More Black Parents Choose Homeschooling |
| More Black Parents Choose Homeschooling Posted: 04 Jan 2011 12:10 PM PST
As No Child Left Behind continued to leave many black children behind, some black parents opted out of the public school system. Some chose charter or private schools, but others felt that the only way they could be assured that their children would get the best education was to teach them themselves.Many parents - both black and white - have lauded the success of homeschooling for years. Students that enter in to traditional schools after having been homeschooled often soar above students who have been working with a traditional curriculum. Some of the obvious reasons for their success is one-on-one instruction, plus you can't pull the old "I-lost-my-homework" schtick, when you're working from home. As the public school systems around the country continue to languish, it's no surprise that more black parents are considering homeschooling. Mirlande Jean-Gilles, a Mother and writer living in Baltimore, looked at the public school landscape when she first moved to Baltimore from Brooklyn and decided on homeschooling her daughter, Sequoia. She and her husband, an artist, homeschooled her until she reached the second grade. They joined a homeschooling network that provided support and socialization: "A good homeschooling program can provide all the social and academic enrichment a child needs," says Gilles. When Gilles' daughter entered a traditional school, she was two grades ahead of the other children, but as middle school approaches, Gilles is less excited about the prospects for traditional schools and is reconsidering homeschooling again. At the Indigo Nation Homeschooler's Association, the curriculum centers on African-American history, culture and language. Twelve families participate in a co-op and meet once a week at the library to learn about African storytelling, Swahili and talk about role models in African-American history. Families in the co-op feel like traditional public schools don't teach African-American children in a way that they can relate to and there are glaring omissions as it relates to blacks' achievements in this country. Joyce Burgess, who co-founded the National Black Home Educators organization with her husband, based in Louisiana, says the No. 1 reason parents choose to homeschool is for a black curriculum. Blacks and other minorities make up nearly 15 percent of the approximately 2 million home-schooled students in the country, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. If the public education system doesn't improve, particularly in the areas of cultural history, I'm sure more will be joining. http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNodes=uiConfig,feedConfig,localizationConfig,entry&id=868400&pid=868399&uts=1294078531 http://www.aolcdn.com/ke/media_gallery/v1/ke_media_gallery_wrapper.swf Your Hottest News Stories Atlantic Records Getty Images North America This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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