Bayou Regional

Team Fusion 364 Youngest son joined Team Fusion 364 this January. Their colors are orange and blue. Team Fusion 364 is comprised of students from different public schools, private schools and homeschools who live along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Youngest son is homeschooled and we are members of PEAK. During their build season they worked very hard to build a robot that could perform all the task required for the 2008 First Robotics Competition. As you can imagine building a robot and going to competitions is very costly so they look for corporate sponsors. Team Fusion 364's sponsors are NASA, SAIC, Sieman Composites, DuPont Delisle, Knesal Engineering Services, INC. (they are always looking for new sponsors). All donations to Team Fusion 364 are Tax Exempt 501(c) (3), the culmination of their fundraising efforts is a golf tournament run by the students. Team Fusion 364 used some of the money they raised to take the VEX kids in the area to the Bayou Regional Saturday. At the Bayou Regional they competed against other teams from all over the country. States represented at the Bayou Regional ~ Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey and Texas. There were 47 teams in all. Opening ceremonies began with a Mardi Gra parade. Then the seeding matches began. These are the awards Team Fusion 364 won in 2007 at the Bayou Regional Engineering Inspiration Regional Finalist Award Autodesk Visualization Award Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Entrepreneurship Award This year Team Fusion 364 only won ONE award, but it was FIRST's most prestigious award, it honors the team judged to have created the best partnership effort among team participants, and to have best exemplified the true meaning of FIRST. The award helps keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition on the goal of inspiring greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology. Team Fusion 364 won The Regional Chairman's Award and will be going to Atlanta for the National Competition. Bayou Regional~Friday Bayou Regional ~ Saturday

CA Homeschooling Decision Voided

A state appeals court will reconsider last month's controversial decision that said parents who home-school their children must have a teaching credential.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles granted a rehearing Tuesday, essentially voiding the 3-0 decision until it rules again. The decision will now allow home-schooling organizations that had blasted the decision to weigh in.

A very nice piece on homeschooling in The Washington Post

Contrary to Stereotype, Home-Schoolers Aren't All Religious or Socially Maladjusted -- and They Are Changing the World

So nice somebody finally gets that homeschoolers are a diverse group. Go on over a join the discussion.

Unschooling & Homeschooling not the same

The subject of homeschooling is a decent article on homeschooling in the Times Recorder. One of the commentators doesn't seem to understand that 'unschooling' and homeschooling are not the same thing. Unschooling is a teaching method that a very few homeschoolers choose to use. Other methods used include the Charlotte Mason Method, Waldorf Education Method, Classical Education Method, Eclectic Homeschool Method, Unit Studies, Montessori Homeschooling, and Distance Learning to name a few. You can read more about the different homeschooling methods here.

Homeschooling Today

Gregory J. Millman is co-author, with Martine Millman, of "Homeschooling: A Family's Journey," to be published in August. Read his article on homeschooling in The Washington Post.

Conventional schools are like the nation's Rust Belt companies, designed in the 19th century but struggling to meet the standards of international competition today. School boards and administrators should be concentrating on ways to make schools more like home-schooling -- not on ways to force home-schooled children to go back to schools. People who are free to think for themselves usually get together and find solutions that are better than what bureaucrats can devise.

HT: HE&OS

Senator Dave Cox is a friend to homeschoolers

Sacramento, Ca -- 1st District Republican State Senator Dave Cox has co-authored an Assembly Resolution to call upon the California Supreme Court to reverse the opinion of the 2nd District Court of Appeals as it applies to home schooling.

Ruben Navarrette's ~California court overreached on homeschooling case

When you think about it, much of education reform revolves around this notion of escaping. Those who advocate vouchers, or call for failing schools to be shut down, or - in this case - defend the right of parents to homeschool their children want to give students a means of escape from low-performing schools, poorly managed districts and all the rest. Those who resist such efforts have constructed all these elaborate arguments against reform efforts, but mainly what they want is to keep students from escaping in order to keep power concentrated in the public schools and the bureaucracies that run them.

Luckily homeschoolers have powerful allies.

And they have a heavyweight in their corner. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger immediately denounced the appeals court ruling and promised to change state law to guarantee that parents have the right to teach their children at home. Parents should decide what is best for their children, he said, and "not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children's education."

