This is basically a master's degree program, and isn't required for teachers in private schools. It may not be required for public school teachers either (I haven't found out California requirements, but nothing more than a bachelor's degree and a short side program is needed here).

Public schools. Some public schools are better than others, but in general I'd usually compare them to juvenile delinquent programs. This isn't everyone's experience, but since my parent's divorce most days I'd come home in tears after the bus dropped me off: First grade, second grade, third grade. Teachers do nothing about bullying. And I was bullied for years. I went back to public school for Junior High and my first year of high school and found that nothing had changed. The thought of making public school mandatory with tight exceptions of the rule makes me suck my breath in and stare in horror.

Private schools. Private schools were better, but still not perfect. My grades improved dramatically, but still I wasn't good with people. Even so, finally (at the age of ten) I'd managed to make some friends. I attended this private school for two years.

Independent home school. Probably the most interesting period of my life. I was thirteen, and after experiencing the hells of New Jersey junior high my mother decided that she couldn't take putting me through that any longer. History turned into an extensive Revolutionary war time line with car trips to see all of the local sites like the Delaware crossing and the plaques marking the Christmas attack of Princeton on the British. Literatures was watching 'Much Ado About Nothing' (public school had never even touched Shakespeare before) over and over until I finally got the language and began studying the classics properly. However, my mother wasn't very good with math, and I had to regulate learning that myself out of textbooks. All of the work that I did every day was documented to the best of my mother's ability (though she can be a little scatter-brained at times when it comes to organization (and I say this in love)). This is also the year that I decided to sit down, and I wrote my first fantasy novel. We home-schooled this way for half of a year before interrupted by yet another move, and this one across the country with different state laws regarding how we did things.

A note to the left-wing extremists that seem to be highly vocal about this. Creationists will teach their children religion whether or not they go to a public school if they care about the subject at all. I suggest you remind yourself that people are still allowed to practice religion as they see fit, even if you don't like it.

Accredited home school. A vast improvement when it came to math, but some of the teachers were downright bad at what they were doing. Like most things, you have to use judgment about the situation at hand. I was here for another half of a year before circumstances demanded that I return to public school for high school.

Community College. I opted for a program where my junior and senior year of high school was spent in community college and took the introductory courses there. It was like high school, except they actually taught you things. And it was a good introduction for the state university, which really was the first place people started treating my like an adult and I finally excelled.

My education is piecemeal just from moving around to the extent that I did. There are things that I really was never taught (certain forms of math... and I never had to dissect anything). I scored 1260 on the SATs when I took them at sixteen, scoring pretty evenly on both sections. I have a friend who had been in home school all her life, was valedictorian of the high school she was enrolled in (Washington State requirement) but had never gone to, and scored in the high 1500's on the SATs before she went into computer science at an acclaimed university. I also know a guy who was 'home schooled' and was barely literate.

I have no intention of subjecting my children to public school, unless I have a very good reason. If the child isn't developing social skills properly, then I'd find a way to make sure that he or she interacts with children his or her own age. Sports, clubs, extracurricular activities. These points that people are making as an argument against home schooling can be prevented by good parenting.

My point is that subjects like this need to be weighed and judged carefully, and to figure out what's right for you. But to have the state decide for you what ought to be done with your kids is outrageous. I'm more willing to trust my discretion than theirs.

Have you ever heard of those parents that overprotect their children from germs? The ones that make sure to spray every countertop and doorknob so that their kids never get sick?

Well, those kids usually wind up with chronic illnesses for the rest of their lives BECAUSE they were never exposed to germs - they never got a chance to build a strong immune system...

VonSkippy, Kansas isn't that bad! That stupid evolution / creationism debate was embarassing for us, but please don't assume my home state only produces brain-washed, mind-numblingly stupid kids. I'm a 4th generation Kansas who went to public school in a tiny town of 4,000 and I managed to get into a top-rated private university and do well in it. Most of my friends consider me pretty smart and open-minded. I'm even enlightened enough to read such websites as Neatorama.

Steohawk, you frighten me. Take your child-love and sign up for that one-way trip to Mars.

That's why we named our son "Sue"

(Humor notice: We don't have a son, actually.)

When our local elementary school had to go into emergency mode when a student was found to have a gun in his backpack, I was very relieved that my youngest daughter was no longer attending.

My own experiences in the social environment of the playground leads me to characterize public school socialization as "The Lord of the Flies". Bullying and ostracism are the rule, and children who show academic aptitude are often denigrated. The pressure to conform is also very strong, while the norms of behavior, then and now, are not always positive.

OH, by the way, while I am a Christian, and our family is active in church (look up my previous posts on our homeless outreach), we are not creationists. I suppose we are kind of hippie-evangelistic.

PRESIDENTS-

FAMOUS WOMEN-

GENERALS-

ARTISTS-

AUTHORS-

COMPOSERS-

PREACHERS & MISSIONARIES-

CHIEF JUSTICES U.S. SUPREME COURT-

DIVERSELY TALENTED-

Homeschooling: wave of the future!

kids who WANT to learn WILL learn.

