Find a good homeschooling group in your area.  You probably shouldn't try to tackle this by yourself.

My understanding is that a "Charter School" is basically the school district outsourcing to a school run by a company..

Am I correct..?

That is my understanding. They get smeared by big unions because they fire bad teachers and pay good teachers more.

K12 is good supplemented by a good homeschool co-op.  Govt schools suck, we HS'd for years then moved to a less offensive district for a couple of years.  One of ours has asked to return to HS so we'll be doing it again next year. You can cover enough curriculum in 3 hours as they do in 7 hours of makework at PS, plus the kids get the sleep they need.  All of my kids were offered a grade bump when we entered PS from HS and neither the wife or I have a teaching certificate.

We do m12 for my 6 year old. Basically we use its curriculum to meet the State requirements. In Arizona it is free and they send you all the materials. The teachers don't harass you too much. It takes us about an hour to and hour and a half to go through each night. You have to learn what to skip and what to expand on depending on your child's intelligence level. I can tell when she is bored or if she knows the material already. So if she is stomping the work, I know to make it a little harder to be a little more challenging for her.

Previously we had her in a Montessori. It was okay, but I have seen more improvement with k12 than with Montessori. K12 also doesn't cost me 4-5 grand a year. "But the tax write off!" Bullshit. I was lucky to get back 600 bucks at my income level.

You have to go beyond the work provided to be an effective teacher. If you're doing carpentry, involve them. Show them the problem solving skills that they will never learn in school. Fire up YouTube and have them practice drawing with the free lessons that are on there.

As for not having social interaction, involve them in events they like. The social interaction they'll get in public school hell is mostly negative.

OP,





You can do it. We pulled our oldest out of school 15 years ago when he was done with 1st grade. Our other 2 have only been home schooled.





Oldest was duel enrolled in the local state college in high school. Had all his core college done before he graduated high school. He is going on 20, started his own business when he was 18 and loves his Job. Is now married to his home schooled sweetheart. Did I mention he made the local varsity bb team as a freshman and scored a 1760 the first time he tool the SAT as a sophomore.





#2 has a totally different learning style, but has done well once we figured it out. Also on VS bb as a freshmen, and just made pitcher of the year as sophomore.





#3 is a combo of the other two's learning styles.





The biggest thing is to TRY different materials. What works for your oldest may not work well for your youngest. Find a Co-op and you can trade and buy used curriculum cheaply to try it.





Don't listen to all the BS about socialization either. We are constantly complimented on how well behaved/mature/polite our kids are. It is what you make of it. Public schools are a waste of time for education, too much socialization going on. One thing you may find is that your kids socialize better with kids 2+ years older then they are after you get a few years of home schooling under your belt.
It was the best choice we have ever made for our children. Your children
can get all their school work done in about 3 hours without all the
distractions and drama of the public schools.





The best part....





Hunting, Fishing, and going to the range are all FIELD TRIPS.

 

OP, you can do this!  And your kids will be better off for it.

My wife and I fired the public school system many years ago.  They were unfit to properly educate my two children, not to mention the agendas they relentlessly pushed.  Both are in college, both did extremely well on the ACT, both got partial academic scholarships.

My wife and I are nothing special, but with a large investment of time, we were able to educate our kids FAR better than the public school system ever dreamed.  Best decision I ever made.

Best of luck sir, feel free to PM me if you have questions.

I have a family member who was "bitten" by this earlier this year.  His son finished the 2nd grade last year with great grades including reading.  No issues were ever brought up during parent/teacher conferences either.  But this year he had to prepare for the Mississippi reading test and he was barely reading at a first grade level on the first practice test.  The parents worked all year and he passed the test this year and can move on to the 4th grade.  They have said they won't let this happen again.

As far as Arkansas schools go, I graduated 3rd in my class from the 4th or 5th worst high school in the state based on the first year the rankings came out.  Based on these rankings, the few schools with lower rankings were consolidated with the nearest school.  My 11th grade English teacher barely spoke English.  She spoke a dialect that you would hear on the street.

Which school district are you in?  It sounds like somewhere on the east side of the state.

When we have kids we're going to do the same thing - We might introduce them at HS time just so that they can get to know some more people before they head off to college.

A charter school may or may not be different from a public school. In some places they are funded from sources removed from the public school. and they may operate under some different rules and requirements from a public school. Some of these different rules may allow the charter to fire teachers, or pay the good ones more, hence why sometimes the unions want them gone.

