Something Is Rotten In Denmark

I'm sitting here in the library waiting on Tink. She is taking her state benchmark test. What for? You see the state is only grading the first five questions on each test! This public school system is so messed up!

You know what gets me? For three years I have worked my butt off to get that child at grade level. I haven't let her do a lot of the fun stuff she wanted to do academically because I was working toward the BIG TEST. We kept our noses to the grindstone. She cried. I cried. We worked through snow days and vacations. We worked most of every summer. She sat inside grappling with adjectives while her friends were swimming in the pool. We struggled through multiplication, alone in our upstairs schoolroom while her friends went to movies at the mall. We worked and worked and worked...and worked, for what? So she could do five problems on a reading test?

I'm furious! Now of course if that is all that is required I definitely wont have her do more of the test. For her sake I'm happy about that. What I'm furious about is the fact the state is so powerful it can demand our children go back into public school but its so lame that it cant even provide an education for our kids after it has them in their greedy hands!

My daughter was at the district public school for 4 years and was being shoved into 4th grade when she was working at a beginning 1st grade level. That's when I pulled her out and began homeschooling. In three years she can now pass a fifth grade test, or so I think! How will I know? She's only required to do the first five problems!

To say I'm angry is putting it mildly! Its time somebody stands up and realizes the state doesn't have the answers! They are wandering around blind folded, shuffling money from one pet cause to another. I wish they would leave us homeschoolers alone!

I totally regret putting my children in the Academy, not because the Academy itself is so bad, but because it gives the state the upper hand and the state has no idea what it's doing. The state doesn't care about all these kids that are falling through the cracks. All they care about is that they are shoved into institutions so they don't lose money or control.

Our state legislatures are right now trying to ban virtual schools in this state. Now I'm not necessarily fighting for virtual schools; I'm more interested in parental rights. It should be our right as parents to teach our kids in the way we see fit. It costs this state roughly five hundred dollars a child to school them through online schools at home. It costs them about 1900 per student to school them in the classroom. So you can see its not about money.

Our school district is trying to close down one of our grade schools and close the other schools on Fridays to save money and yet now they are demanding that all home schooled kids using online schools be put back into the brick and mortar schools at three times the cost! Its clear to see this is about control!

Monday 300 virtual school students and parents rallied at our state capital to protest the initiative under way here. The state doesn't seem to understand that if they do away with virtual schooling they will lose at least half of those kids back into the home school community. At least now they are getting some money from them as they are part of the public school system. It just doesn't make any sense.

My children are now part of the state school too. I am fighting that tooth and claw! I am praying with all my might that my husband allows me to home school in the fall without the use of the charter school. I want no part of this public school system whether it be charter schools or virtual schools, its all public school and I'm fed up to the neck with them all!