Here’s one option you may not have considered: homeschooling.

Before I tell you what homeschooling is, let me tell you what it is not. Homeschooling is not the “easy option.” Homeschooling students, while they often feel a greater sense of freedom (and usually attend classes for a smaller portion of the day than traditional school students), generally are self-starters…they have a strong sense of discipline. They take the initiative and play a larger role in directing their own education.

Homeschooling is pretty much what it sounds like – you’ll follow an educational curriculum at home and a parent will act as your supervisor. You will be involved in choosing and directing your education. This requires a greater sense of responsibility, but the payoff is huge: imagine being able to focus your studies on your interests. For example, do you love earth science? With homeschooling, you can pursue your passions to a much greater degree than with traditional schooling and you aren’t limited to a local school curriculum or the activities it offers. Your options are limited only by your imagination. This is one of the reasons why homeschooling is a great option for super-creative students.

Another reason homeschooling may be right for you is the way you learn. Homeschooling allows students to find and adopt the methods of learning that work best for them, instead of relying on whatever method a teacher (or school curriculum) chooses. For instance, are you a visual learner? Do you do best when new concepts aren’t just read aloud or described by a teacher, but are explained in writing or through images? Perhaps you’re a hands-on learner who excels by doing. Imagine trying to learn to swim from a book. Homeschooling makes learning a lot less stressful and a lot more fun!

Many students worry that homeschooling means never seeing their friends again, but nothing could be further from the truth. Lots of students who homeschool keep their same friends. In addition, with so many additional activities available to them outside a traditional school setting, homeschool students are likely to meet and make more friends than many traditional school students. Homeschoolers have the best of all worlds… friends without the bullying or drama! If you are a social creature, homeschooling is not a problem!

When you are considering what school will be best for you, put homeschooling into the mix! With less peer pressure, shorter school days, more choices when it comes to activities & sports, and the ability to take advantage of your preferred learning style, homeschooling is a great way to complete your education!

What are the most important things to you when thinking about changing schools?

1. Socialization
Friends are important…there’s no doubt about it. One of the biggest concerns parents have about letting their children homeschool is whether you will have enough interaction with others your age. While it’s largely a myth that you’ll be locked inside – forever – with only email or IM linking you to other human beings, homeschooling students need to take that extra step to make and keep new friends. You’ll need to get involved with outside activities in the community and sports programs.

2. Discipline
All those things we mentioned above – sleeping in, eating during class, finishing early – forget all of that. Whether you go to school or school comes to you, there’s plenty of work to be done. Instead of waiting for everyone in the classroom to understand the material, classes will move at your pace. That means once you understand the Pythagorean Theorem and the law of cosines it’s time to move on…you won’t get a chance to rest while you wait for the rest of class to catch up! The good news? You’ll never be bored, and you’ll get an amazing education!

3. Learning Style
Everyone learns differently, and everyone sees things differently. Some students learn best visually – seeing it on the blackboard, reading it in a book, looking at pictures or drawings. Others prefer auditory learning…listening to the teacher lecture, hearing them repeat the material over and over again. Many prefer tactile learning in which hands-on demonstrations – like labs – are the best way for them to learn new material. Unfortunately, schools – even the very best schools – have a limited amount of time to teach the curriculum to the students, which means you may not be taught in your preferred learning style. With a custom-tailored homeschool education, your learning style is identified and you get your education delivered in the best way for you.

4. A New Way of Learning
Sometimes, being able to see what you’ve been learning practiced in the real world can make a huge difference. It can also connect you to the material in a meaningful way, which makes learning more interesting. Maybe you don’t find reading about Picasso engrossing….but a trip to the local museum to actually see his work changes your perspective about his work and place in history. Live near Washington DC? The Smithsonian can be a huge resource! Studying history? Going to Valley Forge National Park (or Boston Harbor…or Donner Pass) brings the coursework to life in ways no classroom lecture can.

Homeschooling is all about receiving a top-notch education that best fits your needs. It requires a good deal of self-discipline, but it can be very rewarding. Most importantly, it is very flexible…since it’s all about you!

What is most important to you in choosing a school?

With Federal and State funding drying up, schools are planning for the worst and cutting programs. Remember art? How about home economics? Or geography? With all of the hoopla surrounding implementation of No Child Left Behind , many schools have already eliminated some of the important subjects we all experienced as children: science, social studies, music…you name it. It seems that everything except reading, writing and arithmetic was long ago left on the barber shop floor.

And that’s very bad news, because with so much already cut out of your child’s education, what else is there to take away? For many public school students, lunch already means two slices of bread and a piece of cheese, no paper or pencils and limited school nurse availability. So what’ll be next to go?

