Why Not Use Charter Schools?

Reasons Why Some Members of Our Group Choose to Independently Home School Their Children

Copyright 2007 - 2008 North Star Independent Homeschoolers.  All rights reserved.

Why Not?

We decided to homeschool our children when our first daughter was a tiny tot, barely walking. Out of the hundreds of different reasons why, the one that sticks out for me is that we wanted our children to grow and develop in a Christian environment, and public school seemed almost polar opposite of that.  When looking at countless curriculum options, it became clear that we could choose secular or Christian books for any subject.  We chose the Christian curriculum, realizing that whatever we could do to bolster our children's Christian worldview would benefit them.  As an added benefit, it has seemed to us that the Christian curriculums and books are equal if not superior in academics.  With other homeschooling families as friends and information sources (i.e. I can pick their brains for answers and discuss curriculums that I haven't seen), we have not found it a need to use (or answer to) any public school systems.  They will not purchase 90% of what we purchase, especially when I find it for a great price at a book sale or Gulliver's!  With the support of a strong homeschool community for encouragement, we haven't found a good enough reason to sign up with the school district.  So, in answer to the question of why we choose to homeschool independently, we say why wouldn't we?  The M. Family

An Unhappy Charter School Experience

The program tells you what and how to homeschool.  You are required to meet all the testing and paperwork needs of the public school in exchange for the money they give you.  I found that I lost my voice and goals for my kids when we did this.  It was more money than we needed or could use.  I ended up buying stuff we STILL haven't used and we are living in clutter.  I also struggled with feelings of failure because I didn't get to all this stuff that I bought to do.  Honestly, after a few years of doing public school at home with the programs I have enough stuff to homeschool my kids 4 times from K-12.  Who needs that???  With it also came the HUGE stress of paperwork, reporting, and testing.  The final straw was that I could not use my Christian curriculum of choice.  That is a main reason for us homeschooling.  The only way I could continue would be to lie.  Many families do lie so they can use Christian materials.  As a Christian, I will not do that.  We quit and are VERY happy.  The B. Family

A Very Unhappy Charter School Experience 

We were looking for a homeschool support group when we moved to Fairbanks, AK. We were told that CyberLynx was a local support group. Silly really that someone would call a public school a "support group for homeschooling." We were enticed by the money and joined after some research. I promised myself if I ever felt over-taxed by the paperwork or if our freedom to use religious materials was restricted, we'd leave.

We were in the first program for a year when we learned their public school district was going bankrupt. They froze the funding accounts of the homeschooled students so no more funds could be spent. At the end of the school year any remaining funds are absorbed into the school district that sponsors the program. Guess who didn't file bankruptcy? We didn't know who the other families were to band together. We tried contacting the school district directly and after several weeks we gave up. We switched to another program after that.

The supervisor we were assigned explained that testing was required because our children were now "public school students". We understood that the mandatory testing is a stipulation for receiving the funding. Our son scored fine, average all the way. Our daughter did, too. The problem with that is she confided in me that the testing was boring so she colored the bubbles in patterns down the columns. How could that come back as an average student's testing results when it was actually her bored colorings?

Nearly 5 years after we joined the first program the laws had changed and my kids had gotten older. The required testing was not a big deal. However, the work samples became an issue. We are required to turn in one per subject. I was told that they wanted additional samples from both my children = more work to copy, turn in, and then amend the paperwork already filed. Okay, so I did that. Each year the school added more forms to fill out. When we quit there were daily grades, weekly grades, quarterly grades, and Semester grades to report, for EACH student. Plus, two sets of Individual Learning Plans and ordering forms for each vendor were needed. Additional paperwork was required for things like sports, art, and music lessons.

There were limits put on the funds by the program on how much of the total budget could be spent on each subject. For reading tutoring we had used 25% of my special needs child's total budget. No more money was left to use for reading for the rest of the year, mind you, this was September! This child has a proven reading disability documented by the testing they did and had in their files.

Our supervisor did not give us any viable options in our opinion. Our daughter's ONLY option was to attend reading lessons in the special education department of our local elementary school. Her class would consist of physically, mentally, and emotionally handicapped students. Fine, if she was elementary aged and handicapped. She was 13 at the time and normal, other than a reading difficulty. We were given no other choice. We later received a letter that this child was truant from the public elementary school! The program was freezing the remaining funding in the child's account. We had never enrolled her at the school and had rejected the offer. How could she then be truant??!

Their grades now went on transcripts because of their ages. We could not do Bible as a graded subject. Fine. We could not turn in or use any religious materials for the graded work samples. Okay, I could work around that. THEN, the law became that I could not use religious materials for several of the core subjects, to include HIStory, Science, Language Arts, and Math. I could not take God out of HIStory, it is HIS STORY.

I'm not sure if the new rules were due to that program's interpreted the recent law changes. I do know that we were no longer able to fulfill the needs of the state and the command of God to train our children for HIS glory. I know I'm coming off as a Bible thumper. I hope you can see our hearts were that we could not meet the needs of the school without lying and hiding what our homeschool was about. That did not sit well with us. It simply was a matter to us of our souls not being worth $1,800 per student.

This was our experience with several different "homeschool" programs run by Alaskan public schools in the Fairbanks area from 2002 - 2007. At no point since have we regretted becoming independent homeschoolers.  The B. Family