Just a Little Common Sense
“Home Schooling”
AIRED: December 5, 2005
Wisconsin spends over $5 billion every year on public schools and we keep hearing they need more money “for the children.” I’ve got a terrific idea for saving money andeducating our kids. I’ll tell you all about it when I come back with “Just a Little Common Sense.”
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We’d really be doing something “for the children” if we just didn’t send them to school. Think of how the kids would appreciate it!
If we kept just 20% of them home from school, we could save a billion dollars every year! You might be saying “What a crazy idea,” but what I’m talking about is home schooling.
Last year, the average cost of running Wisconsin schools, per student, was over $10,000.
According to a Minnesotasurvey, the cost of home schooling ranges from $300 to $1,000 per family per year. And some of those families have more than one child being taught at home.
This means that you can give at least one child 12 years of education for what it costs to educate a public school student for about a year.
With home schooling there are no transportation costs, no janitors, no schoolyard monitors, no superintendent, no principal, no assistant principal, no administrative staff, no school board, no facilities to maintain, no playground bullies, no snow days, no lost overshoes, gloves and scarves, and no teachers’ salaries.
But cost isn’t the only factor. The education is what’s most important. As the politicians and the bureaucrats say, “It’s for the children.”
In a 1997 study done by the National Home Education Research Institute, I read that the worst that home
schooled students did on standardized achievement exams was in the area of study skills. They averaged on the 81st percentile.
For all the tests, home-schooled students averaged on the 87th percentile. The average for public school students for all the tests was, by definition, the 50th percentile.
Even more surprising, home-schooled kids do well regardless of gender, parents’ educational level, parents’ certification (or lack of it), ethnicity, and no matter what level of government regulation is applied.
My advice to the governor and the legislature is to do everything you can to encourage home schooling, which would reduce the burden on taxpayers, and give more of our kids a better education.
Except, of course, the state teachers union is one of the top contributors to political campaigns. Could we expect professional politicians to promote something that goes against the desires of their benefactors?
I suppose not.
This is Ed Thompson with Just a Little Common Sense.
Let me know what you’re thinking. Send email to:edthompson@b945country.com
Or just drop in at the Teepee and say hello.
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