(Andy) As an intro here are 3 links
I think a time is coming when we will not be as free to home school as we have been so far. Our problem is that there are not enough of us in an area to have any real influence over a school, but with a Cyber-school, locality wouldn't be a factor and so enough families could get together. Such a school would be able to adapt itself as the legal situation changes.
There must be more, please add your thoughts, either here in the text or below in comments...
The main thing is, there are enough home-ed families in Ireland as a whole to be able to be strong enough to defeat any attempt by the state to force us to put children into one of their schools, but only if we are prepared before t happens. If they make a move while we are still as we are now, we won't have a chance and what happened in Germany and other places will happen to us.
The fact that children all over the world are already attending cyber-schools, including in places where home-education is declared 'illegal' is encouraging.
This is just fantasy figures, but it gives an idea of the power we have, if we choose to exercise it together. Just around Cork we now have 33 families that we know of, so there are probably 40. There are 36 counties in Ireland. Each family could afford 20 euros a month. Assume one family in 3 decides to use the cyber school.
40 familes x 32 counties = 1280 families (in line with estimates I have read)
assume about one third uptake, and only one child in each, that's about 500 families.
500x20 euros = 10,000 euros a month. That's 120,000 a year.
So, with very conservative estimates, we could have 120,000 euros a year. We have power when we are together. It may not sound like much for a school, but remember we have eliminated at least a million euros for the building.
David W. Kirkpatrick www.schoolreport.com
Cyber Charter Schools
Until about 20 years ago there were no charter schools in the
United States. Today there are more than 4,500 with total enrollments
approaching perhaps 2,000,000. Such growth is significant by itself but numbers
alone don't show the degree of innovation in the movement. Here are some,
partially drawn from Better Value, Fewer Taxpayer Dollars, a December report
from Vermont's Ethan Allen Institute.
The most unusual, found largely in the charter school movement
but generally ignored, if not actively opposed by traditional public school
districts, are what are known as virtual or cyber schools. Twenty-five
states now have students who are educated through various virtual charter
schools. An unusual and major example is the Florida Virtual School, founded
in 1997 which is said to now enroll 100,000 students.
The Florida Virtual School, as is typical of charter schools, is
a public one. Another particular example that shows the potential
advantage of virtual schooling for a district whose board and superintendent are
open to meaningful change has been created in Midland, Pennsylvania. In 2000
this was a declining steel town in which the school district had
discontinued its own high school because of lack of students. For some time Midland
had contracted with other local districts but the situation changed when
the only neighboring district in the county that would continue such an
arrangement would only do so on a year by year contract with no assurance of
continuing to do so. For a time Midland had the distinction of not only
being a district with no high school but one that had to send its students
across the state line into Ohio where a public district agreed to take their
students.
This worked for a time but the arrangement was less than ideal.
In 2000 Midland opened its own virtual school, the Pennsylvania Cyber
School. Originally thought of as a service for its own school-age students the
school has witnessed astounding growth far beyond anything anticipated by
the local board or superintendent.
Today the PA Cyber School has a 250-course online curriculum to
nearly 8,000 K-12 students across the state, 75% of them in the target 9-12
grades. It has 230 full- and part-time teachers with a teacher-pupil ratio
of better than 30-to-1. Most unusual, or literally even unique, in
2006-07 the school met all 21 of the No Child Left Behind Annual Yearly Progress
(AYP) targets. Perhaps somewhere a traditional public school district can
match this but none can surpass a 100% success rate. It's said that barely
half of traditional public schools qualify for AYP.
Success of a somewhat different but still impressive order is the
independent non-sectarian Oak Meadow School, based in Brattleboro
(Vermont)...founded in 1975, it now enrolls approximately 1,000 students
throughout the United States and in several foreign countries. The students are
about evenly divided between K-8 and high school, with graduates from high
school being invited to a formal graduation ceremony held in Vermont each June.
Oak Meadow is accredited through the Middle States Association of
Colleges and Schools and also the Commission on International and
Trans-regional Accreditation, which insures that the work of its students
throughout the world will be recognized by other schools, colleges, and universities.
The Oak Meadow curriculum is the result of over 30 years
experience with distance-learning students, research into proven educational
principles, and the creative efforts of numerous teachers and talented curriculum
developers. Its educational philosophy is based upon four principles of
learning: maintain rigorous academic standards, involve the whole child,
cooperate with students natural developmental stages, and adapt to each
student's unique learning style.
With this educational philosophy as a guide, Oak Meadow is
committed to regular curriculum revisions and improvements built on rigorous
academic standards. Teachers take an active role in curriculum revisions,
based upon their experiences with students. To graduate, students complete a
wide variety of required and elective courses. For advanced high school
students, over 25 Advanced Placement and computer technology courses provide a
depth of study and additional college preparation.
While not all charter schools are as innovative or successful as
these they show what is possible when charter school laws are viewed as
opportunities not obstacles.
The person I found out about these schools from is Dave, who puts out "The School Report" I have forwarded to the list a couple of times. I asked him for where to get advice and he said:
Andy: The most knowledgeable person I know is Wayne Jennings in St. Paul,
Minnesota. You might want to check his website, for some background. I
believe its _www.designlearn.net_ (http://www.designlearn.net) . His email
address is _wayne@designlearn.net_ (mailto:wayne@designlearn.net) . Feel
free to say I suggested you contact him. We've known each other for years.
Dave
If someone is up for writing to him I'd be grateful, not sure why but I'd prefer not to myself!
If we got this together, we'd be in charge of the school, and individual families who ended up disagreeing with parts of the curriculum, but in the minority, would be able to keep that out of their own. As John Taylor Gatto said, you could teach everything that schools teach in an entire school life in just one year, so the kids wouldn't be on the computer all day. Most time at school is wasted, and I reckon even two hours a day would be a lot.
I had a Japanese girl staying at my place in Brighton for a couple of years. She couldn't get a visa, being non-EU, but didn't want to go back, so she worked cash-in-hand, and paid for a course at a local language school, just to get the visa. She never actually went. Know what I'm sayin?! The school didn't care because they got their money, and the 'authorities' didn't care cos they got to stamp their silly forms and go home.