What do you think of this idea for a private school?

Has he considered homeschooling his son? We homeschool our son for far less.

In the home schooling community there are parents who get together and form co-ops. They usually use some form of on-line instruction that is augmented by other material. The co-ops are usually subject based. So one parent will teach math and another will teach science.

I think was your friend is considering is doable. He may/will have to work out some problems but that is common when ever you start something new.

@SpatzieLover me too. I home school three children for about $2100 a year. And that ratio is 3:1.

Since everyone want to run around getting the heebie jeebies over vouchers, which I see as the greater fix, I say private schools are a better option. When my fiancée and I are ready to start a family after the wedding, we have universally agreed to just home school.

If there were a live teacher or teachers there I could see an online charter school or learning center as being a bridge to those who either live too far from a private school to have it make fiscal sense, or can’t quite afford it. If it is in an easy location to get to or near the parent’s work, I can see it as an option many parents might take. The bugs of having medical, security, exercise or PE might need to be worked out, but the construct is good.

I would homeschool….in a co-op. It’s easier that way…so that parents can swap and still work if they need to do so. There are some great online schools that can help supplement or provide curriculum as well.

I homeschooled and my child went to Oxford, graduated with honors and had a huge amount of friends and is a great well rounded person. (So, don’t let the naysayers tell you that your children will miss out…they will…they will miss out for sure… on crazy, undisciplined schoolmates, on teacher’s pulling their hair out with too much paperwork, on “having to keep up with the newest Prada bags”, on foul language, on sex before they are ready, on peer pressure that forces them to “conform or else”, on lack of creativity, on cookie-cutter learning and just “learning by rote for the mandated state testing”, on the homogenization of the human child-brain, on the “you can’t read books to kids because you need to concentrate on sentence construction” (uh—what??). Yes, they will (thankfully) miss out on all that!)

If you still want to go with a charter school…the best thing to do is to contact successful charter schools, visit them, sit in the classrooms, observe and exchange ideas with the founders. Ask a school to mentor you…they might just do that. I taught in a charter school and it was a great experience.

For those who have suggested home schooling, not everyone can afford it. In many cases, both parents work during the day. The idea suggested works as both a means of education and day care.

If the school meets all the local regulations and requirements, it might work out. I would suggest visiting several similar private schools before trying it.

@LostInParadise Home Schooling does not have to cost anything. Working parents can do it, as long as there is proper supervision of the child during the day. I hate when parents have to send children to school just so they can have a free babysitter.

^agree with @YARNLADY 100%. A lot of people in my area send their kids to private school or parochial school at age 3 & up because it is cheaper than daycare…not because they care about their children’s education.

Public education was pioneered in America and made this nation great. It helped build our middle class, and raise us to the most prospectus nstion i the history of Earth. If it’s broke but valuable, fix it.

Public education should be standardized on the national level. Right now, there are great public schools in affluent communities with the property taxes to support them, and horrible ones in areas with low property values. A voucher system is a plan for the transition to an oligarchy. The ruling oligarchs will keep cutting taxes, complaining we can’t afford the vouchers of last year and slashing basic education till there is a very distinct two-tiered system where the wealthy go to dream schools at their own expense plus the paltry voucher, and everyone else goes to schools designed to prepare them for indentured service to the oligarchs. It’s a subtle plan to bring on the banana republic that the uber-wealthy plutocrats funding right-wing politics in America today so desperately want..

There is no logical reason for local control of schools. Two plus to equals four everywhere you go. There’s an awful lot wrong with most public education today, but the answer if to fix it. When your car breaks down, you don’t go back to a horse and buggy, you get the car repaired or buy a new one. When the bath water gets dirty, you don’t flush the baby down the drain with the bath water.

@LostInParadise If we would have to pay $6 to $7K per year to send our son to online charter, I’d have to work full time. If I decided to work full time, there’s no way I’d choose online charter.

Our parochial school costs about $3K per year. We’re not fond of their curriculum or their approach to educating children. Out of the two private schools we prefer the costs range from $9K-$13K per year.

If I had to work full time, we’d also have to set up some sort of after school care, and we’d most likely need someone to take him to various lessons.

Since our homeschooling costs maybe $1200 per year (I’m stretching this to include the various workbooks and manipulatives I buy) and I don’t need a career wardrobe, we can afford to have me stay home.

Here in the Midwest, even the charter schools are having to compete with the private schools, by offering 3yr old Kindergarten. My husband saw yet another add for a local charter school offering early registration for 3K. So many working parents are in need of cheaper daycare, that most of our private, parochial and charter schools offer morning care and evening care as an add-on to the tuition. (Kids can now stay at many schools from 7am-7pm) Most also offer breakfast, lunch and dinner options.

