It turns out that test scores for US students are going down for science. And Steven Strauss, a leadership fellow at Harvard, says the US is approaching Third-World status because student math scores are so low. But you know what? Math scores are not the harbinger of developing society. Women entering the workforce and earning their…

We were in New York a few months ago, and of course we played with every animal we saw because my kids are, at this point, probably more farm than city.  And of course we had the violin and the cello because we travel with them everywhere because we practice every day, no matter what….

Our farm is magical right now. All the animals are having babies. My husband is giving the animals more and more freedom. This year he took the pigs out of farrowing crates and let them farrow in a big, open building full of sunlight and hay. He was worried that the moms would lie on the…

Before I was a homeschooler, before I even had kids, my friend, Lisa Nielsen was running literacy programs in the New York City public schools. The first time I can remember thinking that schools were really messed up was when she told me that teaching reading in school is controversial among reading specialists. Today Nielsen's…

Often, parents ask me how long my son has been skateboarding. This is parentspeak for, "I hope your kid is a lot older than he looks because I don't want to think my own kid is slow." I think the core parent worry is that their child is falling behind and the parent's job is…

Someone sent me a press release about "educational rap music." I knew right away the music would suck. People who write good music do not need to say that it’s educational. I mean, is Bach not educational? Is he just for idiots? What makes some music educational and some not? Stuff that needs to be…

During my last business trip I bought my son a phone. I try to say yes to what they want to buy. I try to trust that they'll use it for something interesting. Sometimes it ends up being a waste of money, but usually not. So the big surprise about the phone is not that he…

The Washington Post announced that Sarah Wysocki has been fired. She got great reviews for her classroom performance. Kids liked her, her principal liked her. But the test scores of her students were not good enough. There is wide agreement that teaching to the test is a vapid way to educate kids. There is wide…

I rarely tout my teaching abilities as a reason that I am homeschooling, which is probably why I have a homeschool blog full of beach resort photos instead of teaching tips. However I do think I'm qualified to teach writing. I've taught writing at Brown, Boston University, and the University of Paris. And having been…

Do you ever hear parents who send their kids to school talking about curriculum? No. Right? Do you know why? Because it doesn't matter. If you use curriculum or you do not use curriculum, that is a very big question. Riverdale is a school that is following child-directed learning: no set curriculum. Most public schools…

My son plays cello in a Suzuki program at The Music Institute of Chicago. The Suzuki method is rigid. There are ten books, and you go through the songs one by one. You learn a new skill in each song, and the Suzuki-certified teacher tells you when you can progress. To be clear, I love…

I was in low track math. I remember when I realized it. I was in the front row, on the far right, and did not understand anything going on in algebra class. We had a tiered system in our school. I was in the highest track for most classes, and the lowest track for math….

Suddenly, so many traditional school subjects look totally insane to me. Here is a list. Language Arts. Kids learn languages themselves if you just put them among a bunch of kids that speak the language. The only reason we don’t do that is because classrooms are like antiquated, face-time-oriented  9-to-5 jobs where if you are…

This is a guest post from Kate Fridkis, whose family did homeschooling when she was growing up. She blogs about body image at Eat the Damn Cake and she blogs about homeschooling at Skipping School. As a fourteen and fifteen-year-old homeschooler, the last thing I wanted to do was sit around the house with my…

This guy emailed me. He said his in-laws live near our farm. He's CEO of a homeschooling startup. So I took a chance on him and invited him and his family over for lunch. He hung out with me in the kitchen and told me his company helps schools do project-based learning and “experiential” learning….