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Last Updated: Jul 2nd, 2008 - 21:15:22 |
(ARA) - The school bell will ring at home for more students than ever before this year. Nearly 2 million school-age children will be home-schooled in the U.S. this year, as what was once considered an unusual educational option is now an acceptable and affordable educational choice.
Katelyn Callahan, 11, a seventh grader from Thurmont, Md., is excelling academically with the one-on-one instruction she obtains at home, and with a new Internet-based review program her home-school is offering, she can join other students from her home for review sessions in math and grammar every few weeks.
A teacher at the school providing Katelyn’s curriculum conducts the one-hour review sessions for Katelyn and about a dozen other sixth graders every two weeks. The teacher’s classes supplement and reinforce the instruction Katelyn obtained at home during the previous few weeks. The on-line classes also provide the students with a chance to experience a classroom environment. Students can ask questions, raise their "virtual" hands, listen and respond to other students' questions and answers, write on an electronic chalkboard and take timed quizzes.
“Math and grammar used to be her least favorite subjects, but now she can’t wait for the review sessions,” says Karen Callahan, Katelyn’s mother and home teacher. “It helps her to feel connected to a school.”
The number of families deciding to teach their children at the kitchen table, or in a spare bedroom or the basement is growing at a rate of up to 15 percent a year, according to research conducted by Calvert School, which provides Katelyn’s home-school courses. Homeschooling has been legal in all states since 1993.
Families are recognizing that home-schooling is a viable, if not preferred, method of instruction, enabling students who might otherwise fail or suffer in other academic settings to flourish, says Jean C. Halle, president of Calvert Education Services. It is the non-profit, distance-learning division of Baltimore, Md.-based Calvert School. Families pay Calvert about $600 a year in tuition for all instructional materials, including 160 daily lesson plans, textbooks, workbooks and supplies. The optional on-line classes cost an additional $300 for 16 sessions during the year.
“Home-schoolers are taking top spots in spelling and geography bees, are scoring up to 30 points higher on college entrance exams and are being courted by the best colleges and universities,” Halle says. “But more importantly, families are seeing that when their children are being schooled at home, they are learning as a family and the children are able to reach their full potential.”
Calvert School’s roots parallel home-schooling’s growth. The Calvert School curriculum, the nation’s first formal home-school curriculum, started in 1906 as a distance-learning program for children in remote locations in the U.S. and abroad. As more people learned about home-schooling, including missionaries and diplomats, Calvert School continued to grow. In the 1940s, the U.S. military started enrolling dependents of soldiers stationed in Japan and Korea. Nearly 500,000 students have used Calvert School’s pre-kindergarten through eighth grade courses.
During a child's academic career, he or she may move through a variety of educational models: public schools, private schools, charter school and home-schooling. The Calvert School curriculum, Halle says, has fostered academic success in all of these settings for students in all 50 states and in about 90 countries.
Explains Halle, “More families and schools are recognizing that the one-on-one instruction home-schooling has always encouraged can truly foster in children a lifetime love of learning.”
To learn more about home-schooling and Calvert School, call (888) 487-4652 or visit www.calvertschool.org.
Courtesy of ARA Content
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