Tax-paid E-schooling vs. Homeschooling

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In Ohio, parents can opt for tax-paid e-schooling in lieu of attending a brick and mortar school. Or parents can notify the superintendent of their school district that they have chosen to educate their children at home, on their own. See my previous posts on how to do this with a brief notification letter. 

Which is better? What will work best for your child or children? That will vary from child to child, from family to family. But I have found that e-schooling can't compare to the richness that students can find by following a self-directed and self-motivated curriculum instead of one established by the businessmen who have set up and run the e-schools. 

If that isn't enough, then consider what has happened recently. A young girl, 15 years old, is currently in a juvenile facility because a judge said that she wasn't doing her e-school homework. This case has many people shaking their heads and wondering what has happened to our legal system. Read more about this case and how this case went down here: https://www.propublica.org/article/judge-wont-free-michigan-teenager-sent-to-juvenile-detention-after-not-doing-online-schoolwork

If what you read here doesn't bother you and you think that this is appropriate legal consequences for a child not doing e-school homework assignments on time, then you must be willing to face the lifelong consequences of a young person's experiences in a juvenile detention facility. While the child is incarcerated the e-school business execs are still collecting your tax dollars to continue this child's e-school program. 

Homeschooling isn't about punishing children to force them to learn. It isn't about imposing learning on them without helping them see how these things might relate to their own lives, their futures. Read the article and think about what could happen, what has happened already, before you decide to enrich the coffers of one of Ohio's tax-supported e-schools. The story I've referenced happened in Michigan, just across the state line from Ohio. It could just as easily happen here. 

Any parents who enroll their child/children in an e-school also have the right to withdraw their children while notifying their school district that they have opted to educate their children at home, on their own, under Ohio's Administrative Code 3301-34. Parents can do this at any time during the school year. Follow up by sending in a notification letter to your school superintendent, including all the necessary, legally required information. Send copies of all paperwork to both the e-school and the local school district. Return any materials provided by the e-school program. Then you can learn to set up your own curriculum and allow your child/children to blossom under self-directed learning and a self-motivated learning program. 

More to come!

Norma Curry

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