[email protected]

I received this from another email list and thought you might be interested.
The new stereotype will be that homeschoolers are overachieving pedants. But
the news media love to focus on the extremes.


<A HREF="about:blank">Chicago Tribune | Metro -- Home-schoolers find vindication in contests</A>

Home-schoolers find vindication in contests

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/article/0,2669,ART-51825,FF.h

tml

By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah
Tribune staff reporter
May 16, 2001

Last year, home-schoolers startled the educational establishment when
they swept the top three places
in the prestigious Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, nailing words
such as "phrontistery" and
"sphingine."

Just a week earlier, home-schoolers took four of the top 10 spots at the
national geography bee.

This month, students who are taught at home -- just 2 percent of all
school-age children -- will again
make up more than 10 percent of the national spelling bee's participants
and an even higher proportion
at the National Geographic Bee, sponsored by the National Geographic
Society.

Their success is no accident. Parents who home-school, often on the
defensive about the quality of
education they provide, are looking to these contests for vindication.

Some are spending thousands of dollars on specialized dictionaries,
atlases and computer programs,
and untold hours training their children for these high-profile proving
grounds.

Critics argue that teaching to compete successfully in bees is more
about gamesmanship than lasting
educational achievement. But in a climate that puts a premium on the
results of standardized tests, the
bees give home-schoolers their own flashy scorecards to show the rest of
the world.

"Clearly it makes a point that home-schooled parents can do the job,"
said Richard Jefferson,
spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association. "For years,
people were not convinced that
home-schoolers were really up to the job of teaching our own children.
So we've had to fight extensively
in the public arena just to make sure people understood that we can do
it. If another school system
produced winners, what would they say? They would say, 'See our school
system works.'"

Home-schoolers in the Chicago area have four of their own spelling bees,
whose winners go on to
compete with schoolchildren in higher rounds. The geography bees have a
similar structure.

Mom starts a bee

Laura Yates of Antioch started a home-school spelling bee in Lake County
after hearing about a
home-schooler winning the national competition in 1997. For her, it was
a way to offer her children
academic competition.

Since then, she has amassed a library of books on word stems and
etymology and thick dictionaries to
help find difficult terms. She has fed her kids' appetite for new words
by visiting bees at neighboring
schools and purchasing word games on compact disc or tapes with strange
pronunciations of equally
curious-looking terms found in the Scripps Howard paideia, the spellers'
bible of 3,600 words.

Along with math on the living room couch, science at the lake in their
back yard and gym on a neighbor's
trampoline, the Yates children have spent five to eight hours a day
learning to decipher obscure
spellings.

Lindsey, 15, qualified for the nationals last year, finishing 118th.
Elliott, 13, came in third at the Chicago
Tribune's suburban spelling bee in March. They both attribute it to
home-schooling.

"It gives you so much freedom," Lindsey said. "If I was in school, I
don't know how I'd study for it because
I'd be so worn out with homework and sports. It allows me to focus in on
something I enjoy."

Linda Bolt, of South Bend, Ind., has created flash cards and stuck word
lists on windows and mirrors
throughout the house to help her son, Erik, 13, study for the spelling
bee. She entered him in the
geography bee after learning about a home-schooler winning it in 1999
and reading about the bees in a
home-schooling magazine.

This year, the national geography bee, with a $25,000 scholarship at
stake, will be held in Washington,
D.C. Tuesday and May 23. The national spelling bee, with its $10,000
prize, will be held May 29 through
31.

Home-schoolers reached the nationals of the spelling bee for the first
time in 1992, and 27 did it last
year. This year, 25 of the 248 competitors are home-schooled. The
geography bee started seeing
similar trends in the mid-1990s. A record eight home-schoolers are among
55 eligible contestants this
year.

Image-conscious

Over the years, the Home School Legal Defense Association has helped
improve the public's image of
an estimated 1.2 million home-schoolers across the nation by emphasizing
high standardized test
scores. A 1998 study commissioned by the association showed that
children taught at home typically
score between the 70th and 80th percentiles in national tests.

The association also highlights the bee results, which Penny Beihl of
Saluda, S.C. -- a former private
elementary school teacher -- believes are important to changing public
perception.

"I'll be checking out of a store and people will ask the kids, 'Where do
you go to school? And they find out
and say, 'How do you know they're learning anything?'" she said.