In NY, a caution about the magic of charter schools should come from the fact that our beloved left wing governor Cuomo is in favor of them - some postulate its because his big money donots stand to make a lot of $ from privatizing education.

In the end, private, faith based, public, home schooled - what matters is the quality of the teacher your child has, and how YOU help your kid focus and funnel their learning.

1. Find / Recruit subject matter experts that align with your educational goals.  Think about hiring a piano teacher, except you are hiring an english or math teacher and they will be longer sessions.  Retired teachers are a place to start.  There is also a cottage industry of really talented people offering teaching services to homeschoolers.  

2. Declare your family "homeschoolers".  This will enable you to avoid truancy prosecution.  Procedure varies by state.  

3. Get plugged in with other like minded homeschool families.  There are more in your area than you ever imagined.  Combine with like minded families on certain subjects to hire teachers / tutors and spread out the cost.  Based on my limited experience I am certain good teachers are going to migrate away from public schools and into this model because they can make a lot more money and they can deal with kids and parents that really want to learn.  

4. you will quickly come to realize that desite your new liberated and flexible schedule there is not near enough time in the day to take advantage of all the learning opportunities there are available.  Focus on whats core and important to you and your education goals for the kids.  You will also be spending far less money per year than a private school, especially if you co-op with a few other families.  

I have been doing the above four years now.  The Math and Science teacher we hired speaks only Spanish to our co-op of 7 kids and three families.  Opps, what do you know!?  The kids all speak spanish now.  We have a retired english teacher that come in twice a week and works with the kids in two different age groups.  She is old school.  Hard core grammar and spelling.  She is also doing some history and civics.  All of the older kids (8-10years old) are required to pass the US immigration test; she reasons they should be at least as civics minded as any legal immigrant.  My oldest is going to join a small group for the next 5 years that will focus on leadership, classics and writing.  Lots of writing.  They will read hundreds of classics in the coming years. We have Music teacher that comes in and teaches Piano, Voice, and drums.  Today we had a parent come in and work with the older kids on graphing in excel.  One of the older boys has joined a coding club and is learning programming.  The possibilities are endless.  

As for social skills?  We got invited to attend a private school in Panama based on some interviews and (the older kids) writing (in spanish).  So my daughter is absolutely giddy at the prospect of attending three months of school in a foreign country in her non native language next year.  She also joined a three hour a week Chinese / Buddhist school so she can learn Chinese.  She is the only caucasian in the class and its all in Chinese; true immersion.  Tell me again about confidence and social skills?  

If anyone is serious about building such a model I am happy to share info.  PM me.  

Bradley county, tomato country. So what does that tell you?

What?

best decision I have ever made and wish I had done it far sooner.

Exactly what we did.
Kids are 9 and 11 now. Sometimes they have their assignments done before I get up.
They got finished early yesterday so we had film appreciation class (I Am Legend).

www.khanacademy.org  This site is great for math and science.

They have to get a GED or HSED.   Easy if your homeschool curriculum is rigorous enough.   BTW most colleges and universities will also require the GED and HSED if homeschooled, and if they are looking to go to a high end college, that better be with honors (that also exists), and their ACT or SAT scores better be very high.   Those colleges/universities will also require writing samples and other samples of work.

Ok, I have to point this out.  Your kid is 11, and can barely read?  WTF?  Mine is in Kindergarten (6) and reads her little brother stories at night after we read to them.  YOU have a responsibility to teach your kids just as much as a school does.  It is not a one stop shop, it's a baby sitting service that teaches a few things.  You need to be filling in that other 16 hours a day with something educational.  It seems you realize your error, I hope for the kids' sake that you start making an effort.

HaM

K12 or any variation of is often hard for a new homeschooler without proper support (parent groups eiither online or IRL)
It is a good start if you are nervous about teaching but they still hold to the government rules about time spent in each subject which is where it gets hard for many homeschoolers

Check again. I know of at least 2 homeschooled kids who went on to the Air Force academy and are now serving officers.

I may have exaggerated a little. He can read, but not as well as I expect MY 11 year old should be reading. Let's just say he only reads better than 50 percent of arfcom.

Schools should be 24 hours a day, triple concertina wire, armed guards on catwalks with shitty food. Tests for children should be real life, like how fast can you can hotwire or rip a radio out of a car.

Public school summarized in a gif.

It is probably better than any district in Chicot county.

I don't have kids, but if I did, I would look into homeschooling them PROPERLY.
I have relatives a few years younger than me that homeschooled their last few years of highschool, and they are a mess.
They pretty much just ran around smoking dope, and one even died from OD.

