Back-to-School Internet Safety Tips

By Dory Devlin

Since there can never be too many reminders for kids on how to stay safe online, here are seven from the Illinois Attorney General, Lisa Madigan. She joined with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Microsoft, Best Buy and the Geek Squad, and an Illinois retail association to spread the word on safe online practices. Best Buy and other retailers will be distributing 20,000 mouse pads emblazoned with these seven tips during Back-to-School shopping days:

• Never post personal information online.
• Don't put strangers on your buddy list.
• Don't post potentially embarrassing images of yourself online.
• Remember that anyone can read blogs.
• Communicate only with friends and family.
• Tell your parents if you receive anything that makes you feel uncomfortable.
• Think before you post any information about yourself—a message long touted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

All good advice, nothing groundbreaking. But the more reminders to young kids and teens, the better. For more tips for parents, teens, and younger kids, take a look at the AG's pointers in these longer docs. Then check out the post link below to see why just telling kids not to post personal information is merely the start of what should be an ongoing conversation.

Study: Online Safety Warning for Kids Need Work

Online Homeschooling - Is it right for your family?

by Ura Kondo Rinaldi, M.A.

I am a parent of two young boys and my husband and I have been discussing homeschooling. We've always believed that we needed to encourage learning outside of school, and we've made our commitment to nourish our children's natural curiosity. For me, though, I was a little hesitant - would I have the time, patience and skills to homeschool our children?

I hope I am not the only one that thinks homeschooling is all about parents becoming a teacher, a school administrator, a principle, and the school support staff all at the same time. I figured you'd have to find out what the state requirements are, develop your own curriculum for each subject, based on the guidelines, find teaching materials and supplies, make the learning interesting, do testing, grading and much more. Many parents still go the traditional way and I applaud them for their patience and effort. But there is another option that is more practical and manageable for many parents who consider homeschooling for various reasons.

I expected that there would be endless resources available online (and I don't know how people homeschooled children before Internet!). But what I did not know was that there are many online schools that offer online homeschooling for grades K-12. It works just like an online college, where students enroll, take as few or as many courses at a time, but without a schedule or time limit for when they need to complete each course. Students receive materials - textbooks, CD-Roms, or online, have access to a teacher to ask questions, and learn at their own pace. Students never fail, but are required to receive a minimum score to move onto the next level. You also have an option of renting or purchasing materials. Once the student passes the test, they can continue with the next course. It's that simple.

The online homeschooling option costs much less than private schools, for example, one school's tuition was $1,500 for 3 or more courses in one academic year plus materials fee, another was about $100 / month. It may be a little more than what you may spend if you are homeschooling traditional way (you can spend as little as $200 a year on materials and use as much public and free resources as possible). But consider the time you save on research, curriculum development, planning and paperwork.

Some schools also offer other options like receiving all materials and tests at once so that students can test out of the course quickly, or work with individual local schools to customize their curriculum for advanced students or students with special needs.

This is a great option for parents who are not comfortable for taking the "teacher" role in every subject, or parents who just don't have the time or patients to do it the traditional way. Parents, however, still have to have the commitment to monitor and support the children - you can't expect your child to sit at the desk and learn on his own while you do your thing! One site noted parents are expected to spend about 3 hours per day out of a 5 hour schooling time for each child. The child can always ask questions online if parents are unable to answer them.

This also gives parents peace of mind that your child is "passing" the grade, not because you feel like he knows the "stuff," but because he is evaluated by a professional. Students will receive report cards, transcripts, even help with college applications. Although more and more colleges are becoming open to homeschooled applicants, this sure makes things easier.

There are, however, limitations to this service. Your reason as a parent to homeschool your children may be to have complete control over teaching materials. With this option, you'll have to go with what you are given, although you are more than welcome to supplement what you feel is missing. After all, that's what you're paying the money for. There are some online homeschooling sites with religious or spiritual interests available. You will have to screen the materials and determine what is best for you and your children. (Most offer a limited time money back guarantee.) Also, most require some online or computer time for your child. So if you are concerned about the child's exposure to technology (or how much time the child spend on a computer), that's something to think about. If you are homeschooling because you wanted to keep your children away from the school environment, this may be a simple solution.

This is also a great service for your gifted children who may not fit in a "grade" system. It gives you a flexibility to place your child in one grade for one subject, and choose another grade for another subject. Many offer placement tests to determine the right level for your child. So you can be sure that your child is appropriately challenged and move through the K-12 grades at his own pace.