Further, I don’t have any clue what your friend would offer in the charter school that would compete with the free online public charter school already offered in PA.

Let me see if I have this straight. An online charter school, and there will be a teacher (will it be a cerfified teacher?) to guide the children, and help them, and mind them. I don’t love the idea, but I don’t hate it. I guess since the schools are very bad there this option is better than the public schools at this point and time. Really it is basically homeschooling, but the kids actually have to wake up and behave in a classroom setting. So, not really homeschooling. One of the great things about homeschooling is being able to adjust to how the child learns best. Will there be lots of flexibility on when a student can arrive to class? Or, everyone is expected at the same time like regular school? I would have done much much better in school if I could have slept another two hours in the morning.

I would want to know how much money this guy is taking home in the end. I have never heard of online charter school? Are you just skyping with a remote teacher? How is the taxpayer paying? Money is actually given by the local community taxes for each child enrolled?

I prefer fixing the public system, but I know that can be a slow process and when your child is in school now, it is hard to wait.

@SpatzieLover Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Wow. I dread thinking some kids have all three outside of their home M-F. I am assuming it is typically only one or two out of the three.

I just read the link @SpatzieLover provided. So basically this business idea is babysitting kids enrolled in this program. I would rather co-op with other parents I think, as others suggested.

@ETpro voucher system is a plan for the transition to an oligarchy. The ruling oligarchs will keep cutting taxes, complaining we can’t afford the vouchers of last year and slashing basic education till there is a very distinct two-tiered system where the wealthy go to dream schools at their own expense plus the paltry voucher, and everyone else goes to schools designed to prepare them for indentured service to the oligarchs. Wait, let me get this straight. You believe vouchers is not a help because a small group of government insiders will herd and direct spending away from the vouchers after getting people to embrace them, to leave the rich kids going to private schools and those of the poor and working class basically stuck in technical schools learning trades that will service the rich? If all schools were vouchered, private and public, it would be hard for any oligarchy to survive or lay waist the school system for their gain. Most politicians have a life expectancy of so many terms then they are out of there. They can’t just hand the reigns over to a hand-picked “yes-man”. Many politicians will still have to be voted in, and if people believe they will gut the school system, voucher or not, I don’t think that politician will get the votes.

If all schools system wide were voucher I believe the state of education will get better. No school could afford to just rest on their laurels. If the money travels with the student and the student can go anywhere their travel can carry them, then a school in an affluent area that never updates its AP classes or has boring crappy teachers will lose student to schools in less affluent areas that punched up their AP classes, modernized their labs etc. Better teacher will mean more students, equaling more revenue. That can mean better pay for the teachers, and if they make more money they might keep up trying to make school fun as well as make sure their student learn something. A school where 87% of the student body graduates with a 3.8 GPA and scores high in the LSAT, and SAT, etc. will have a line around the block come admission time. If all schools had to compete for the students, many schools that just cruise through will have to wake up, get up, get on with it, or go by way of the T-Rex.

@JLeslie You were correct in thinking it’s not really homeschooling. Online schools are generally called “virtual” schools. Since the individual parents don’t have control over the curriculum, it’s not considered homeschooling.

EDIT: Also, you’d hope kids aren’t having their three squares a day at school, but when looking into our parochial options I found out many are. Parents keep requesting the after care goes longer. When the school started the before & after school program, they began the day at 8am, and stopped at 5:30. It’s grown in hours each year since they began it. Mostly due to other schools offering more.

I’m against vouchers also. The very poor still cannot make up the difference for private school. I hate public money going to religious institutions, and many private schools are religious. I still have never heard of an example of a prosperous industrialized nation that has only private schools; or, that does not have a significant emphasis on public education. The third world functions on primarily educating through private schools. So, I have my doubts about the ideal of competition curing things. I think it will result in the poor getting screwed. And, indeed I have people all around me who do not give a damn about educating the black kids in Memphis, they are hopeless. Not my words. And, a sentence later they say why should their tax money go to educate those children. There certainly is an element in the Republican party who would love to keep their own money in their own pocket, and really don’t care about the education of all children in our society. Those specific Republicans talk about how the vouchers will help the disadvantaged child, but I call bullshit, it is code for I get to keep my money. At the same time, there are people in the lower income classes who want vouchers. It’s kind of like the Christians supporting Israel blindly because they believe the second coming will happen, and Jews saying, I don’t care why they support Israel as long as they do.

I am pro homeschooling though.

From what I understand in California they passed a law when Swartzenegger was governor to make it much simpler for children to transfer within the public system, and the money stays with the student. So, a compromise of sorts, creating competition within the public schools.

I’m sorry to say @Hypocrisy_Central vouchers certainly did not help us in Milwaukee at all. After years of having them, it has been realized that vouchers were not the way to go. Even most of the charters are falling by the way side. Smaller, neighborhood schools are working.