My 6 year old daughter is in kindergarten at a charter school.  The school is the #1 ranked charter school here in PA.  Best decision my wife and I made in terms of my daughter's education.  The class size is 26 students and we had to apply for a lottery to get my daughter into the school.

The school has over 5 million dollars in scholarships for this year's senior class.  They help students find a lot of scholarship money, considering there is only 50-70 students in the senior class.

OP, only you and your wife can make that decision for your kids.

Just keep in mind that people always give themselves way too much credit and think their kids are so smart as another poster already stated.

My friend's wife has a teaching degree and she home schools her kids.  No offense to my friend, but his kids are dumb as rocks, so home schooling isn't helping them and their social skills are lacking.

That's true.

OP, we have home schooled for 7 years so far.  What a GOOD DECISION!!!!  so glad we did.  2 kids are ahead of their class and damn smart.  Th one child that needed extra help GOT IT from us.

don't look back.  

I went to my public school 20 year high school reunion just to find out a lot of people were failures of various degrees. Some in prison, some strung out on drugs, some still working at burger king, some working on their fourth or fifth marriage. Also, it's home schooled. Not " home schools". So, whats your damn point?

We just finished year 6 of home schooling. The hardest/greatest thing about it is that there is no 'best' curriculum. There are many great curriculums and each child will benefit from different learning styles. Also, none of them are perfect, and we've tried many didn't ones over the years to adjust for each child.

We started out with Classical Conversations and did that for a few years. Although we don't still use the classical method (we have switched to connections academy due to some life changes) it was a great way to get started. My wife is a former high school math teacher, and very qualified. She works her butt off making homeschool a success. Our three small kids are sharp. It really stinks when you can't spell things to your wife and get away with it because your 5 year old yells out what you're spelling.

As far as socialization, whoever said that your child is a reflection of you is dead on. I make a habit of talking to my kids about the stuff I've seen during my career in law enforcement. It gives ME the opportunity to advise them on how to navigate the trash in this world, not some punk in the local 5th public school room. My kids are plugged-in in local sports, COOP, and other extracurriculars. Neighbors (some of who teach at the local public school) love to ask them out for ice cream or just have them over because even at 6, 8, and 11 they carry on conversations like adults.

I say good move OP. Every time my wife and I ask ourselves if we can do it another year we always say, are they worth it?

In what way?  is it they can't actually hold a conversation or are they simply not interested in things that you think a child of their age should be interested in.  

Again the whole social skills argument against home schooling is a load of garbage.  Plenty of government school students  lack the basic ability to hold an adult conversation.  unless of course it consists of "yous wan frys wit tat?"

Exactly who has stated that their children are smarter then any other children?  oh that would be you.  The one who apparently is anti home schooling.


In my opinion all children have the ability to succeed beyond what many of them do, mine are no smarter then children of anyone else, they simply have had the opportunity to learn in an environment that was not a prison and I refused to turn them over to communist.

I have dealt with more then just your few anecdotal home schooled children and by and large they are able to hold actual conversations.  one young man is autistic.  if left to the government agents this boy would be more worried about the peoples court then he is what he actually does worry about which is doing a good job for his employer working apartment maintenance,  sure he is a little slow.  but he catches on fast, because he had opportunities his parents gave him because they took 100% responsibility to teach him.  this boy has a full time job and a nice car, insurance and he controls his own budget. he would have never received what he needed from the government schools.

but please continue to believe that the only good parents are the ones who turn their children over for someone else to raise.

This. The percentage of "socially maladjusted" kids exiting public school is, well, a travesty. We home-school our boys as well, they are well on their way to being comfortable and conversant with adults of all types. They also are already reading better than most.......and they're not even 10 yet.

I was home-schooled. Seemed to work out OK. My experience, C.V., and range of tech skills aren't bad for a poor rural kid. Started with nothing, never taken any loans, and sole income source for my family. Oh, and somehow I will have managed to earn a science Ph.D. a year from now if all goes as planned. The funny part is, I'm known for being a good communicator of my field of research to groups of all types.

I'll stomp on the "maladjusted" stereotype for home-schooled kids every chance I get. If the typical college undergrad is the "best" that public school is turning out, I really hate to see what the rest look like. Future not looking bright, gents.

Charter schools are an improvement over government run schools and they have noticeably higher graduation rates. http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/17/study-charter-high-schools-have-7-11-higher-graduation-rates-than-their-public-school-peers/

They are typically only opposed by big government progressives who support the teachers unions who don't think bad public teachers should be fired.