Before you sign on with any online homeschooling services, here are some things to consider:

Does this online homeschooling service follow our state guidelines?
Is it a reputable company?
Who is on the board, management, and teaching staff?
Who develops the curriculum?
What are the billing and payment options? Do they offer a money back guarantee?
What support does the online homeschool offer for parents?

The best way to determine if online homeschooling is right for your family may be to just try them for a course. Some offer summer program, which may be a great way to continue learning during a long vacation. Most offer an option to take once course, and they are reasonably priced. If the child and you enjoy the experience, you can always sign up for more. Online homeschooling is one of the most simple and practical solutions to homeschooling, and it just may be what you were looking for!

© 2006 ZeroPrep Homeschooling - Ura Kondo Rinaldi, M.A. - All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized duplication is not allowed. For more information, or to request reprint permission, contact: support@zeroprep.com

Shorter breaks help kids recall lessons

By NANCY ZUCKERBROD, AP Education Writer

While it's the start of the school year for most U.S. students, children at Barcroft Elementary have been at their desks for nearly a month — and they're fine with that.

The suburban Washington school is among 3,000 across the nation that have tossed aside the traditional calendar for one with a shorter summer break and more time off during the rest of the year. The goal: preventing kids from forgetting what they have learned.

Barcroft's principal, Miriam Hughey-Guy, pushed for the new calendar in hopes of boosting student achievement. She had read studies showing the toll a long summer break takes on what students remember, and she figured that shorter breaks also would help the school's many immigrants keep up their English skills.

Tests given to kids in the spring and fall show children generally slide in math and reading during the traditional summer break lasting 10 to 12 weeks, says Harris Cooper, director of the education program at Duke University. Both poor students and their wealthier counterparts lose math skills, and kids from low-income families also decline in reading. More than half of Barcroft's students are poor.

There hasn't been rigorous research into whether students at schools where summer breaks are short do better than kids attending other schools. But existing comparisons suggest the modified calendars have a small positive effect on student achievement. The impact appears to be somewhat bigger for low-income children.

Ron Fairchild, executive director of the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University, says reconfiguring the school calendar simply makes sense.

"You would expect an athlete or a musician's performance to suffer if they didn't practice," said Fairchild, whose organization advocates for educational summertime opportunities for kids.

There are about 3,000 U.S. schools using alternate calendars like the one at Barcroft, where July is the only full month off, according to the National Association For Year-Round Education.
The number of schools on modified calendars with shorter summer breaks more than doubled in the last 15 years. Today, 46 states have schools operating on these calendars — up from 23 states in 1992. The entire Hawaiian school system recently moved to a nontraditional calendar with a seven-week summer break.

A goal of the federal No Child Left Behind law is to get all students reading and doing math at their grade level by 2014. That has placed enormous pressure on schools to try new things, including reconfiguring calendars and schedules.

Teachers typically spend time at the beginning of each year reviewing the previous year's lessons. Schools that have fewer weeks off in the summer may need to do less of that.
It's mostly elementary schools using the modified calendars; For older students, that could make it hard to get summer jobs or participate in competitive sports programs.

In Auburn, Ala., a push to move to a year-round calendar created an outcry and ultimately failed, partly because of high-school athletics.

"It would have put a vacation in the middle of the football season," said Chris Newland, a father of two who fought the change and a psychology professor at Auburn University. "You don't touch football here."

Newland said parents didn't like the idea of putting the younger kids on a modified schedule and leaving the older ones on the traditional calendar. That would make it hard to take family vacations and would be especially problematic in a university town, where families often spend entire summers off together, he said.

Schools that have a calendar like Barcroft's typically offer educational programs during the fall, winter and spring breaks. At Barcroft, about 80 percent of kids participate. The courses offered are often aimed at giving remedial help to those who need it, a common purpose of traditional summer school.

Many teachers at year-round schools believe providing remedial help after nine weeks of coursework is an improvement over the traditional model in which kids wait until summer school to get extensive help, says Duke University's Cooper.

In addition to helping struggling kids, the breaks at Barcroft include fun electives that aren't typically offered during regular school periods.

One recent program was devoted to wetlands, which second-grader Anthony Merica described with glee. "We made clay things," he said breathlessly. "We made clay turtles and lily pads for frogs. It was fun!"

Not all schools go to a year-round schedule to boost student achievement. Some do it because they have more kids than they can accommodate in a building. By extending the school year, they can rotate more kids through a building by giving them different schedules.

The traditional school calendar dates to a period when children were more likely to be needed on family farms in the summer, and before air conditioning made school buildings hospitable during hot months.

