Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Debating home school vs virtual school

I googled about the California homeschool reimbursement scheme. It appears it works like this. Homeschoolers register with the school district, thereby becoming recognized as student being "taught" by the district. Consequently the district receives $5k per homeschooled student, gives each student $1k, and keeps the other $4k.

I'd be much obliged! Thanks ColinsMum!

In other words, it's a revenue capturing scheme, that gives the homeschooler some incentive to be involved. Of course, exactly the same thing could be said about virtual schools.

I would prefer a system that directly funded some homeschooling expenses, without homeschoolers being used as pawns in various schemes to siphon off taxpayer money.

Depending on the school this is true. However, some homeschool charters maintain an actual school site where the kids can take classes. One we are involved in is a K-8 school, with about 240 students and more than 70 classes from piano, guitar and dance to science, math and a hybrid 2x a week program. Plus field trips, a huge curriculum catalog and lots of choice to use (or not use( that curriculum. PM me if you want more info!

In California there exist homeschool charter schools. Some reimburse you a certain amount each semester for books, classes, and materials; others will lend books and equipment (e.g. microscope). You are assigned an Education Specialist, who meets with you periodically to make sure you're still on track.

In return, of course, you need to meet some requirements (e.g. you can't just not do science all year) and take standardized tests in the spring.

Some of our friends have great ES's who allow them to be more lax about what their kids are doing. Others seem to have to jump through hoops to prove that they're doing enough ELA or science or whatever. No one we know appreciated the standardized tests, but more because of the time it took (not because of the results).

We chose not to go this route, and we are homeschooling independently. DS8 was so burned by school that we wanted as much freedom in his education as possible. But it's definitely attractive.

Answering various posts:

DS8 has just started one of the lowest level AoPS on-line courses. He's managing with reading the scrolling plaintext, typing responses, staying focused for the whole lesson, but only just now; I don't think he could have when younger. So "the common view is that the pace of the AOPS on-line courses are too fast for younger kids even the very gifted ones." is somewhat true depending on kid and age, at least for the "live" class. Doing weekly homework is no problem, since one is not under time pressure to respond quickly. Maybe I'll review it in a few months.

Two people mentioned "Usborne Encyclopedias". I'd never heard of them. I like the idea of children's encyclopedias. DS8 and DD5 will get interested in, and pick up and read, these types of books, as long as they are designed to be attractive to (maybe older) children. Any other suggestions along these lines?

"... $400 per child...$250 per child..." These numbers are encouraging. I don't mind paying for a well designed curriculum that saves parent and child time (less detailed planning for parent, easily compactible for child) and follows some kinds of standards. Actually I just want this for Math and ELA, and we'll improvise the rest (for elementary school). We mainly want to cover "the three Rs", and really it's writing specifically where we need well designed structured coursework. (We do not need to teach our kindergartners about ancient bloody battles like k12.com's history does.)

" For elementary age, I think I'd definitely prefer pure homeschooling (indeed, I did!)." That's what I want to hear. Unfortunately when I floated the idea with DW "Let's drop the virtual school and home school instead", her response was along the lines of "How could that even be possible?". So I've got some work to do.

For the Usborne books,

http://www.usborne.com/quicklinks/eng/catalogue/catalogue.aspx?area=EN

(These were cheaper ordering through a friend who sells these with facebook parties)
Usborne connects the information in the encyclopedias to websites you can visit. The links are noted in the book and each book has a webpage with the links listed.



Some other helpful sites for discounts on curriculum

http://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/homeschool-math-curriculum/

http://www.educents.com/

For next year with the two kids, they are doing World History, Writing and Science together. Some curriculum save you money by having the same reading but different exercises and expectations for each level. I am going to use SWI B for language, I bought that for the older one but the website provides downloads for the lower level readings for younger kids without cost. For science, I bought everything for the older one and use that as the guide and use workbooks and encyclopedias to go along with the topic that the older one is studying so that my husband is teaching them both at once but their activities and tests are level appropriate. A number of history curricula have exercises for different ages in the same book. For math, one is using dreambox.com and the other is going to use the AoPS textbook on her own with Alcumus. I am not paying for the class.

Our area has a homeschool consignment store and a couple of facebook pages where people sell used curriculum.

Thanks for the clarification, KnittingMama. Kind of you to reply.

22B, maybe the best approach is to have her come on here and correspond with some of the homeschoolers, or to meet a group of like-minded local homeschoolers. Seeing is believing.

Glad you're getting some helpful advice! In terms of money-saving, probably you know about the following already, but I wish I had!

(1) When you buy books, buy them used on amazon. Sometimes our library doesn't have things, esp. textbooks, and so I buy them used. "Acceptable" quality is usually more than fine for us, and I can buy, say, a $100 textbook for $5. I haven't looked for the Usborne books, but I'll bet you can find those for far less than the bookstore (new) prices.

(2) Homeschool Buyer's Co-op website. They have a lot of stuff I wouldn't use, but if you've independently identified some kind of software or other program, they often have group discounts. My kids liked BrainPop (web program that has little educational movies), for instance, and the Co-op had a discount.

(3) EPGY Open Enrollment. If this still exists, it's a great deal, compared to the regular EPGY. You don't get a teacher or a transcript/grade, but you get full access to the software, which at the elementary level is all we wanted. The software tells you how the student is doing, but you just don't get the official EPGY grade record.