We do have a choice program. The trouble with school choice is the busing, and the kids never quite fitting in, and the fact that most kids that are bused long distances really can’t participate in before & after school activities.

@Hypocrisy_Central No, I didn’t say a small group of government insiders are doing this.. The people driving right-wing ideology today are not in the government, They are a large group of billionaires that want to convert the USA into a typical banana republic where they hold virtually all the wealth—far more than they have today—and they own the government and use it as a tool to repress any dissent and ensure that they and their children are always on top.

This is NOT a rant against wealth. I’m a small business owner working as hard as I can to get wealthy. Bill Gates is the wealthiest man in America, and he agrees with me on this. Warren Buffet is the second wealthiest man, and he too sees the problem oligarchy presents.

Here’s a list of the culprits that are funding right-wing think tanks full of PhD;s and PR people working to convince the American middle class to give all their wealth to the plutocrats.

We hear, ad nauseum. from the right about how Big Labor and George Soros rule American politics with money. Well, “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” According to the Greedy Oligarch Pigs (AKA new GOP), Soros is a communist/socialist that made $14.2 billion in capitalism and with it runs the whole world. His money makes it terribly unfair for the whinny GOPers. The only fairness in the Oligarchs eyes is when everyone outside the wealthiest 1/10th of 1% just rolls over and plays dead, giving them all the wealth of the nation and absolute dictatorial power. Even billionaires like Soros who fund liberal and progressive causes must be demonized and stripped of any ability to resist the corporatists. After all, that’s what the Con-man Justices of the US Supreme Corporatist (oops Court are there for. To ensure justice for all who are fabulously wealthy and powerful and support corporatocracy.

What we don’t hear much about is the Walton (Wal-Mart) family’s $83.8 billion; the Koch Brothers’ $43 billion; casino billionaire, Sheldon Adelson’s 23.2 billion; Rupert Murdoch’s $6.2 billion; Dallas Superfund king, Harold Simmons’ $5.7 billion; Charles Schwab’s $4.7 billion; casino and gaming billionaires, Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta’s $2.1 billion; Direct TV’s Stanley Hubbard at $1.9 billion; real-estate magnate, George Argyros’ $1.7 billion; Paypal founder, Peter Thiel’s $1.5 billion; real-estate magnate Harlan Cros’s $1.4 billion; Home Depot’s founder, Ken Langone’s $1.3 billion; Amway founder, Rich DeVos’ $1.2 billion and Publisher Richard Mellon Scaife’s $1.2 billion.. That’s $178.9 billion. How utterly unfair that Soros would use his $14.2 billion to drown out all that influence peddling.

But there is still hope for the poor, underfunded and underrepresented billionaires and corporate jet setters. There are massive contributions from Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, BP, and the other oil giants; big Pharma, healthcare Insurers, corporate farm interests such as Cargil, construction firms such as Halliburton and of course, the military industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us of. They give directly, and also funnel billions through their front group, the National Chamber of Commerce.

In total, $3.8 billion was spent last year on lobbying in Washington. We can’t know how much goes to right-wing front groups like American Action Network & American Action Forum, American Crossroads & Crossroads GPS, American Future Fund, Americans for Job Security, Americans for New Leadership & Liberty.com, Americans for Prosperity & Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Center For Individual Freedom, Club for Growth & Club for Growth Action, Coalition to Protect Seniors, Commission on Hope, Growth and Opportunity, First Amendment Alliance’ The New Prosperity Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, Americans for Progress, Dick Armey’s Freedomworks, The Smith Richardson Foundation, John Olin Foundation, Sarah Saife Foundation, and Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation. These are just a smattering of the 60 front groups who can keep their rich donors secret. Then there are the law firms acting solely as corporate mouthpieces”:http://www.pfaw.org/media-center/publications/after-citizens-united-look-into-the-pro-corporate-players-american-politic. See http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Media_and_Public_Affairs and http://www.publiceye.org/ifas/fw/9701/funding.html for documentation and for many, many more slush funds to buy political favors for the rich and well connected.

So yeah, it is sooooo unfair that Soros gives to the wrong side. How are we supposed to achieve true fascism and one-party rule when that sort of calumny is allowed?

As long as we are wandering off topic, which is okay as long as we stick to education, consider the Finnish school system as an example where public education works and where the approach is pretty much the antithesis of that of the U.S. Here, here and here

@SpatzieLover vouchers certainly did not help us in Milwaukee at all. After years of having them, it has been realized that vouchers were not the way to go. Did all the schools system wide have them? Was the amount for each student the same system wide? If the amount per student was the same, logically the only way a school could have failed financially is they were paying way to much to offset the income from the vouchers, or there was not enough students attending to cover overhead.