It took Hughey-Guy two years to implement the change at Barcroft. She said parents were skeptical at first, but most backed the change after they learned more about it.

All of Barcroft's teachers decided to stay, and in some cases the calendar has even been a recruiting tool.

"I was definitely excited about the calendar. I didn't want two-and-a-half months off with nothing to do," said new first-grade teacher Caitlin Miller. She says the longer breaks during the year have improved her teaching, "They are a chance to reevaluate how the year is going — to stop, collect my thoughts and plan."

Reading, writing and rebellion? Homeschooling takes on tradition, but some wonder if students are seeing benefitsBy

By Inness Asher

Rather than the title of an often-controversial federal program, the phrase 'No Child Left Behind' might very well be the rallying cry for the contemporary homeschooling movement. On the rise nationally -- and with a prominent presence in Acadiana -- it's evident that among those with the will and determination, home teaching is a rich and satisfying experience.

Unfortunately, because the nature of homeschooling is still somewhat a tacit act of rebellion -- one which sometimes doesn't lend itself to voluntary information disclosure -- statistics are somewhat dated and limited.

As reported by the National Center for Education Statistics, the most recent national survey estimated the number of homeschooled students increasing from 850,000 students in 1999 (about 1.7 percent of the total student population), to 1,096,000 students in 2003 (approximately 2.2 percent of the total student population). While such a rate of increase doesn't yet endanger the current U. S. educational systems, it should create some reflective moments in wiser school administrators.

As an alternative to traditional school programs, the reasons for moving away from institutionalized education are as varied as those who homeschool. Some find a home environment a preferable alternative for religious reasons; others, however, say they are seeking a quality of individualized education lacking in schools run by an increasing oligarchy of professional administrators whom they often find more interested in the current lover's knot of test scores and government funding than in providing education to individual students.

Two Lafayette parents, Kate Corkern and Marie Diaz, members of the Magnolia Home Educators community, have had ample experience with children and their education. According to Corkern, the traditional school system was definitely more concerned with adapting her child to fit their mold rather than finding an individualized approach to his needs. To her, homeschooling is a way to provide a rich education to her children, while bypassing the increasingly programmatic instruction in today's schools.

"But it quickly becomes more than that," she says. "The family dynamics are natural and there's no interference."

In addition to how she views homeschooling as a natural extension of the family, she also cites a variety of reasons other homeschoolers she knows have undertaken the education of their own children.

"The reasons are as varied as people are," she says. "Some are religious, some kids are brilliant or slow or weird or persecuted in school."

Corkern's assessment aligns accurately with the NCES survey findings. According to the survey, 31 percent of parents responding cited school environments "as the most important reason for homeschooling." Another 30 percent noted a need for religious or moral instruction they found lacking, with 16 percent citing "dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools."

Or as Corkern simply states, "Most people would say they're homeschooling because they want to offer their children something different."

Diaz has had experience in both local public and private schools. A Tulane graduate, she nevertheless found that when the time came to introduce her daughter Ruth to the traditional school systems, neither were sufficient.

"We looked at public and private schools where my daughter was accepted," says Diaz, "but it just wasn't right. It just didn't feel right."

Beginning with Holy Family Home Educators, the local Roman Catholic homeschooling organization, Diaz eventually joined what was then only a mailing list begun by Corkern and a few other interested parents. As the list grew and others found an open network of like-minded parents, Magnolia Home Educators was born. Three additional children later (Joseph, Martha and Annette), Diaz is pleased with the choice she made back when her family was just beginning.

"We began as a group of interested parents," she says. "We were lucky enough to network with a couple who had homeschooled and they were reassuring."

Speak to any dedicated homeschooler and you will eventually hear of the need for such a connection. Without the support of others within a community, the very idea of homeschooling can be so intimidating as to welcome either poor practices or outright failure. With mutual support, however, Lafayette homeschooling parents can begin undauntedly teaching their children, and continue as the experience achieves academic results.

"Based on skills ranking my children, (they) haven't done too badly," Diaz modestly admits.

By anyone's account, the scholarly success of each of her children is remarkable, even by the standards of traditional education. Indeed, those are the standards by which most serious home educators gauge the progress of their pupils. With a 4.0 grade point average, Diaz' eldest daughter qualified for acceptance at a variety of both public and private universities; at the senior high level, her son Joseph is a college scholarship recipient and a National Merit semi-finalist.

Was this the kind of success she envisioned when she began homeschooling her children?