The governor is quite correct, and I'm glad to see him in this fight. Homeschooling isn't perfect. But look around. Neither is the public school system, which needs all the reform it can get. That's why we can't stop looking for viable alternatives that augment traditional teaching - and, just as importantly, challenge traditional thinking.

Read the whole column here.

Enlightening

What Makes a Creationist Tick?

30 percent of the nation's public schools aren't making adequate yearly progress

About 30 percent of the nation's schools aren't making adequate yearly progress - mostly because students didn't make steady gains in required math and reading exams given in grades three through eight and once in high school. Schools are judged not just on average scores but according to how groups of students perform, such as those with disabilities, limited English skills or minorities.

115th Carnival of Homeschooling: Oh, The Things That You’ll Do!

115th Carnival of Homeschooling: Oh, The Things That You’ll Do! hosted by Janice Campbell.

Enjoyable Column by Daniel Leddy

Putting the shallow pretense aside, opposition to home-schooling is really driven by its implications for the nation's public school system. However, rather than denying parents what must be deemed a fundamental right, the focus should be on making public education so attractive that more parents will select it.

Instead, the trend is in the opposite direction. Among other things, obsessive secularists and alternative lifestyle advocates have commandeered public education and are holding students hostage to their agendas.

For fed-up parents, home-schooling is one way out. No wonder so many of them are taking it.

Daniel Leddy's On The Law column appears each Tuesday on the Advance Op-Ed Page. His e-mail address is JudgeLeddy@si.rr.com.

Read the rest of Home-school decision gets a failing grade.

Home school student wins bee for second time

Home school student wins bee for second time read the rest of the story here.

According to Time

Sugarman said the fact that both Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state superintendent have spoken out against this ruling means that, chances are, even if the case is held up in the California Supreme Court, uncredentialed parents will still be allowed to educate their children — that there is nothing that requires the state to aggressively go after people. Indeed, the education department (which is not involved in the lawsuit) will not want to waste their resources going after such parents, despite the "illegality" of their actions, leaving the Second District Court of Appeals opinion of the law unenforced.

Carnival of Homeschooling

The Spring into Action ~ Carnival of Homeschooling is up at, AT Home with Kris.

Ignorant College Editorial About Homeschooling

TITAN EDITORIAL: Ignorant education
Homeschooling advocates, headed mainly by Christian zealots, are calling for Gov. Schwarzenegger's protection of their fundamental right to teach their children to be bigots and idiots.

Obviously the Editorial Board is composed of bigots and idiots, with poor writing skills. Go read the article and comments and see for yourself.

Graphics Contest

The Homeschool Blog Awards need medium sized graphics for 2008. We will need a graphic for nominees and one for the winners. The same graphic may be used for both nominees and winners.

Here is how to enter.

• Post the icon on your blog and leave a comment telling me how to get the icon. (or)
• email the icon to me at osso(at)cableone(dot)net

I want to make sure people have enough time to be creative, so the first stage will last until the 28th of April, 2008. I am hoping for a couple dozen entries

Then in May I will display the icons and allow people to vote on the one they like best.

The rules for the contest are:

• The graphics have to be available for others to use. The only options I can think of are 1.) you created the graphic or 2.) the graphic is public domain.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger supports homeschooling

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says he will step in if the home schooling ruling is not overturned.

In a statement released Friday, the Governor says, "Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their child's education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts, and if the courts don't protect parents' rights, then, as elected officials, we will."

Henry Cate isn't worried about CA ruling

Henry from Why Homeschool was interviewed by a reporter for The Mercury News.

While many home-schoolers are fearing the worst, Cate said he is not
worried. "The U.S. Supreme Court has said again and again that parents can
home-school their children."

Things not as bleak for California homeschoolers as paper implies

From The Madison Project

The LA Times got it wrong in the first sentence of their article. Parents without teaching credentials can still educate their children at home under the various exemptions to mandatory public school enrollment provided in § 48220 et seq. of the Cal. Ed. Code. The parents in this case lost because they claimed that the students were enrolled in a charter school and that with minimal supervision from the school, the children were free to skip classes so the mother could teach them at home. There is no basis in law for that argument. If only the parents had attempted to homeschool their kids in one of the statutorily prescribed methods, they would have prevailed.

Drop by Doc's to read her take on the issue.

Learn More about Helen Keller

at History is Elementary