County Review becoming more rigid - what to do?

[rumi]

Hi everyone, we just had our review from our County. Normally I have had a pretty positive attitude about the County Review process as I see it as an opportunity to have an external evaluation twice a year.   It has not been hard for me to translate what we do into things that fit into the curriculum and so it has generally been fine - a bit of extra work for me, but worthwhile.

Today when I went in with all my stuff I was dismayed to learn it was not enough to show all the things that dd had done / could do but I also had to show evidence of my planning, documenting and assessing her learning.  The reviewer was very specific - she says, "I can see that she knows plenty of things and that you are doing things with her, but I need to document it, I need evidence.  I need to know what you are doing as a teacher to know that she knows what you want her to know."

This is so against the flow of what we do or how we approach learning.

Later she was giving an example taken directly from something that dd had said during the review - "that shows how she is making connections, taking something she has learned in this context and using it in another context."

SO I asked her, "when those things happen spontaneously then should I just note them down?"

to which she replied, "Well, they happen spontaneously as a family, but we want something intentional, showing what you did as a teacher, not as a parent, to make sure she learned that.  It needs to be intentional, and not only spontaneous."

Now to me it is obvious that

- doing it intentionally may not even work, i.e. it may not happen
 - if it happens it will most likely take up a lot of effort and maybe frustration if I am trying to make it happen at a particular time so that we can document it
- as a result the spontaneous learning may get compromised
- no one will enjoy this
- it will be useless or even harmful to our learning process
- dd will learn less as a result
- dd will enjoy learning less

am i exaggerating?  I don't think so.
This whole idea of separating what we do as a family from what i do as a teacher is so alien to me and I am surprised that she put it that way in such specific terms.  

For PE I mentioned that dd played soccer, badminton, roller skated and swam.  The reviewer wanted evidence of instruction in these things.  "All kids play outside," she said.   So just saying that she played every day was not going to suffice.  

Are they trying to make it expensive to HS?  Like I have to enroll her in a class in order to meet the PE requirement?  She actually has a whole group of kids that meet almost every day and play these games.  So it is happening regularly- more regularly than math or science, if you are talking about documentable activity.   

We are going to face the same for art, music ...
even writing is something that she has done by herself, which I actually had to completely stop trying to teach or "encourage" at all before she would deign to do it.  She writes almost daily - more than meeting our requirement.  However, much of it is private (in her diary) and certainly not anything "planned" or "intended" by me.

And reading - her passion!   A day without a book is rare for her, most like 3-4 per day.  But just a list of the books read was not enough.  The reviewer wanted to see my "planning," what I wanted her to read and learn from her reading.  She wanted me to talk about main idea and stuff.  I wonder if I should show her Alfie Kohn's article on "How to Create Nonreaders." www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/nonreaders.htm
  He quotes a teacher who says “The best way to make students hate reading is to make them prove to you that they have read."
 

Math too is quite precious l- dd just loves math, often wakes up talking about it.  i don't want to touch this with any regular planning and teaching - I do teach when she asks, but this is very casual and minimal.  To meet review requirements I have been able to have her complete a few written worksheets to demonstrate various skills.

Of course during the review I just nodded along and took notes.

My options are

- opt out of County Review and go with an Umbrella (private) HS Review program. 

- figure out a way to produce the kind of paperwork that is expected with minimal impact to our life / learning.

However in the latter case, I am not sure how I could do this.  The reason I prefer to review with the county is that I think that the County should be equipped to support homeschoolers of various approaches, as I felt they were in previous reviews.  Why move in the direction of more "control" over the child's learning. If I am being reviewed by them I should be able to share my concerns with them ... so maybe I am really hoping for more tips on how to do this.

[moominmamma]

Holy crow, that's just crazy. It's not enough that your dd has learned, that she has engaged in meaningful activities, drawn connections, grown and thrived. What's important is that you are behaving like a teacher?

I would opt out and go with the umbrella review option if you can possibly afford it. 

I could suggest a few ways to make natural learning look like top-down organized home-based learning, but if you have any other option, like the private review, I would go that route. Anything else is just playing a game, which I hate doing. I like my meetings with any liaison people to feel authentic and honest, rather than being a dance of words and intentions.

If you really want to stay with the county review process, you probably just need to make it all look more like what they are expecting to see. So have a learning plan (derived collaboratively with your child) with specific goals and targets. Keep notes to show that you did what's in the plan. Revise the plan if you don't end up doing so. 

For instance, for PE ... if your dd says she likes playing outside and doesn't want to do any organized sports, write down a PE plan that says "Five hours of physical activity per week are planned. Focus will be on collaborative and co-operative game play and individual fitness pursuits rather than competitive sports. Four primary units: 1. swimming 2. badminton skills 3. soccer skills 4. roller skating. Instruction strategies will include parent coaching, peer feedback, self-directed learning, modelling and participation in organized activities as appropriate and available. Will continue to expand knowledge of game play rules in soccer and badminton. Nutrition: Will participate in meal planning, grocery shopping and meal preparation with attention to healthy choices and balanced comsumption of various food groups. Methods of assessment: Affective indicators, parent observation of skills development, log of hours spent." Then you keep a silly little log of hours in a ledger or computer file and everything is cool. That's probably not your assessor's 100% ideal PE program (which is likely a school gym class), but it likely looks a lot more like what she expects than "She is very active and very fit." If it turns out your dd has no interest in roller-skating, then you amend your PE plan in November ... and "plan" the hip-hop instruction she's been getting from her cousin and the neighbour kid, or whatever.

