Homeschool World Forum

This issue has been a cause of concern for some since the homeschooling movement had to fight to get where they are today. Charter schools offer freebies to entice homeschooling families to enroll. Many will offer free curriculum, free computers and/or other materials. In exchange, the school district receives funding for the child enrolled in the charter school and the parents relinquish some of their decision-making abilities. Here's an article from HSLDA that captures the whole debate much better than I can articulate.

http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200206260.asp

The Problem with Home-based Charter Schools
HSLDA's Position in the Charter School Debate

Charter schools are a new phenomenon rapidly gaining popularity across the country. All charter schools are created or "chartered" by public school boards, which establish a mission, educational program, and methods of assessment. Most charter schools are classroom based. However, some charter schools are home based. When parents enroll their child in a full-time, classroom-based charter school, it is obvious that they are signing away much of their parental right to direct their child's education. Home-based charter schools gloss over this surrender by giving parents a wide variety of "free" benefits, all for use at home: computer and Internet access, books, school supplies, support from certified teachers, and a diploma, etc.

(Admin Note: Further material removed to at least partially retain HSLDA's copyright, see link for full article)

Hmm, so some charter schools basically just give you money and then test every now and then to make sure your children learned something? That sounds remarkably similar to homeschooling (in the more restrictive states), except in this case you're being given money to homeschool. A rather creative way for schools to get generate funding (funding varies according to the number of students enrolled) from people who wouldn't otherwise be interested.

Or to put it another way, the schools get x amount of money for every student, so they give you some fraction of x in return for being allowed to list you as enrolled. So long as they don't dictate what sorts of curriculum you can use (what sort of guidelines do they give for what you can and can't spend the money on?), and tests are infrequent, I don't really see a problem. Though from the taxpayer point of view, schools shouldn't be getting funding for doing basically nothing. If all they're doing is testing, then their funding should be at most a few hundred dollars per student (even counting special needs).

Here's an interesting link on district / charter school funding for various states:
http://www.edexcellence.net/institute/charterfinance/

California, for instance, gets an average of $4,834.97 per charter school student per year. How much of that money are they redistributing to you, and what services are they providing?

I started with connections academy for this school year and I felt like a slave to their system. They wanted me to send in paperwork for everything! Plus I didn't like to have to follow their curriculum and not have the freedom to teach what I wanted. Thankfully I got out of that one real quick. I hated them breathing down my neck.