Beihl grills her sons daily on world facts and has compiled a
geography-version of the "20 Questions"
game for the dinner table. Her son, David, 15, won the national
geography bee in 1999, and now her
second son, Tommy, 13, will be in the national spelling and geography
bees this year.

"I think obviously they must be learning something," Beihl said. "This
is my job. If my (son) wants to do it,
I'm going to help him achieve it."

A little Greek, Latin

The kids often drive the process. George Thampy of suburban St. Louis,
the 2000 spelling bee champ,
developed his own list of 3,000 words from dictionaries and via Internet
Web sites. He dabbled in a little
Greek and Latin.

The 13-year-old also came in second in the geography bee last year. This
year, his sister, Mallika, 12,
will be in the national spelling bee.

"I think one of the obvious benefits of a home-school education versus
any other trend is you can focus
on specific needs and interests in your education," said Paige Kimble,
director of the Scripps Howard
National Spelling Bee. "Children in other types of schooling follow a
set program regardless of whether
they are interested or need that program."

Public educators don't think the bee victories mean much.

"I think they can prove that home-schooling is a viable alternative
without using that as an example," said
Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School
Administrators. "If I was in
the home-schooling movement, I'd say, is that the way you want kids to
spend their time, sitting around
all day and memorizing lists of spelling words or facts.

"Education is not 'The Weakest Link' or 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.'
You're not an educated
person because you can memorize pages of esoteric words. That's why you
have spell check on
your computer." Jefferson dismisses the criticism. "What is wrong with
memorizing?" he said. "How
else do we learn Spanish or another foreign language? How else do I know
how to drive? Memorizing,
we all do it."




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Tammy Graves

<snip> Public educators don't think the bee victories mean much.

"I think they can prove that home-schooling is a viable alternative
without using that as an example," said
Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School
Administrators. "If I was in
the home-schooling movement, I'd say, is that the way you want kids to
spend their time, sitting around
all day and memorizing lists of spelling words or facts.<snip>

What I like about this editorial is that the ps doesnt think too much about the
bee victories, but they sure put focus on those darn report cards & tests huh?
And he certainly does not know what the hs teaching is really about or how it
works. Let them say that hs is full of overachievers! I hope my dd's to be in
that same category soon.



I received this from another email list and thought you might be interested.
The new stereotype will be that homeschoolers are overachieving pedants. But
the news media love to focus on the extremes.


<A HREF="about:blank">Chicago Tribune | Metro -- Home-schoolers find
vindication in contests</A>

Home-schoolers find vindication in contests

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/article/0,2669,ART-51825,FF.h

tml

By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah
Tribune staff reporter
May 16, 2001

Last year, home-schoolers startled the educational establishment when
they swept the top three places
in the prestigious Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, nailing words
such as "phrontistery" and
"sphingine."

Just a week earlier, home-schoolers took four of the top 10 spots at the
national geography bee.

This month, students who are taught at home -- just 2 percent of all
school-age children -- will again
make up more than 10 percent of the national spelling bee's participants
and an even higher proportion
at the National Geographic Bee, sponsored by the National Geographic
Society.

Their success is no accident. Parents who home-school, often on the
defensive about the quality of
education they provide, are looking to these contests for vindication.

Some are spending thousands of dollars on specialized dictionaries,
atlases and computer programs,
and untold hours training their children for these high-profile proving
grounds.

Critics argue that teaching to compete successfully in bees is more
about gamesmanship than lasting
educational achievement. But in a climate that puts a premium on the
results of standardized tests, the
bees give home-schoolers their own flashy scorecards to show the rest of
the world.

"Clearly it makes a point that home-schooled parents can do the job,"
said Richard Jefferson,
spokesman for the Home School Legal Defense Association. "For years,
people were not convinced that
home-schoolers were really up to the job of teaching our own children.
So we've had to fight extensively
in the public arena just to make sure people understood that we can do
it. If another school system
produced winners, what would they say? They would say, 'See our school
system works.'"

Home-schoolers in the Chicago area have four of their own spelling bees,
whose winners go on to
compete with schoolchildren in higher rounds. The geography bees have a
similar structure.

Mom starts a bee

Laura Yates of Antioch started a home-school spelling bee in Lake County
after hearing about a
home-schooler winning the national competition in 1997. For her, it was
a way to offer her children
academic competition.

Since then, she has amassed a library of books on word stems and
etymology and thick dictionaries to
help find difficult terms. She has fed her kids' appetite for new words
by visiting bees at neighboring
schools and purchasing word games on compact disc or tapes with strange
pronunciations of equally
curious-looking terms found in the Scripps Howard paideia, the spellers'
bible of 3,600 words.