@ETpro The people driving right-wing ideology today are not in the government, They are a large group of billionaires that want to convert the USA into a typical banana republic where they hold virtually all the wealth—far more than they have today—and they own the government and use it as a tool to repress any dissent and ensure that they and their children are always on top. Unless these people are very adapt at Jedi mind control, they can’t contain all the rest of us middle class and working mooks, if we got off our duffers and insisted on voting reform. Too many people are worried they might lose this or that to spend time actually changing things for their benefit.

@LostInParadise consider the Finnish school system as an example where public education works and where the approach is pretty much the antithesis of that of the U.S. Interesting articles. What I see is the major problem in US schools, more than when I was in school back in ancient times, is that there is two camps at odds with each other, with the media stoking it on. When I was in school, the media played teachers as these stiff-necked, stuffy, anal people that tried to sap the life and fun out of kids. How many Hollywood films played up the students pranking or getting over on the school or the teacher, and that class work was not for the cool kids but the lame geeks who had nothing better to do. The Lisa Simpsons were to be scorned while the Barts and Farris Buellers are lionized. Parents think the teachers are inept, and treating their kids badly, and the teachers think the kids are undisciplined, and often they are right, with no sense of self-worth and are just slackers trying to game the education system in between getting high. And the media rakes in the cash playing both ends against the buck. “So what has happened since is that teaching has become the most highly esteemed profession. Not the highest paid, but the most highly esteemed.” That is what the article said, but I don’t see that happening here in Yankee Town.

The system itself is rather broke because there are too many mini chiefs and not enough Indians. Everyone wants to be the shot caller. I think too many people in education is looking for higher and being a teacher is just a springboard to principal, dean, chancellor, etc. What I found interesting in one of those articles is, “Every school is staffed by excellent teachers, and teaching is a profession that excellent people want to enter. Teaching is a life-long career, unlike American schools where 50% of teachers drop-out before five years.” If many don’t get out of the classroom into some office running things, I guess they leave. Teachers feel they are not getting enough, and many think teacher are getting paid too much and that they are not working hard enough for what they are getting. When people say they want to be teachers many I know want to pity them than to think they are every noble and praise worthy. Plus the fact it would take forever to pay off the loans if you had to take one, other professions seem fiscally more logical.

@LostInParadise Amazing. I never knew my general opinions on education were so in line with Finland. Elevate the expectations and education of the teachers, start children out with pkay instead of an emphasis on reading at age 4, a national system that levels the paying field, excellent vocational programs, inexpensive university. All what I want. But, The culture in America would have to shift dramatically.

First, educators and parents flat out do not want to believe any studies that demonstrate a lot of homework is overkill, or that getting to children young in their studies is overkill also. Even the parents who hold back their children from kindergarden hoping the will be slotted into gifted programs, still start on their kids with academic learning early. There are study after study that shows head start type programs help children in their testing through about third grade, they are ahead of the kids who did not have early learning, and then right around mid elementary it all evens out. There are no long term benefits, total waste of money. Regular homework in the very early years, k-2 also has no long term effects, yet parents and teachers insist it is good practice for the children. Meanwhile, in a country like America where so many families have single parents or both parents working, homework in those early years requires a parents help usually, causing strife, and stress in the home. Also if the parents are ESL, and do not read and write Enhlish well, that child is at a disadvantage. Pribably not a disadvantage at learning, a disadvantage at getting his homework done, leading to bad feelings. Also, poor families, or parents who do late shift work, makes the famiy environment more stressful for nothing.

Another obstacle is America pays people well who have a skill that is hard to come by. Competition, free market, that sort of thing. Not many people are rocket scientists, so they get paid pretty well. Tons of people can be teachers, so not paid so well. Not to mentions the war on taxes in America. I am going to assume Finland has a high tax base for these programs. I am also going to assume Finland has less of a desparity between professions and income levels. That they have a respect for all professions, and feel everyone has a right to live at a moderate level. I assume they are more social system minded?

@JLeslie , One interesting thing I came across on the Web, but I do not remember where, was that Finnish teachers average 13% below the average income of college educated workers and that American teachers average 40% below. When teaching is treated as a profession and teachers as professionals then improved results will follow.

@LostInParadise Most teachers are not paid that badly in my opinion. Some states it is very low, but most not too bad, they only work 9.5 months a year. If they are making $40k+ which many do, annualized that is not a bad salary.

@Hypocrisy_Central I guess then that the Nazi propaganda machine never happened, and instead Hitler and Goebells actually were Jedi Masters gone over to the Dark Side. Think, man. Do you truly believe they fund a network of think tanks staffed by highly paid PhD’s and PR experts, with at least one located in every single state, and they have been funding this for 40 years now because they are certain it won’t work?