Not educating child

I think it was right to call CPS. If it's not something CPS investigates, they should pass it on to the right agency.

I am just saying this on a gut feeling (having no ideas about the laws on this), but I would think that what the mother wanted to would violate child labor laws. It's one thing to work as a kid after school, but quite another to work -instead- of school.
 

From linked article: "Problems with Legislation to Prevent "Unqualified" Families From Homeschooling
Larry and Susan Kaseman, HEM: Do we really want the government to have the authority to decide who's qualified to homeschool and how we should homeschool?"

Yes we do. This is a good roll for government. You set a minimum standard that is applied equally to all. Not everyone can teach. I could not do it very well. It is a skill set like being able to weld or repair a car or balance company accounts. Some can do it, some can not and others excel at it. If you are homeschooling and your children can not meet the minimum standard then you are not qualified. This is why OP was correct in reporting the family.
 

huh what? people on the dis are always saying how much they hate the duggards because they have their older kids help/babysit/take care of the little ones, and they bash over and over again because of it... but the OP/Mrs.Op should have minded their own business... The Daughter is taking care of her lil (brother or sister all of the time and no one sees anything wrong with it? At least the Duggards really do homeschool the poor girl in this instance is doing nothing but learning how to be a mom at the age of 13 :sad2:
 

This is not a question of "homeschooling" since this mother was clearly not doing that; this is not a question of "unschooling" since that can be an effective educational tool when done right (granted it is extremely difficult to do right). This is a question of a child being denied access to ANY sort of education despite obviously wanting one very badly. This is a classic case of educational neglect. It should have been reported to CPS.

To the PP who saw some sort of anti-male bias, I don't agree. Sometimes the DIS is just conducive to a pile-on and the sex of the poster is usually irrelevant. In this case, he just happened to be male.
 
is so funny everyone hates the duggards here because they think they do the same thing but it seems like its okay in this family... ah gotta love the dis...

Do you mean the Duggars? No one hates them because of homeschooling.
 
From linked article: "Problems with Legislation to Prevent "Unqualified" Families From Homeschooling
Larry and Susan Kaseman, HEM: Do we really want the government to have the authority to decide who's qualified to homeschool and how we should homeschool?"

Yes we do. This is a good roll for government. You set a minimum standard that is applied equally to all. Not everyone can teach. I could not do it very well. It is a skill set like being able to weld or repair a car or balance company accounts. Some can do it, some can not and others excel at it. If you are homeschooling and your children can not meet the minimum standard then you are not qualified. This is why OP was correct in reporting the family.

But who sets the minimum standard? And what would it contain? I am against the Gov't being involved because there are so many variables. Take science for instance. There are those who homeschool for religious reasons and rebuke many forms of science. Are you going to now tell them that they have to teach something that goes against their beliefs? Many who homeschool use religious curriculum. Are you going to tell them they no longer can use that and have to use what they use in public schools? While I agree that the child the OP talked about is suffering educational neglect and something should be done I don't think wanting to mandate an across the board crackdown on homeschoolers is the answer.
 
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From linked article: "Problems with Legislation to Prevent "Unqualified" Families From Homeschooling
Larry and Susan Kaseman, HEM: Do we really want the government to have the authority to decide who's qualified to homeschool and how we should homeschool?"

Yes we do. This is a good roll for government. You set a minimum standard that is applied equally to all. Not everyone can teach. I could not do it very well. It is a skill set like being able to weld or repair a car or balance company accounts. Some can do it, some can not and others excel at it. If you are homeschooling and your children can not meet the minimum standard then you are not qualified. This is why OP was correct in reporting the family.

There are a few problems with this line of thinking, but the biggest is- how do we determine whether a child is meeting the "minimum standards"? Standardized testing doesn't work when you're not teaching the curriculum from which the standardized tests are being derived.

For example, my 10 year old uses a math curriculum that doesn't follow the same scope and sequence as a traditional public school curriculum. So, he's doing pre-algebra and pre-geometry, but we haven't covered order of operations and exponents yet. Well, most 5th graders in public school have covered order of operations and exponents, so even though my son excels at math, he would not score well on those portions of a typical standardized test.

History is another good example of this. I teach history chronologically. So, while my 5th grader could run circles around his peers in ancient history and early American history, he knows very little about recent American history or Texas history. But, his public schooled peers all took state history in 4th grade, so they would pass that portion of the standardized testing while he would fail.

Standardized tests that are written to coincide with public school curriculum will never be an accurate barometer for success or failure of homeschooled children.

All that to say, it's pretty easy to tell whether or not a child is being educated without the use of standardized testing, and the child in the OP clearly is not being educated.
 
Just want to say thank you for taking the time to care for this child. :thumbsup2 What a winner that "mom" is.
 