"We home schooled kind of one year at a time," says Diaz.

With support and dedication came the positive affirmation of academic success. One year led to another, she says, until at one point she eventually realized "the chances of not doing it are kind of slim right now."

Despite the enthusiasm engendered by almost every successful home-schooling parent, most traditional school participants have some serious and legitimate concerns when considering homeschooling.

How does one acquire the qualifications for imparting knowledge to one's own child on a wide variety of subjects even parents sometimes find daunting?

"Teacher's guides," says Corkern, "are essential."

Also, thanks to a free-market economy and the rapid expansion of an initial cottage industry, homeschooling parents now have an expansive array of educational material to choose from -- unlike those parents who often had to make do with used texts and subject guides less than a decade ago.

"You start out with 'school-in-a-box', everything prepared for you, but you quickly move on," says Corkern. "You start shopping around. The marketplace has really expanded to fit so many different people. Most people who do it for any length of time get the hang of it."

Not unlike teachers themselves, she adds.

Modern homeschoolers also dismiss that oft-cited bugaboo some bring up time and again: The lack of socialization homeschooling provides in contrast to the traditional classroom and playground.

"We haven't found a problem with socialization skills," says Diaz. "We see other children a fair number of times, above and beyond having friends."

She cites numerous community organizations and activities in which her children and others participate, again illustrating that a community of caring parents plays a key role in educating one's own children. The list grows rapidly as Diaz recounts the extensive extracurricular activities of the Magnolia Home Educators.

"We do field trips together, have group meetings, we sometimes meet at the park," she says. "The only thing they [the students] do alone is study. Generally most of their academic work is done at home with their brothers and sisters, if they have them. But for most other activities, there are ways to meet people, and we take those opportunities."

One example of socialization is the monthly meeting of the Magnolia Home Educators held at the Main Branch of the Lafayette Public Library.

"The library has been very welcoming to us," says Diaz. "A lot of the teenagers are involved in the Lafayette Teen Committee at the library. This year they had Book Buddies, and several of the homeschooling kids were involved in that."

Book Buddies is a confidence-building program in which independent readers aged 7-10 are paired with more experienced readers. Initially part of the Summer Reading Series, the success of the program has it resuming in October. Among home schoolers, as well as the public, it is the literate and educational activities that make local libraries community focal points.

"The Children's Department has been wonderful," says Diaz. "I think in most communities homeschoolers will gravitate to the libraries."

Do-It-Yourself Education

By Jason Overdorf
Newsweek International

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - In India, education is supposed to be free and universal through age 14. In fact, it often doesn't work out that way. Consider Dhiraj Sharma, the 10-year-old son of a bicycle rickshaw driver in Dehli, who was forced to stay home last year after the local state denied him admission because he didn't have the right papers—a common problem. So Dhiraj is now applying to a private school. For just $6 a month, the R.S. School offers a much better education than the state, says Dhiraj's father, Ramesh, complaining that his son "finished class three in government school, and he can't read anything!"

Such problems have sparked a boom in private schooling throughout the developing world. In 2000, James Tooley, an administrator for Orient Global, a Singapore company that invests in education for the poor, went walking in Hyderabad, India, and was startled to find private schools on virtually every corner. He launched a full-scale study in India, China and Africa, and everywhere, officials and aid agencies told him such schools for the poor didn't exist. But when his researchers explored the villages and slums, they found that not only did they exist, they were flourishing. "It's a tremendous success story," says Tooley. "Entrepreneurs are catering to poor, low-income families, and they're achieving better than the government at a fraction of the cost."

The story was perhaps most dramatic in China. Tooley and his chief researcher, Qiang Liu, traveled to the poorest, most remote villages of Gansu province. Officials there insisted there were no private schools. And so it seemed, until Qiang woke up one morning at dawn and canvassed the vegetable market. Sure enough, women who'd traveled there from the neighboring countryside told him about private schools farther up in the mountains. "In the end, our survey found 586 of them in these remote villages, where the government and [aid workers] said there were none."

Elsewhere the private schools were easier to spot and even more numerous. In Delhi, hand-painted signs advertise low-cost private schools at every twist of the narrow lanes. In Hyderabad, 60 percent of the schools serving poor neighborhoods are private. None of them get state aid, and two thirds are not recognized by the government at all—meaning they are essentially black market. In the hinterlands of Accra, Ghana, Tooley's team found the same phenomenon: 65 percent of kids there attended private, unaided schools. In Lagos, in three different slums, the figure jumped to 75 percent.

