Email of the Day:
I just had my first conversation with someone who is doing a PPP but argued that it’s homeschooling because they’re doing the curriculum at home. The school is dictating what they have to cover, doing the testing, creating transcripts and the child will have a diploma from the public school because they were told the military won’t accept a diploma from her parents as easily as they would from a brick and mortar school. I tried to explain the difference but she got upset and said the school told her it’s Homeschool so it’s homeschooling.
She was saying she got to pick her curriculum but that the school would pay for it and that they handle all the transcripts and the diploma at the end to make it easier for her if she wanted to re-enroll her child into public school. She said they also told her what subjects she has to cover each year, including PE.
She said they told her it was homeschooling. Not once did they said it’s public school at home. So I guess that’s where the confusion lies.
I told her it’s fine to be enrolled in that type of program, some really like it and it works for them but it wasn’t homeschooling by state definition and that’s where our disagreement started.
I didn’t want to upset her further, so I dropped the topic, but that is what a PPP is right?
Answer:
It is. Homeschooling in WA is narrowly defined as “being provided by a parent, educating his or her child only.”
If you “enroll” in a public school at home program, you’re doing public school at home, and you’re operating as a unpaid public school employee.
Lots of schools misrepresent their programs, and lots of parents are confused, and lots of others are “insulted” when you say they’re not homeschooling.
To add to the confusion, you *can*, as an an actual homeschooler, enroll in one of those programs on a part time basis and continue to be a homeschooler.
If, though, you have to enroll, report to a teacher, and someone else is footing the bill — you’re not homeschooilng.
The biggest problem with this confusion came some years ago when people in the school at home programs were in conversations with traditional public schoolers who said, “Why do you “homeschoolers” get to do all these things with public money and we don’t?”
And instead of saying, “Hey — we’re public schoolers, too — let’s figure out how you guys can get these benefits, too,” the conversation turned into a public school vs. homeschooler converation — when there were NEVER ANY HOMESCHOOLERS INVOLVED. Just imagine how many more awesome programs and opportunities might have come into being if the public school at home parents had banded together with the brick and mortar public school parents to give that kind of choice to all the pubic schoolers of WA. Just imagine.
Homeschoolers cost WA state zero dollars and we free up to 32,000 seats (equal to any of the biggest three districts in our state — Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane).
We’ve got lots of great educational choices in WA, but only one of them, narrowly defined in the law as “being provided by a parent, educating his or her child only,” where “ALL DECISIONS relating to philosophy or doctrine, selection of books, teaching materials and curriculum, and methods, timing and place in the provision or evaluation of home-based instruction shall be the responsibility of the parent.” If you’re homeschooling, you get all the freedom, but you bear all the responsibility (including the paperwork, including the financial burden).
Warmly,
~Jen GS