That's true of public schoolers and homeschoolers. I wish people would stop getting so hung up on demographics and percentages that are utterly skewed and slanted according to who funded the research. There are quacks and geniuses in both schools of learning, and it seems like the more volatile arguers on this thread have simply clung to a few non-representative extremes that have made headlines, and then formed their own badly-informed generalizations from there. Especially about homeschoolers being either "hippies" or religious nuts. This is the same narrow-minded stereotyping that lazy minds never think to question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling

Some exerpts:
Statistically, the typical American homeschooling parents are married, homeschool their children primarily for religious or moral reasons, and are almost twice as likely to be Evangelical than the national average.

home school parents are 39 percent less likely to be college graduates, 21 percent more likely to be married, 28 percent less likely to have experienced a divorce, and that the household income is 10% below the national average. Barna found that homeschoolers in the U.S. live predominantly in the Mid-Atlantic, the South-Atlantic, and the Pacific states. It found that homeschoolers are almost twice as likely to be evangelical as the national average (15 percent vs 8 percent), and that 91 percent describe themselves as Christian, although only 49 percent can be classified as "born again Christians." It found they were five times more likely to describe themselves as "mostly conservative" on political matters than as "mostly liberal," although only about 37 percent chose "mostly conservative", and were "notably" more likely than the national average to have high view of the Bible and hold orthodox Christian beliefs.

* Homeschool graduates are active and involved in their communities. 71% participate in an ongoing community service activity, like coaching a sports team, volunteering at a school, or working with a church or neighborhood association, compared with 37% of U.S. adults of similar ages from a traditional education background.

* Homeschool graduates are more involved in civic affairs and vote in much higher percentages than their peers. 76% of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 voted within the last five years, compared with only 29% of the corresponding U.S. populace. The numbers are even greater in older age groups, with voting levels not falling below 95%, compared with a high of 53% for the corresponding U.S. populace.

* 58.9% report that they are "very happy" with life, compared with 27.6% for the general U.S. population. 73.2% find life "exciting", compared with 47.3%.[49]

Although there are studies that conclude that homeschooled students on average do well on standardized tests,[53] these studies generally compare voluntary homeschool testing with mandatory public-school testing. The study organizers cannot require testing. Homeschooled students are not subject to the testing requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Some states require testing for homeschooled students and some do not; many that do require testing let homeschooling parents choose from more than one evaluation method. Since testing is not required, homeschoolers taking the tests are self-selected, which biases the statistical results. Therefore, the progress of homeschooled students cannot be compared with that of students in public schools.

Children who are homeschooled, on average, perform better on standardized tests and college entrance exams. They typically perform better in college. Whether they are socially adept is the responsibility of the parents. Anyway, the social "reality" of public high-school is about as genuine to adult life as the easter bunny... hence the reality check that occurs when people finally get out of school and out into the world.

Either way you'll have your kids brainwashed into mind-numbing stupidity in no time.

here's a few famous hoeschooled individuals-

PRESIDENTS-George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, William Henry Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D Roosevelt

FAMOUS WOMEN- Abigail Adams, Mercy Warren, Martha Washington, Forence Nightingale, Phyllis Wheatley, Agatha Christie, Pearl S. Buck

GENERALS-"Stonewall" Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton

ARTISTS-John Singleton Copley, Andrew Wyeth, Rembrandt Peale, Claude Monet, Ansel Adams

AUTHORS-Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Irving Berlin, Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis

COMPOSERS-Anton Bruckner, Felix Mendelssohn, Amadeus Mozart, Francis Poulenc

PREACHERS & MISSIONARIES-John & Charles Wesley, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, William Carey, Dwight L. Moody, John Newton, Hudson Taylor

CHIEF JUSTICES U.S. SUPREME COURT-John Rutledge, John Jay, John Marshall

DIVERSELY TALENTED-Blaise Pascal, Booker T. Washington, Thomas Edison,Benjamin Franklin,Andrew Carnegie, John Stuart Mill

http://sharebradenton.homestead.com/famous.html

Most of the people here who are actually in favor of this new law have portrayed all home-schooling parents as militant Christians and child molesters. Is it just me, or is that a wee-bit narrow-minded?

And Bean, I'm glad you care about child abuse as much as I do, but you have a poor way of showing it. One, you don't seem to mind that kids are FORCED to attend school. Two, don't confuse pedophiles with child molesters. Some of those kids you want to "defend" are actually the former. If you don't know what I mean, then read my website or my blog.

Anytime that the far left and the far right meet together in the middle, it's probably not that bad.

Those who spoke against home-schooling, above, don't have any idea what they are talking about. Home-schooled kids, on the average, do FAR, FAR better scholastically than kids in public schools (and better than kids in private schools too). They are much sought after by the best universities as applicants.

Also, they are VASTLY less likely to be abused by their parents than are non-home-schooled kids. Home-schooling parents are, on the average, MUCH more concerned about their kids than other parents, and they make more sacrifices for the kids. The parents want the kids to excel academically, spiritually, etc., so they give up the opportunity to have two incomes.

A couple of "old wives' tales" are that home-schooled kids do not "socialize" as well as public/private-schooled kids -- and that they do not excel in sports. These two "whoppers" have been discredited by researchers.