The numbers suggest that despite the low prices (as little as $1.50 a month), parents believe such schools do a better job than the government. And they're generally right. Harvard's Michael Kremer found that though private-school salaries were lower in India than in public schools, teachers at the former skipped fewer classes (absenteeism is a notorious problem in India's state-run schools). Similarly, a 1999 survey conducted by Delhi University's Centre for Development Economics found that while teachers in state schools spent their time sitting idle, the makeshift private schools enjoyed "feverish classroom activity."

Harder-working teachers, of course, get better results—even when they lack qualifications. Kremer's 2002 study of Colombia's PACES program, one of the largest school-voucher projects ever implemented, found that three years after switching to relatively low-cost private schools, students had accomplished more, repeated fewer grades and scored higher on tests, and were less likely to have dropped out to take jobs, than were their counterparts still stuck in the government system. Other studies have reported similar results in Thailand, Tanzania, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines and elsewhere.

Indeed, it's remarkable how many cheap private schools manage to do more with less. In Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorer Indian states, for instance, Oxford University's Geeta Kingdon has found that private, unaided schools are about twice as cost-effective as government schools, achieving better results in math and comparable results in reading at half the cost. The explanation lies in basic market forces. Competition forces these schools to work effectively. It also produces greater accountability.

In India, teachers' unions are so powerful that educators are almost never fired or transferred for transgressions. And parents are powerless. "At government schools, parents won't even be allowed into the compound, let alone to meet a teacher, but in private schools, in most cases, they have parent-teacher associations," says Parth Shah, president of New Delhi's Center for Civil Society and coordinator of India's School Choice Campaign—a program that promotes vouchers to allow poor kids to attend private school. "Parents feel they have a right to ask a question of a private school."

This higher standard is on view at Priya Adarsh School, another low-cost private operator in northeast Delhi. Here the principal—keen on keeping customers—watches his teachers on a closed-circuit television while he pecks away at a spreadsheet on his desktop PC. The standards aren't perfect, of course; when NEWSWEEK visited, the camera caught one teacher whacking a pupil with a ruler. But at least every teacher was in his or her classroom teaching, and every student was sitting at a desk and paying attention.

Skeptics decry this "at least they're trying" argument. In many regards the cheap private schools are substandard—with poor infrastructure, high teacher-student ratios and poorly qualified instructors—even if they are better than state schools. R. Govinda, head of the department of schools and nonformal education at New Delhi's National University of Educational Planning and Administration, says embracing cheap private schools is defeatist.

"I'm not ready to settle for a substandard alternative," he says. "Comparing them is like comparing two people who are drowning. One is drowning in 20 feet of water, the other is drowning in 30 feet of water. Does it make a difference?"

Other opponents, both in India and elsewhere, argue that ceding the educational field to private players will put an end to any hope of an equal education for all. A study based on a survey of parent satisfaction published earlier this year by researchers at Columbia University found that relying on private markets can undermine educational equity and universal access.

Furthermore, it argues, private schools strive for superior quality only where they compete with government schools; otherwise they offer "lower-quality, second-chance" educations to children without any other option. "There is no reason to assume that private markets will necessarily improve the quality of education," the study concludes.

School-choice advocates respond that it is a fantasy to suggest public education is providing a quality education to all. "You can't compare the reality of private education with some myth of what public education has been like," says Tooley. At least cheap private schools are responsive to parents, and the more parents who choose this route, the better private schools will get, thanks to increased capital, higher demand, more competition and economies of scale. "These are [now] small cottage industries," says Tooley. "They're mom-and-pop stores. There are thousands and thousands of them. Some of them are beginning to consolidate, and you're getting small, embryonic chains."

That's where he's looking to invest much of the $100 million education fund he manages for Orient Global. Already the fund has given grants to six private-school associations or institutions in Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Nepal, and Tooley's team is conducting research in India ahead of opening a chain of budget private schools for the poor there that would set new benchmarks in quality. "It's an inadequate analogy," says Tooley. "But when I go shopping in a supermarket, I go to one of several chains, and poor people also go shopping there. Poorer people. They have the same diversity of choice and the same quality. The chain doesn't discriminate between us. Also, some of them have food stamps or social-security payments, which are like school vouchers. So when you have competing chains of schools, when the market system develops, that inequality will become less relevant." In the meantime, as the slums of Delhi, Lagos and Accra show, black-market schools will continue to thrive, ensuring that, even in places where government has failed them, poor kids can get an adequate education—on the books or off.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.