In fact, the news is that the situation is slated to get even worse as September rolls around and the last of the federal stimulus money that was handed out in 2009-2010 is spent. Florida will see a 10% cut in K-12 education spending. Ohio will see a 5-6% cut. New York City’s mayor is proposing laying off 5% of schoolteachers, while the State of Texas worries that a stunning 65,000 school employees could be laid off. Few – if any – states have been spared.

Recessions typically bring about austerity measures, but what’s the bottom line for your child’s education? How austere can we make our education system before our children (and tomorrow’s leaders) wind up as bad at math as the people who got us into this mess?

If your children are in public school, here are four ways you and your child’s education may be impacted:

1. Parents will need to plan on being a teacher from 3:00 p.m. until bedtime.
Yes – it already feels like that’s what you’ve been doing, but it’s probably going to get worse. With layoffs, class sizes will increase. That means teachers are going to have their hands full just managing classrooms. Kids will start seeing new material at homework time – instead of in the classroom – so parents will have to step up to the plate as teachers.

2. Don’t count on after-school activities to serve as a babysitter.
All those nifty activities the kids love to join, like sports and the Dinosaur Club? Many will go the way of dinosaurs and become extinct. After-school programs are almost always the first thing to go when the budgets get crunched.

3. No one is special anymore.
There are many kids out there who have special needs, whether it’s a learning disability, a physical disability or behavioral issues. These special needs programs have already been trimmed over the last few years. You should expect even more cuts and you’ll need to start looking for other ways to help your children.

4. No child will be left behind….much.
Unless the laws are changed, the requirements for No Child Left Behind will still need to be met. Teachers will continue to teach for the tests, with the bulk of the focus on reading and math. Instead of delivering well-rounded, educated students to higher learning institutions, our children will only receive the bare minimum in education.

Budgets reflect those things that we – as a society – deem worthy of our tax dollars. In 2010, we spent $15 billion less as a nation on education, even as our educational system continued to weaken. What does this say about how our nation views our children’s futures?

How will you help to expand your children’s education in spite of the education system cuts?

Between the bullying, the teasing, the constant competition, and those classmates who seem to switch from friend to hater overnight, the pressure can be overwhelming. And it can hurt — a lot.

You aren’t alone. In fact, many middle- and high school students report feeling depressed and anxious because of school. The stress of learning is bad enough…who deserves to be picked on too?

Have you ever considered homeschooling? Forget whatever it is you think homeschooling is all about. Homeschoolers aren’t the weird kids that everyone picks on…they’re just like you and me (but maybe a lot more confident and happy).

Homeschoolers tend to excel in school because they learn using the methods that work best for them, instead of how students are forced to learn in public school. Some people prefer to learn by reading while others do better with a hands-on approach. With homeschooling, you don’t have to deal with the stress of struggling to keep up or doubting yourself in front of everyone else in the classroom.

Here are a few of the self-esteem building advantages of homeschooling you may have never thought of!

1. Dress the way you want – there’s no peer pressure to wear the latest (and let’s be honest, sometimes ridiculous) fashion!
2. No bullying or teasing during school (unless your horrible brother is acting mean again).
3. You’ve still got your friends…and you can still take part in after-school activities and sports, without the stress. You’ll also meet new friends doing activities that you are interested in. There’s nothing better than having friends who share your interests!

When you do well in school and don’t have to deal with the bullying, peer pressure and stress, your self-esteem soars! Homeschooling happens in the real world, where you can forget about fitting in or being the butt of jokes. You can concentrate on living your life and becoming the person you want to be.

What do you think hurts your self-esteem most at school?

Ever since NCLB was signed into law, there has been a public outcry about its value. The objections have become deafening as we rapidly approach the 2014 deadline. From where we sit now, unfortunately, it looks like our national public school system could very well be headed for a 100% failure rate in just three years.

So what happened? Why did No Child Left Behind end up leaving so many children behind? Well, here are three reasons:

1. “Show Me the Money”
NCLB was chronically underfunded from the get-go. Each year it was in effect, the program generally received at least $6 or $7 billion less than requested. During some years, NCLB received as much as $20 billion less than was needed to run the program effectively. Fast forward to 2011: with states slashing educational funding to make up for budget shortfalls, our public schools are hurting…and there’s no end in sight to the crisis.

2. “Teaching to the Test”
NCLB’s “test-and-punish” policy has led to a school system in which education takes a back seat to test scores. Schools no longer have a vested interest in helping educate kids. Rather, those children whose scores are bringing down a school’s test score average are encouraged to go elsewhere in order to raise the school’s overall average.

Because NCLB mandates punitive measures for failing schools and schools that fail to demonstrate improvement, teachers have been forced to focus classroom instruction on just English and Math skills to boost test scores. School systems are choosing to ignore science, history, the arts and humanities. Many teachers believe that this practice distorts education, and hurts our children. I agree – it leaves our children far behind in many subjects that are key to our country’s long-term success.