I think you did the right thing. I think in addition to calling CPS you should also put in a call to the school district administrator/school board and let them know of a student who was taken out of school to be homeschooled who IS NOT being homeschooled. If the 13 yr old will admit it to you maybe she will tell the truth and admit it to them too. She needs to be put back in school. I hate to see ppl who use their older kids to basically raise their younger kids for them. I feel sorry for those kids. They use them as live in baby sitters.
I have known of some families who did this to their older kids and made them take care of the younger kids for years and those older kids grew up to not ever want any kids of their own because they got so burned out on raising their brothers and sisters. Pathetic really.
 
I think a better option would have been to call the school district. They are the ones in charge of homeschooling.
I think calling CPS was too much because you just don't know what is going on. You got your information from a kid. Now, we homeschool sort of. DS is 15 and attends a virtual school. They have a set amount of work that has to be done each week. It is divided up by the day. He is currently done with his online school work for the rest of the day except for a phone call he has to make later. Now, he is watching my one year old so I can work. I work at home on the computer. I pay him to watch her while my fiance is at work so I can get a head start and not work late into the night. To an outsider, my home looks much like you described. I would hate to have CPS called on me because someone doesn't like my parenting choices.

If you "WORK" at home on your computer then that means you make money at whatever you are doing on your computer. I guess you may be getting paid for being on the DIS boards right now while your kid watches your other kid. In my opinion, if you can afford to pay your 15 yr old to watch your 1 yr old then you should be able to afford to pay a real sitter to watch your 1 yr old so that your teen doesn't have to raise your baby for you.
 
As someone that may wind up homeschooling due to bad public schools and very $$$ private options...I say good for you! I'd have done the same, or at least called someone. CPS may be the appropriate place to call in some states but not others. I'm not sure who in IL I would need to call but once I researched it, I'd pick up the phone.

According to the OP, the mother flat out TOLD her she was NOT providing ANY education at all and using the 13 year old as a sitter for a younger sibling. That's neglect in my book, and someone needs to look in to it.
 
If you "WORK" at home on your computer then that means you make money at whatever you are doing on your computer. I guess you may be getting paid for being on the DIS boards right now while your kid watches your other kid. In my opinion, if you can afford to pay your 15 yr old to watch your 1 yr old then you should be able to afford to pay a real sitter to watch your 1 yr old so that your teen doesn't have to raise your baby for you.

Wow, jump to conclusions much? worm761 described a perfectly acceptable use of time and resources based on her son's legitimate schooling schedule - not sure how you could possibly make the leap to him "raisng the baby" for her. That's just ridiculous. She's paying him to babysit while she works and he has free time to do it - it's not impacting his educational requirements at all. How is that any different from me paying my older daughter to babysit after school while I go to the grocery store by myself?

Sorry, you are way off base here.
 
I think you did the right thing. I think in addition to calling CPS you should also put in a call to the school district administrator/school board and let them know of a student who was taken out of school to be homeschooled who IS NOT being homeschooled. If the 13 yr old will admit it to you maybe she will tell the truth and admit it to them too. She needs to be put back in school. I hate to see ppl who use their older kids to basically raise their younger kids for them. I feel sorry for those kids. They use them as live in baby sitters.
I have known of some families who did this to their older kids and made them take care of the younger kids for years and those older kids grew up to not ever want any kids of their own because they got so burned out on raising their brothers and sisters. Pathetic really.

Depending on the laws in their state though, neither of these phone calls may do any good, been there, done that like I said in an earlier post. It's really sad actually. In our state a parent has to report quarterly grades if they don't have a college degree and semester grades if they do. They don't have to turn in anything to support those grades, just fill out a form stating either a letter grade or pass/fail...that's it. They are not required to take the standardized tests proctored by a 3rd party, they just have to report what they got on the test, again, with no supporting evidence.

When I reported the family I knew that was doing the same thing as the OP's "friend" the school was well aware of the lack of instruction that was happening in that home but their hands were tied. It's a very, very, very sad situation.
 
Calling CPS was pretty darned drastic, IMHO.

I thought that homeschoolers had to take state issued tests proctored by someone other than their parents at least once a year. Is that correct?

If the home-schooled students do have to take such tests, then yes - you overstepped drastically as the truth would come out pretty soon. Once the DD wasn't testing up to standards for her grade level, she'd wind up back in the public school system within a year and mom would have been taken to task for lying about homeschooling.

If there really is no mandate towards proving grades for home-schooled students, I probably would have contacted the school district or state board of education before calling CPS.

this depends on the state and if the homeschooler belongs to any special organization. we homeschool DD. she is enrolled in a homeschool organization that keeps her records (i submit them quarterly) and her test scores should she ever re-enroll in school and need them. she does take annual testing, which i administer (but i do not grade--i submit them to the organization to grade). i had to be approved as a test administrator and have to renew that every year.

