The Cons of Homeschooling Under a Charter School

When considering the option of homeschooling under a charter school, the pros of this educational route can be tempting. However, before making your final decision of whether or not to go from being an independent homeschooler, to homeschooling under a charter, it is important to be aware of the cons of this educational option. As a mom who homeschooled independently for several years before signing up with a charter school this semester, I would like to offer what I perceive to be the cons of homeschooling under a charter school.

The ways in which you are permitted to utilize instructional funds can seem very limited - Before I signed up with a charter, I'd had several other moms encourage me to do so because of the instructional funds that would be available to my children. I got the impression that we would be able to use the instructional funds for any curriculum we needed, as long as it was not religion-based. However, when it came down to it, I learned (after enrolling, unfortunately), that this was not the case at all. In actuality, the curriculum materials we can order come from an extremely limited, pre-selected list. And it's very difficult to just order, say, a textbook. You are required to order a "package", which contains a teacher's edition, as well as other items. These "packages" can run close to $200, per subject! That eats up a child's instructional funds very, very quickly.

Additionally, I believed we would be able to use the instructional funds for classes, and field trips that were pertinent to what we were studying. However, your choices, again, come from a pre-selected list of "vendors". If what you want isn't on the list, than you are out of luck. In our case, we wanted to use some of the funds for karate classes. Since all karate vendors within half an hour of my home were removed from the list, we could not choose karate. However, we have some other choices, such as horseback riding, piano lessons, and rock climbing classes. We will likely attempt to use our instructional funds for one or more of these selections. Instructional funds can also be used for academic classes that the charter school holds at a facility; in our case they are conducted at a church. However, I enjoy teaching core subjects and foreign language, and my children were not interested in the elective-type courses offered (guitar, theater).

In some cases, the issues with how instructional funds can be utilized seem unreasonable to me. For instance, there are two very inexpensive (about $8 each) social studies workbooks that would really benefit my son, and which were written to correlate exactly with our state's educational standards. However, we are not allowed to purchase these workbook with instructional funds. At the same time, we are allowed to use instructional funds to purchase lift tickets for a ski-resort in our area. Call me crazy, but I think the social studies workbooks are far more applicable to my son's education than a ski trip. So, again, some aspects of how instructional funds can be used when homeschooling through a charter school make no sense to me.

Students in grades 2-12 will be required to participate in yearly standardized testing - Now, some homeschoolers will not see this as a con to enrolling with a charter school. I can understand that. Personally, I don't mind that my children participate in testing. I think it is good practice for tests they will take all through their lives. However, I don't love the fact that they are required (yes, required) to prepare for this testing. How does this work, you might wonder? Well, that leads us to the next con of homeschooling under a charter.

A supervising teacher will visit your home once every 3 weeks - These meetings don't always have to occur in your home; in fact you can agree to meet your teacher in a park, restaurant, or even Starbucks if you want to. However, there is often a lot of paperwork involved in these meetings, so it's easiest to do it at home.

Each month, your supervising teacher will require that your child complete "benchmarks", which are really just packets of test-practice worksheets. These "benchmarks" must be completed during the supervising teacher's visit (which can make for a very long visit). The purpose, as I see it, is to gauge your child's test-taking skills; not their understanding of content (which is usually what homeschooling parents care most about). I find myself feeling quite resentful of these so-called "benchmarks", and the fact that we have no choice in whether or not our children do them, so long as we are enrolled with the charter school. This might be one of the cons of homeschooling under a charter school that pushes me to go back to homeschooling independently (or, in our state, registering as our own private school).

Additionally, I find myself stressed out over these monthly teacher visits. It's not our supervising teacher; she is an extremely nice woman who is very easy to chat with. We all like her very much. But these monthly meetings are affecting our homeschooling atmosphere at home even during the weeks when she will not be visiting in ways that seem to take a lot of the peace and fun out of homeschooling that we have grown accustomed to.

You are required to submit learning logs and work samples - Again, this might not seem like a con to some homeschoolers. I don't really mind the work samples, although I don't love the fact that the subject is chosen for us each month. It's not a deal-breaker, though. The learning logs require you to write down one assignment, and its corresponding subject, for each day of the learning period. You submit these each time your supervising teacher visits for her monthly meeting with your family.

The only thing about the learning logs that I resent is that it makes it difficult for us to take time off when we want to take time off. For instance, we school all summer long so that we can take a much needed month long break in the Fall to enjoy our favorite weather and Fall festivities. Now that we are enrolled in the charter school, we can't really do that because our assignment dates need to correspond with the dates written on the learning logs. So, in essence, we can only take real time off from school according to the charter school calendar. This is another con of homeschooling under a charter that may keep me from enrolling next year. We are really missing our Fall break this year!

Aside from a few other miscellaneous issues (difficulty obtaining information from school staff; several week waiting period between the order of items and their actual arrival, etc.) these are the most significant cons of homeschooling under a charter that my family has experienced to date. We may enroll again next year, but only if by the end of this year, I assess the situation to find that my kids' educations have benefited significantly from this educational choice. From where I stand today though, I can say that we likely will not enroll next year, but instead will probably go back to enjoying the flexibility and freedom of independent homeschooling.