That's why your thread doesn't make much sense.

Based on half a century of research from the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, human infants are born basically with a genius level ability to learn, unless they suffer from brain injuries of some sort.  That's how the Institues actually started, researching ways to help brain-injured children learn to read, talk, walk, and perform other basic tasks.

What they learned right away was that infants learn faster than 1yr-olds, and 1yr-olds learn faster than 2yr-olds, and so forth.  This moved them to devise learning methods based on optic nerve and brain function parameters that were geared for the early infancy and early childhood years.

What ended up happening was the creation of a learning system that proved highly effective in teaching very young people how to read, do math, and truly enjoy learning.  I wish I had known about it earlier, because my youngest kids are 2 and 3 now, so we're having a lot of fun with it, but could have had them reading on their own already by now.

What ends up happening in schooling systems, which are mostly behavioral subservience prisons for conditioning a sheepulace, is that they crush your natural desire to learn.  We take wonderful little human beings with bright eyes and dreams, then school them into submission for 12+ years until they are dumbed down into barely-functional human consumer units that operate in a groupthink, collective mindset.

We can do so much better than that.  This is America, for heaven's sakes.  My daughters get excited when we do the little reading sessions developed by IAHP.  I'm using their methods for early reading development, and it's just a lot of fun, really.  The sessions are really short, using 22x6" flashcards with huge letters on them for their first words, since they discovered that kids don't understand abstract ideas like alphabet letters.  It is much more productive to start with complete words, and blow through the cards in short sessions that leave them hanging, wanting more, never overwhelming them.

You show the cards for only fractions of a second, since they will get bored if you go slow and hold them there for a second or more.  Once you work through a large set of words, you go to couplets, then word games with 3 words where they can play with them and make silly sentences.  Then you move on to making their own books with them, where they use their words to form their own simple story.  The transition to reading from that point is very fast, since they have been doing it really from the start by seeing the flashcards.

This method has been proven over and over to the tune of hundreds of thousands of case studies, with the same type of parent feedback since the 1960's.  About The Institutes

My wife talked me into home schooling our boys this year for kindergarten. I was very skeptical at first but became beyond sold by mid year.

We do CLASSICAL CONVERSATIONS along with a co-op that meets every Tuesday for class.

People are awesome, curriculum is unreal. My son is 4 and he's already reading, knows more history than I do and is beginning to speak a fair amount of Latin. I can't tell you how glad I am my wife was persistent.

Here's a random weeks lessons. Keep in mind, he's 4.

ETA: He got an award for subject master in history and Latin which means he was able to answer 100% of the years review by memory.

When I was on the fence I said to a friend, I'm worried about him not socializing with kids his age at school. His response was have you seen how kids his age act in public school?

Right, noted.

first time im hearing someone doesn't want a charter school. rather have a charter school than a standard public union school

But

In some cases you cannot blame the teachers. I was recently talking to my kids school 3rd grade teacher (wanted him for my daughter next year) and he is leaving. Apparently in my school district they grade the teachers on performance based on the kids showing up to school. I don't care who you are but that's one fucked up policy. In addition in my state when it comes to low incomes schools (mine is one of them) there is less consequences (almost non existent) for delinquent students.

Ha!! Seeing your photos reminded me of all the timeline songs my kids would sing. The hardest part is not looking like an idiot when your 7 year old says, hey dad, can you recite all the presidents in order or can you help me with this Latin?

We got a bad ass over here.

He removed the part that said I was a liberal democrat. The charter school thing didn't make any difference here. I guess in areas with higher populations it works because you all say it's wonderful.

Completely incorrect for Florida.





Colleges are recruiting home school students because most (those who are not home schooled because they were kicked out of PS) are hard working, self motivated, and there to learn.





Even the public schools try and push the home schoolers into taking the standardized tests at the school so they get a bumped up average with them included in the mix.



ETA: my oldest was contacted his senior year by a bunch of "high end colleges" as you put it, including a couple of Ivy league with no initiation on our part.
 

I find myself singing those goofy songs at work.

Don't get so uptight sparky.  You home school, good for you that you feel that home schooling is best for your family.  What works for one family may not work for another.

I went to public school and I'm fine...and my wife went to a Catholic school and she's fine as well.  This is BS "please continue to believe that the only good parents are the ones who turn their children over for someone else to raise." even though you have your opinion.  You can think what you want, but you really need to get off of your soapbox, sparky.