I'm guessing you could make it look like it's all planned, when in fact the "plan" is really just a (modifiable) prediction of what you think is likely to happen. But it's a lot of hoop-jumping, and personally I would be bailing on the county assessment procedure if I were in your shoes and another alternative was available.

Miranda

[SweetSilver]

What are your state laws?  In our state, the state rules for homeschooling are the only rules, though sometimes I hear of school districts "requiring" something else and homeschooling families don't seem to question it, like asking for "teaching credits" when the state has no requirements for it.  Also, our state has several homeschooling organizations to connect with others, to help in these situations and theoretically find out how others approached things.  Other families in your county might have some advice on that as well.  This lady might be The Hard Nut.

[onatightrope]

Are there guidelines you need to meet?  From what you wrote, it sounds like she's telling you what she wants to see, and that's a hard standard to meet.  I would get a copy of what the state requires, and see if what she's asking for is on there.  If it isn't, I'd ask her, very politely, to show you where in the law you are required to use a particular method of instruction.   It sounds to me like she's likely overstepping her authority, and if that's the case, knowing the law is your best defense.  

[4evermom]

Yeah, I'd make sure you know the law and that she isn't asking for more than is required or putting her own interpretation on the requirements.  Are you likely to have the same person or do you get someone different each time?  We get to choose our evaluator in this state, thankfully.

[rumi]

Thanks for the tips Moominmamma.  In case I survive in the County I will probably have to come up with that language.   Like you, I don't want to dance and feel like the whole thing is contrived.  Nor do I want to give them more than is required - this only makes it harder for others in my boat

.

We are in Maryland - this the law I found on the homeschool page: http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/laws/blMD.htm

I may go back with a plan that seems doable to me, and if she needs anything more specific than that I will frankly have to tell her, that what she is asking would have a negative impact on my child's learning experience.   That all the learning she has done so far has been self-directed and without planning or prompting by me.  If the County cannot understand / support this kind of homeschooling / learning then we won't be able to stay with the County.  I don't know if there is a way to ask someone higher up whether the requirements this woman is stating are real - we don't get to choose our reviewer, afaik and I'd rather not get in a conflict with her if we have to get reviewed by her again.

[fritz]

I'm also homeschooling in MD (Anne Arundel county), and I also chose to do the county reviews twice a school year.  I realize each school district can set their own review process, and so each district might have a different attitude from another.  In my experience with DS (age 6) and the county reviews, which so far have been positive, they have emphasized "evidence" too, but they're only looking for evidence of learning, not evidence of teaching.  However, my reviewer (it's happened to be the same lady both times, though it wasn't planned that way) is happy to see pictures of DS doing whatever activity, or screenshots of the computer screen.  (It mostly seems they just want to see you making an effort to educate your child.)  There is a definite bias towards favoring already-established curricula or worksheets (which we have very few of, since DS isn't a worksheet kind of kid).  We're definitely eclectic, though, so the only established curriculum we use is Singapore Math (at this point in time anyway).

For our reviews, there's a bunch of reviewers in the same room, being supervised by the home school coordinator (who's actually required to sign off on the review form before we can leave).  I'd definitely find out who your home school coordinator is and try to verify if your latest reviewer was really in line for what your school district wants, or if she was getting carried away by her own personal preferences.  Although, you know, there's also a huge bias against unschoolers (at least in my home schooling coordinator), but that's b/c of a few lazy/negligent parents who borrowed or misunderstood the unschooling label without following or applying the ideas.  So I'd advise you to never use that word during your reviews.  But if you did happen to mention it, that may be why she was harping on proof of intention.  "Regular, thorough instruction" is the backbone of the MD homeschooling law, which, in my eyes, can be met in a variety of ways; it's obvious that your reviewer was looking for very explicit evidence that you're doing more than letting your daughter run wild.

Here's the link to the state curriculum, which I've found very helpful (and although it can seem a little overwhelming at first, it's actually pretty thorough).  We'll be focusing on the 1st grade skills this coming school year, and it's a wonderful reminder to me to be a little more explicit w/ DS about discussing things in a critical thinking kind of way.  It's basically a grade-by grade, subject-by-subject overview of the entire school year's goals.  A giant, already-typed-up lesson plan, if you will.  If I were stuck with your reviewer again, I'd print off the state curriculum pages that apply to my child and show that as proof of my overall intention or plan for deliberate instruction.  It's impossible to argue with, since every school in the state is supposed to follow it, too.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do!

[pigpokey]

You need to brush up on your edubabble -- here's some from schools near me

http://www.themuseumschool.org/Curriculum/museum_school-model.php 

http://www.paideiaschool.org/elementary/index.aspx 

http://www.horizonsschool.com/ElementaryandMiddleSchool.htm 

And then you'll be prepared to describe to the county how, by doing unschooling, you are "instructing."  You are, in fact, instructing six ways to Sunday.