SC residents are required to join some homeschool organization. i'm not sure what the state testing laws are.

SIL/BIL homeschool their children but are part of a different organization. they only submit grades at the end of the year and are not required to test. and they do live in the same state as i do.
 
Depending on the laws in their state though, neither of these phone calls may do any good, been there, done that like I said in an earlier post. It's really sad actually. In our state a parent has to report quarterly grades if they don't have a college degree and semester grades if they do. They don't have to turn in anything to support those grades, just fill out a form stating either a letter grade or pass/fail...that's it. They are not required to take the standardized tests proctored by a 3rd party, they just have to report what they got on the test, again, with no supporting evidence.

When I reported the family I knew that was doing the same thing as the OP's "friend" the school was well aware of the lack of instruction that was happening in that home but their hands were tied. It's a very, very, very sad situation.

I was aware of a situation (I was not directly involved with it) where a mother was basically doing the same thing with her 4 children. The oldest (age 15 at the time, I believe) called CPS and the State (Maine) forced the 3 oldest to go to school. The oldest child was also placed in Foster Care since she refused to go to her mother. There were other issues of neglect in the house, but none justified removal of the children, just providing services to the family. The others stayed with the mother, but went to school. The oldest is now a recently graduated RN; another is now in college; while the youngest two are still in school. Their mother was not a bad person, just really, really lazy and depressed. This was a wake-up call to her, I think.
 
This is not a question of "homeschooling" since this mother was clearly not doing that; this is not a question of "unschooling" since that can be an effective educational tool when done right (granted it is extremely difficult to do right). This is a question of a child being denied access to ANY sort of education despite obviously wanting one very badly. This is a classic case of educational neglect. It should have been reported to CPS.

To the PP who saw some sort of anti-male bias, I don't agree. Sometimes the DIS is just conducive to a pile-on and the sex of the poster is usually irrelevant. In this case, he just happened to be male.

:thumbsup2
 
Do you mean the Duggars? No one hates them because of homeschooling.

Yeah them but they (lots of people here on the dis) hate them for the whole older kids taking care of the younger ones... it was too late/early to care about spelling their name right.. Sorry!
 
Well, CPS called me today and said they had tried to get her at her house but no one was there. I told her that she hangs out at the Burger King off a certain road every day from 9 ish to 3 ish and she could probably find her there.

I don't know what, if anything, CPS will do, but I hope the child gets put back in school.
 
But who sets the minimum standard? And what would it contain? I am against the Gov't being involved because there are so many variables. Take science for instance. There are those who homeschool for religious reasons and rebuke many forms of science. Are you going to now tell them that they have to teach something that goes against their beliefs? Many who homeschool use religious curriculum. Are you going to tell them they no longer can use that and have to use what they use in public schools? While I agree that the child the OP talked about is suffering educational neglect and something should be done I don't think wanting to mandate an across the board crackdown on homeschoolers is the answer.

Religious beliefs have very little conflict with the whole of science, math, history or social sciences. This isn't the dark ages so I would insist that kids be taught something that goes against their beliefs if it was a known fact. It used to be heresy to say the earth revolved around the sun or was flat

There are a few problems with this line of thinking, but the biggest is- how do we determine whether a child is meeting the "minimum standards"? Standardized testing doesn't work when you're not teaching the curriculum from which the standardized tests are being derived.

For example, my 10 year old uses a math curriculum that doesn't follow the same scope and sequence as a traditional public school curriculum. So, he's doing pre-algebra and pre-geometry, but we haven't covered order of operations and exponents yet. Well, most 5th graders in public school have covered order of operations and exponents, so even though my son excels at math, he would not score well on those portions of a typical standardized test.

History is another good example of this. I teach history chronologically. So, while my 5th grader could run circles around his peers in ancient history and early American history, he knows very little about recent American history or Texas history. But, his public schooled peers all took state history in 4th grade, so they would pass that portion of the standardized testing while he would fail.

Standardized tests that are written to coincide with public school curriculum will never be an accurate barometer for success or failure of home schooled children.

All that to say, it's pretty easy to tell whether or not a child is being educated without the use of standardized testing, and the child in the OP clearly is not being educated.

Home schoolers should teach in a way that would allow testing and proof of their curriculum. Without some oversight, there is too much room for abuse under the guise of homeschooling. The original topic of this thread illustrates this.

I am sure 99.99% of home schoolers are doing it right but who can say that for sure if there is no way to check? It is in everyone's best interest that kids have a certain level of education by the time they reach adulthood.
Thank you OP for reporting on what is clearly an abuse of the right to home school.
 













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