Concur, sir.  This matches our recent experiences finding the proper colleges for our two.  Far from being the problem we expected, prospective colleges from Texas to West Virginia were excited to hear that they were homeschooled.  Moods in the admissions office improved noticeably when they found out we homeschooled. GED and SAT scores were all that were required.  However, both had very good SAT scores, so that may have had something to do with the school's enthusiasm.  

By the way OP, look up Home School Legal Defense Association, HSLDA.  Membership is very cheap, and the legal protections they afford you are INCREDIBLE.  While my wife and I never had issues with truancy officers or school administrators, several of our good friends did.  HSLDA are absolute pit bulls when defending you....very sharp group.  Worth every penny you will spend.

As time goes on, reputable institutions of higher learning are going to look more and more for home-educated kids, because the proof is in the pudding.

As schooled children devolve lower and lower into illiteracy in English, math, and are already clueless about science, there simply isn't anything to work with in a university where high achievement is the norm.

Ask a high school graduate what the scientific method is, for example.  Ask them basic facts about the United States, world geography, rivers, commerce, military power, three branches of government.

Precious few will be able to answer.

Some friends of mine are professors of law at BYU.  They say it is getting measurably worse every year with new students.

They don't know the US has three branches of government, what those branches are, the Bill of Rights?, let alone a basic understanding of the framework of the US Court System, due process, etc.

BYU is extremely difficult to get into and stay in.  It isn't your local community college with liberal arts galore.  It's an esteemed university with heavy foreign competition for attendance.  One of these friends of ours clerked on the Supreme Court, and went to Harvard Law after graduating summa cum laude from the University of Utah, was the first female law student to graduate top of her class at Harvard, and the first woman to graduate summa cum laude.  She was also on the Harvard Law Review and several other journals at Harvard.

It is alarming to hear that students who have graduated high school, and are cream of the crap to be admitted into BYU Law, don't know basic high school civics lessons we learned in 8-10th grades in the 1980's.  Does anyone seriously believe that public school is going to be able to fix this mess?  They are one of the prime causes of this.

The way it was explained to my wife is it's not her job to know everything and recite the information to my son like public school. Her job is to teach him how to learn it himself and help him foster the skills that make him able to teach himself from information provided.

There's a book. Let's learn how to learn from it. Not remember these things and repeat them back on test day so we don't lose funding.

This man gets it.  Doctor Ben Carson, a world-renowned brain surgeon known for successfully separating conjoined twins at the head, grew up in poverty with an illiterate mother who required him to do book reports all the time.  She made funny little marks and smiley faces next to random sentences in his reports, and encouraged him to read voraciously.  He never knew she couldn't read.  He attributes her encouragement and discipline as one of the fundamental keys to his success.

that's an easy thing to say, but not so easy to accomplish, especially in science.  imagine teaching your child to shoot in that fashion, or telling a drill instructor that his job is to teach young soldiers how to learn instead of how to recite everything.  it's good to teach him how to learn from different resources, but there are a lot of elements that need to be directly instructed and drilled, because those represent the foundation for all future learning. reading is a trivial but fundamental example of this--you can 'help a child learn' to read on his own, or you can sit down and teach him phonics.  the latter will have far better results, and will benefit all his future learning endeavors.

why is it hotter in the summer and colder in the winter?  when i teach this particular concept in earth science, the young college students in my lab have already read it in the textbook, and read it in the lab manual.  but many of them are still confused, even the bright ones.  after all that reading and confusion on their part, it normally takes me about 3 minutes with a flashlight and a white board to get the idea across.  the most common response from students is "oh, that was easier than i thought".  go look up any mathematical theorem (say, the central limit theorem) on wiki, and ask yourself honestly how long it would take you to "learn that on your own".  my quantitative analysis professor got our heads around the CLT in 45 minutes.

IMO, the single most important piece of language in a teacher's vocabulary is "it's kind of like this...", followed by a metaphor.  analogy is how our brain functions--we look at a new thing, and immediately start comparing it with already-familiar things to try to find similarities.  the best role of a teacher is to clarify the basic concepts, and to help the student make connections that he wouldn't have made on his own.  

so i agree that it's not a teacher's job to know everything.  but the teacher has to have enough of a grasp on the subject matter to start creating analogies.  if the teacher lacks this grasp, dumping all the responsibility back on the student is a cop-out--an abdication of the teacher's responsibility.  the solution is to find a teacher that is equipped to instruct the material.

this is where programs like the one i mentioned are invaluable for the homeschooler.