(Virginia) Senate panel kills 'Tebow bill' - homeschoolers NOT allowed on public school sports teams

[Igel]

86. "What they espouse" varies. A lot.

Houston had an Afrocentric education homeschooling mini-movement a few years back. Black, secular, and opposed to the Eurocentric history/science/etc. education they got in public schools.

Granted, that is largely anti-science, but let's not go there.

Some are fundie Xian. I knew one fundie Xian who managed to get his kids away from the horrible secular culture that is public school before it could do any harm, when the kid was finishing 8th grade. Four year later the kid was still reading at an 8th grade level and doing math at the 8th grade level. I was pleased: I'd have though 4 years of not reading a single word (apart from street signs and Playboy) would have left him stupider. Another fundie Xian, same church, took her daughter from the last day of 9th grade to the first day of 11th grade. 9th grade GPA was just over 1.0; she had to test to be placed in 11th grade, and they put her in 12th grade. Oops. One year homeschooling, 2 grade levels.

I lost students to homeschooling earlier this year. In one case his father works for NASA as a physicist. The kid's drop-dead smart and messed up his sophomore year. So his parents are going to get him ready for college. They can do it. In another case the daughter just kept not doing her work--smart kid, but out of place in a large school in classes with 28 or 29 other kids, most of whom don't want to be there. She had a 4.0 and it should have been higher.

A lot of homeschoolers are counterculture, still, and don't like the rigid uniformity and obedience to rules that they see in public schools. If the parents are educated and disciplined enough themselves, it works.

I've just lost a lot of kids to homeschooling because of behavior problems. Their parents are yanking them to keep them home and away from their friends. The assumption is that it's their friends that are into drugs and cheating and not the kids so yanked. Tough call from my vantage point. These very much non-fundie and probably not especially Xian parents are just transiting their kids from their senior year to high-school drop-out in a less painless manner.

I also lost a couple of kids because of health issues. There's no way to make up a month of school 3 months before you graduate. The kid comes back for next spring or doesn't graduate--or gets a home-issued diploma. He's already accepted to college, contingent on finishing high school. The home-issued diploma is legally binding.

A junior in my class was pulled out because she's 4 months pregnant and having both health and emotional issues. Homebound won't cover the duration of the pregnancy.

Deciding public policy based on vindictiveness to a subgroup of the population the policy would effect isn't a good policy. Most of these groups don't consider public school sports teams "the enemy." They're your words. Some do, of course, but there are lots of reasons for parents to homeschool their kids.

It can also be a pain to try to organize sports teams. Okay, you organize a basketball team. Where do you practice? Where do you compete?
Hire coaches? Refs? Equipment?

These teams aren't part of the real mission of public schools. Although, granted, in Texas the claim could be made that the public school system exists primarily to support the football teams--I've seen a private school cancel the required weekly chapel for a football game and last summer when there were few job openings in Texas nearly every one had "coach" or "asst. coach" in the job title.