|
Medford opens up to home-schoolers They can enroll part time, take standard tests, take home books By Vicki Guarino The Medford School District will open its doors next fall to a brand new class — home-schoolers. In a sharp reversal from past policy, the district will open classes, furnish materials and administer standardized tests to any of the hundreds of home-schooled students living in the district as their families’ request. The students will be welcome to enroll on a part-time basis and take home learning materials. Those options have not been available before. In the past, youngsters could either enroll as full-time students or be educated at home without public school assistance. "Essentially, we went from saying ‘no’ to saying ‘yes,’ " says Medford school administrator Phil Long, architect of the new open-door policy. "This is a 180-degree turn for us." The new direction is a stark departure for the district, but it isn’t sudden. School officials have been considering some sort of assistance to home-school families for more than a year. And when Long was moved up from assistant high school principal to curriculum administrator a year ago, the school board assigned him to produce a plan to reach out to the growing number of home-schoolers. Solid numbers are hard to come by, but school officials figure a few hundred students in the Medford area are opting to be educated away from school. Families are supposed to register as home-schooled or risk being charged with truancy. As a practical matter, however, there is little to no enforcement, and many diligent home-schoolers are not registered. Nonetheless, the number of registered home schools has increased rapidly. Tallies over the past five years show growth of more than 60 percent, to around 300 this year. In contrast, regular enrollment in the Medford district’s 18 schools has been growing by about 2 percent a year. Administrators are not sure what the impact of the new policy will be on classrooms. However, Long notes that accepting home-schooled students as part-time public school students is consistent with the school system’s responsibility under federal law to provide "free and appropriate education" to the nation’s youth. As Long took up his new job last summer, he said, the issue for the board was not whether but how district services would be extended to the community’s home-school families. He says the district and the families clearly share the same objective: educating youth. "There are important community issues we all have in common," says Long. "These are our neighbors, our friends, the people we go to church with." To design the new policy, Long sought out home-school families. He wanted to know what sort of services they might find useful. The effort was an extension of Long’s doctoral dissertation on home-schooling in Jackson County. He pursued the loose network of home-school families that he met during his original research. Long said he found that many parents were looking for more resources for their children. "They assumed we were a closed resource," Long says. "Now we’re a more open resource." Specifically, the new policy offers part-time enrollment as classroom space is available. Parents will have to provide transportation if necessary. Part-time students will be required to meet the same rules — such as attendance policies — as full-time students. The changes align the Medford district with many other districts in Oregon. Long says Medford’s new policy is similar to changes made in the Phoenix-Talent School District a few years ago. Ashland, too, has a program for home-schooled middle school students that is expanding to include high school. |
|
Obituaries | Sports
| Business |
Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times |
So Oregon Sites | Outdoor
Journal | Subscribe |
Contact
| Movies |
Advertise
| Real Estate Showcase |
Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up
Call | NIE |
Cyber Chef |
Job Network |
So Oregon
Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q.
| Awards |
