Montana is still in the throes of a negative sum conflict over home schooling that most states and Canada have solved decades ago. Here both sides lose. Our district loses the average daily attendance count from home schoolers, and this reduces funding. Home schooling parents lose their property tax investment in education for their children, and end up paying double in the time/money crunch.
No one benefits from the current conflict over the home school movement.
Twenty years or more before I first set foot in the one room country school of my childhood, farmers in Mud Creek Valley had organized to end home schooling. Busy farm life of the 1920s meant sporadic schooling, if at all, for the children of rural America. The school was considered an extension of parents' teaching and training in socialization.
I remember starting my first day at Montgomery School in first grade, in the late 40's. There were a dozen others in the school, grades 1 – 8. I looked around, and saw a desk with a name carved in the blond maple surface. It belonged to an 8th grader named Jimmy, strong and angular, old for his grade. I was shy, and I quickly adopted my hero. I had my trusty pocketknife.
Quietly and carefully, while the two 8th graders were reciting, I carved my name (DaviD) starting with a forward capital D and ending with a backward capital D. I almost got spanked at school, and did get a good tongue lashing at home. No hiding that crime. For every school day the next several years, until I outgrew the desk, I had to face that dyslexic spelling.
Human interaction was integral to our learning environment. We learned reading with older students reading to us, and they practicing their reading. They watched out for younger students' safety on the school sledding hill in winter, and the younger ones learned to trust older ones' judgments.
No one questioned the government's essential role in supporting this alternative to home schooling or no schooling. The government was us--the community working together to build something of value for the next generation--with funds from property taxes. With uniquely human interaction in a mixed age group of a dozen or so students, we had space to build social learning skills.
Over the following decades, the strong bond of ownership between school and family has changed. Schools have grown larger, age stratification has become mandatory, and parent roles in formulating school policy have diminished. Choices of school curriculum, and administration are more likely to come down from state or even federal government than from the local community.
For some parents, the disconnect is enough that they choose to withdraw their children from district enrollment to school them at home. That's where we are now, and everyone loses.
This is not the only solution. Other states are looking at partnerships with mutual benefits. My daughter works for the Delta County School District in Colorado as a science curriculum coordinator in the "Vision School" home-school network, an arm of the district. Parents can choose to register with the school district. If they do, the district reimburses costs for materials they purchase, up to $500, provided the materials do not promote a particular religion. At their discretion, parents can have their children enrolled in extra-curricular activities and participate in standardized tests. Parents can choose and pay with district funds a teacher to serve a group of home-schooled children in particular subject areas. The district provides a building for this service. The district receives state funds for the Vision home school network based on numbers of students enrolled, just as in the regular classroom. Everyone wins.
Both sides should be winning here. We have in Big Horn County the skills and the community support to catch up with Colorado and other states. It's time to brainstorm rationally how we can all win. Marketers are making millions promoting wedge issues that stalemate support for home schooling linking with school districts. Both sides can start examining the distortions and allow truth to win for the good of all the children. Now may be a good time to transform this conflict so the families of Montana have reasons to trust their school districts, whether they home school or not.
Check this web link: http://www.visionhcp.org/
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David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
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