Along with math on the living room couch, science at the lake in their
back yard and gym on a neighbor's
trampoline, the Yates children have spent five to eight hours a day
learning to decipher obscure
spellings.

Lindsey, 15, qualified for the nationals last year, finishing 118th.
Elliott, 13, came in third at the Chicago
Tribune's suburban spelling bee in March. They both attribute it to
home-schooling.

"It gives you so much freedom," Lindsey said. "If I was in school, I
don't know how I'd study for it because
I'd be so worn out with homework and sports. It allows me to focus in on
something I enjoy."

Linda Bolt, of South Bend, Ind., has created flash cards and stuck word
lists on windows and mirrors
throughout the house to help her son, Erik, 13, study for the spelling
bee. She entered him in the
geography bee after learning about a home-schooler winning it in 1999
and reading about the bees in a
home-schooling magazine.

This year, the national geography bee, with a $25,000 scholarship at
stake, will be held in Washington,
D.C. Tuesday and May 23. The national spelling bee, with its $10,000
prize, will be held May 29 through
31.

Home-schoolers reached the nationals of the spelling bee for the first
time in 1992, and 27 did it last
year. This year, 25 of the 248 competitors are home-schooled. The
geography bee started seeing
similar trends in the mid-1990s. A record eight home-schoolers are among
55 eligible contestants this
year.

Image-conscious

Over the years, the Home School Legal Defense Association has helped
improve the public's image of
an estimated 1.2 million home-schoolers across the nation by emphasizing
high standardized test
scores. A 1998 study commissioned by the association showed that
children taught at home typically
score between the 70th and 80th percentiles in national tests.

The association also highlights the bee results, which Penny Beihl of
Saluda, S.C. -- a former private
elementary school teacher -- believes are important to changing public
perception.

"I'll be checking out of a store and people will ask the kids, 'Where do
you go to school? And they find out
and say, 'How do you know they're learning anything?'" she said.

Beihl grills her sons daily on world facts and has compiled a
geography-version of the "20 Questions"
game for the dinner table. Her son, David, 15, won the national
geography bee in 1999, and now her
second son, Tommy, 13, will be in the national spelling and geography
bees this year.

"I think obviously they must be learning something," Beihl said. "This
is my job. If my (son) wants to do it,
I'm going to help him achieve it."

A little Greek, Latin

The kids often drive the process. George Thampy of suburban St. Louis,
the 2000 spelling bee champ,
developed his own list of 3,000 words from dictionaries and via Internet
Web sites. He dabbled in a little
Greek and Latin.

The 13-year-old also came in second in the geography bee last year. This
year, his sister, Mallika, 12,
will be in the national spelling bee.

"I think one of the obvious benefits of a home-school education versus
any other trend is you can focus
on specific needs and interests in your education," said Paige Kimble,
director of the Scripps Howard
National Spelling Bee. "Children in other types of schooling follow a
set program regardless of whether
they are interested or need that program."

Public educators don't think the bee victories mean much.

"I think they can prove that home-schooling is a viable alternative
without using that as an example," said
Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School
Administrators. "If I was in
the home-schooling movement, I'd say, is that the way you want kids to
spend their time, sitting around
all day and memorizing lists of spelling words or facts.

"Education is not 'The Weakest Link' or 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.'
You're not an educated
person because you can memorize pages of esoteric words. That's why you
have spell check on
your computer." Jefferson dismisses the criticism. "What is wrong with
memorizing?" he said. "How
else do we learn Spanish or another foreign language? How else do I know
how to drive? Memorizing,
we all do it."




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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kate mcdaniel

It's amazing how we are "damned if we do, damned if we don't".
Why do you want to homeschool? Your children will not be able to
"socialize" with other children? They will be so far behind.
Later that decade....
Why do you want your children to enter contest that usually ps school kids
enter? Do you want them to socialize with ps kids and prove that
homeschooling creates a positive learning environment?
We will never please the masses - then again who wants to?
God forbid we should want our children to do well.
The statement about memorization doesn't mean your a 'well rounded educated
person', then why do the ps force students to memorize spelling list? Ahh -
could it be that people are losing faith in the ps system and this scares
the educational system? Is it only ps kids that win the contest that are
'well-rounded educated people'? I don't think so - sounds like a double
standard to me.
On Mon, 21 May 2001 14:05:20 EDT, [email protected] wrote:






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