So let me get this straight, EdSurge, which fancies itself the voice of the ed tech revolutionaries is celebrating mega-corporation Pearson’s attention to small ed tech ventures in its new newsletter (which is quite good and free to subscribe to via the link above)? Hmmm guys, that’s not how the little companies are going to get traction in this sector…
I’m not a homeschooler but I was unpersuaded by Dana Goldstein’s Slate piece about why progressive parents should eschew homeschooling. As a rule of thumb a headline of “Liberals Don’t Homeschool Your Children” is almost certain to be followed by an illiberal sentiment. The article doesn’t disappoint on that score. Conor Friedersdorf responds in The Atlantic. It seems to me we have a few marginal ideas colliding here. First, homeschooling is hard to do well and arguably too lightly regulated as a result. But there is also a lot more interaction between homeschoolers and the public system than many people seem to understand. In many states homeschoolers can and do participate in school clubs and extracurricular activities, take classes, and in 29 states participate in sports under some circumstances (in 13 with broad access to high school sports). Second, economic integration is great, something I value as a parent, but it’s also marginal and in practice politically difficult to put in place. And that’s not just conservatives, many of the very liberals Goldstein is urging to flood the schools with their own children assiduously work to ensure their kids are not around a lot of poor students. Spend any time around school and school district boundary issues and that becomes painfully obvious.
Sara Mead also takes a look at why everyone is so into arguing about homeschooling.
Fun edujob at US DOE’s OII office – working on Promise Neighborhoods.
Hey Alexander – So glad you’re reading EdSurge. And which part of what we wrote was a “celebration”? We think that keeping an eye on startups *is* smart. And we also figured that startups should know where Pearson is. You gotta know where the ambushes are to fight the good fight.
Homeschooling does not make any student illiberal, it makes the student introvert. But, if the student gets a good home tuition then no matter will be applicable for the student.
It’s hard to find educated people on this topic, however, you sound like you know what you’re talking about!
Тhanks