3. “No Solution to the Problem”
The solutions to poor school performance offered up by the NCLB legislation are one-size-fits-all fixes. And we all know that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all anything! In fact, these “solutions” may even make poor performance worse. The problems our nations’ schools face tend to be complex, with local, cultural and demographic aspects. However, the NCLB requires school districts to apply the exact same set of solutions in each school that fails to meet its goals, regardless of the school’s unique circumstances.

Far from making every American child proficient in math and reading, the NCLB and our public schools have ended up crafting an educational system that is bankrupting our school systems. All of this hurts our children’s’ education – and by extension their futures.

It isn’t all bad, however – there actually is a bright spot. What NCLB exposed was the very real achievement gaps that exist among minority and low-income students. What is frustrating for us educators is that the law doesn’t help correct the problem, it merely shines a light on it.

As educators continue sizing up the impact of NCLB in the classroom, some are looking at other indicators and trends. Private schools have seen sluggish growth, likely due to rising tuition costs. Homeschooling – on the other hand – grew 74% between 2000 and 2007, highlighting growing parental concerns with America’s school system.

How has NCLB impacted your child’s education during the past 10 years?

A fun and quick article on why homeschooling should be outlawed.

Click here and enjoy

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In other words, if you want your child to attend pre-school, you must first get him a flu shot.  And kids who don’t get the shot will be banned from attending classes unless parents can prove that their child will receive the shot within two weeks of the law’s deadline.

And it won’t stop there–it will only be a matter of time before the law precludes children from attending public school without a flu shot.

No matter that according to statistics, last year’s flu season was the worst in three years.  Why? Reports state that this was due to the fact that the virus that so many people had injected into their systems was completely ineffective against the flu.

No matter that there are many children who should not get the vaccine–children with certain types of cancer or who are taking drugs that lower the body’s ability to resist infection.  No matter that some studies indicate that the flu shot may be linked to autism. In addition, all recommendations state that children younger than 6 months of age should not get the influenza vaccine.  Will they be exempt?

Perhaps you have no difficulty with giving your child the influenza vaccine.  But at what time did we decide to hand over our right to determine what we will subject our children to to the government?

And what better way for the government to control what we can and cannot do with our children than through the school system?

I personally have experienced the tragedy of a loved one who died as a result of a flu shot gone wrong.  That is not a risk I want to take with my children.

Just another great reason to homeschool-hold onto our rights as parents and have the freedom to choose whether or not to vaccinate our children.

Despite his assertion that “home schooled children . . . are typically badly deficient in science education,” the facts tell another story. In fact, Mr. Lessenberry, statistics indicate the exact opposite:

In 1990, the National Home Education Research Institute issued a report entitled “A Nationwide Study of Home Education: Family Characteristics, Legal Matters, and Student Achievement.” This was a study of over 2,163 homeschooling families.

The study found that the average scores of the homeschool students were at or above the 80th percentile in all categories. The homeschoolers’ national percentile mean was 84th for reading, 80th for language, 81st for math, 84th for science and 83rd for social studies.

He continues with the usual blather . . . homeschoolers aren’t adequately socialized, parents should be qualified to teach, homeschoolers aren’t up to date with computer technology . . .. All of these comments clearly demonstrate his lack of experience with homeschoolers.

Let me provide my responses based on fact, not opinion. Just taking from the last three graduating classes, each year Bridgeway Academy homeschool students have received full scholarships to college, have qualified as national merit scholars, have been highly involved in volunteer efforts, have served local politicians, have established their own businesses while still in high school (including computer services such as programming and web design), have been highly recognized athletes, and have served on the mission field.

These students come from homes of all different backgrounds, but they have two things in common: a desire for excellence and a drive that takes them there.

Are all of Bridgeway’s students this exceptional? No. We also work with struggling students who have not received the help they need from their local public school. We have worked with adults who hit a brick wall personally and financially because they lack a high school diploma and are now motivated to do the work to obtain one. (By the way, every one of the American born adults dropped out of public school–not home school). And we have worked with students who seek an alternative to failing educational system in their local public school. But all of our homeschool students, no matter where they are when they enroll, exceed the standards of their local public school system by the time they graduate from Bridgeway Academy.

Many of our students come from families who seek a strong Biblical foundation for their children. A growing number do not want the Biblical element. Others are looking for a combination of both. Either way, the homeschooling community is much larger than Jack seems to realize.

So what is my point? Despite the uninformed anti-homeschooling blather of people like Jack Lessenberry (who by the way is married to a public school teacher), homeschoolers are sought out by colleges and universities, are impacting their communities and are outdoing their public school counterparts.

Look out public school graduates! The leaders of tomorrow are educated in the homes of today!