two-dimensional art?  I'm so bad at that!

I'm honestly sweating bullets right now at the thought of trying to teach drawing at home.

This is partially why I find homeschooling parents' answers to how they are going to teach advanced subjects fascinating.  Each option is my summary of the blog post attached.

Option One: "I'm going to graduate my 16-year old from high school having completed badly flawed 10th grade Biology and 9th/10th grade Geometry using Khan Academy.  Education isn't about getting a job, after all."

Thanks to Amy from Raising Arrows for this plan.

• Her son was completing Biology using Apologia Science.  I bought a copy of Apologia's Biology textbook; the material is horrible. 
• The "evolution" section is a joke, but I expected that.  I didn't expect the genetics section to be convoluted to the point of being incoherent. (The study of Mendelian genetics somehow fails to label the "Law of Independent Assortment" and "Law of Segregation" with those terms.  That was surreal.)  
• I didn't expect the entire field of ecology to be ignored outside of biogeochemical cycles (and, no, that term was never used to describe those cycles). 
•  Honestly, most of the book is a study of animal and plant taxonomy without evolutionary grounding which is roughly 60 years outdated.
• In Michigan, a student is expected to have covered either physics or chemistry before leaving high school.  I wouldn't be opposed to a student doing some in-depth biological or earth science topic (think botany (with field section), astronomy, geology, etc.) in lieu of physics or chemistry - but doing two years of high school science is not considered adequate for a high school diploma.
• In Michigan, the minimum high school graduation requirement in math is Algebra II.  Most students take Algebra I in eighth grade or ninth grade.  Geometry is the next class in the most common math sequence so most kids would take it between 9-10th grade.  It's not considered a math capstone class.
• I like Khan Academy as a resource for students who learn well from videos and I linked some of the videos on my old classroom website for students to use during and outside of class if they wanted.  Having said that, I have deep concerns about using it as a stand-alone curriculum.
• All of the problems given by Khan Academy must be rapidly graded by a computer algorithm.   This limits the types of questions that can be asked severely.
• I've been working through Algebra II, Trigonometry and Precalculus on Khan Academy for mental exercise.  So far, all problems that have addressed theoretical concepts have been marked as 'challenge' problems that required to reach mastery. 
• Khan Academy doesn't provide either cumulative tests or projects to be completed.  I accept a wide variety of ways for students to demonstrate mastery - but they've gotta do it at some point.
• I have no idea how a home-schooling parent would convert information from Khan Academy to a 4.0 point GPA.  Is completion worth an A?  
• Education is not about getting a job - but education is required to get certain jobs.  A weak STEM background in high school is expensive to remedy.  Remember, public schools cover whatever classes a student can take in K-12 for free.  Taking remedial classes or college classes that count for credit, but do not count for a major (which I had several friends who needed to do to reach the requirements for General Inorganic Chemistry) is more expensive.
  
  

Option Two: If we can't teach it, the subject must not be that important.

This pearl of wisdom comes from Kimberly at Raising Olives.  The only redeeming value is that she seems not to have enforced that idea on her offspring.

She lists a series of "other" options instead having a parent actively teach their kids advanced subjects.

• Pick a good curriculum and a teenager who knows how to learn should be able to teach themselves!. 
•  I know how to pick out a good curriculum in high school science courses because I have enough college level classes in science to do that.  I would struggle to do that in History or music or a foreign language; I just don't have the background to figure out if a given curriculum covers US government or Economics well.
• How much time is it worth to have a student struggle on a concept within a good curriculum that could be cleared up by a trained teacher in the area in 5-10 minutes?  I get the benefit of wrestling with a hard concept - but often a student isn't wrestling with a hard concept; they are spinning their wheels because of a minor misunderstanding.  Other times, students need more scaffolding (education jargon for "break it into smaller steps") than the text provides.  Some people advocate simply sending the student off to find different resources until they learn it, but that has its own issues.
• KimC at InAShoe wrote a blog post about how she used progressively finding different textbooks to teach herself math up and including calculus.  That's genuinely impressive and deserves kudos.  The part that broke my heart: she remembers crying over functions before she got how to do them.  For people who aren't math geeks - functions shouldn't be hard for a kid with as much raw talent as KimC had.  I suspect she got stuck on the notations of functions which a teacher would have straightened out for her in....oh.... 30 seconds maximum.
• Have a sibling who is talented in that subject help them out!
• That's not much help for the first kid to cover the subject, is it now?
• Ever notice how worked up homeschool bloggers get over the theoretical idea that advanced public school kids will be expected to help other students instead of getting more advanced work?  Ironically, that indignation completely evaporates when siblings are involved.  I find that irritating since I worked hard at making advanced materials for my students who needed a challenge and I never pretended that all advanced students made good tutors.  
• Take high level subjects from subject area experts in your church without passing off educating your kids to them!
• There is some weird, hair-splitting, angels-dancing-on-a-pin semantics going on in that section.  I doubt God's going to smite a family who chooses to let a subject-area expert teach an advanced class because the parents have abdicated their duty to educate their children.  On the other hand, I did teach in the public system so I might be terminally warped.
• There is a very important reason that I didn't assume that advanced students made good tutors: a sizable subset are horrible at teaching.  Being good at a topic does not mean you can teach a topic well.  I have an overwhelming sense of pity for the scientist at a CP/QF church who went into research because he still has nightmares about being a TA while getting his Ph.D.  Being told he has a moral duty to teach the congregation's teenagers chemistry and physics is going to suck for him.
• I can't imagine that every homeschool friendly church has a math and science career guy who is willing and able to teach physics, chemistry and all math above geometry while supporting his massive family.  Oddly enough, the subject of paying for his time is completely ignored because he's a church member. I guess that's an issue for men as well as women! 
• We've never used them, but online options and co-ops exist!
• See all of my earlier objections for picking subject area texts for online options.  When does a homeschooling mom have time to look at the major online options for Calculus?
• I refer to co-ops as "unregulated private schools who hire unlicensed teachers".   There are some excellent parent-teachers in the world and there are some really bad ones. 
• How does a co-op deal with a well-meaning parent-teacher who is a weak teacher?  In school systems, new teachers get a mentor teacher plus the help of plenty of other experienced teachers in their building and system. Can a co-op do that?  
•  How about a parent-teacher who is well-liked by the students, but creates classes that are academically below expectations?  Would anyone ever know?  (That second question caused me to break out in a cold sweat.)
• Can a co-op remove a parent-teacher without causing the entire co-op to shatter into factions?  Is it worth the risk of shutting down a co-op to remove a subpar teacher?  Who makes those kinds of decisions?  

Well, this post has gotten long and I'm sweating bullets at the thought of kids being taught chemistry badly by a dad who was guilt-tripped into teaching by his local congregation because he's an agricultural engineer.  *shudders*

Please teach your kids.  If you pull them out of a school system, you take on the responsibility of their academic future. If doing that gets to be too much, put them back in the system.