Above is a pic of my youngest daughter and me.
My Husband, My brother in Christ
Home Educators, are you really ready if Obama is elected?
Unlike McCain, Obama's site makes no mention of home education. However, here is what is available on his site regarding education reform. For those home educators that do not have a teaching certification, you may want to start preparing your children for the strong possibility of being forced into the public school environment, until you can obtain one, if Obama is elected. For those that are already accredited, you may need to start collecting substantial evidence of what and how you teach and be prepared for close evaluation and government intervention.
On the Obama site: "Obama and Biden will require all schools of education to be accredited. Obama and Biden will also create a voluntary national performance assessment so we can be sure that every new educator is trained and ready to walk into the classroom and start teaching effectively."Under Obama's Education reform and prek-12 Education facts: "...Their vision for a 21st century education begins with demanding more reform and accountability...Most professions besides teaching require preparation programs to be accredited, and use the accrediting process to leverage quality. Professional accreditation in teaching is voluntary in most states, so there is no guarantee of quality. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will change this by requiring professional accreditation of all programs preparing teachers, with a focus on evidence regarding how well teachers are prepared. In order to help identify the most successful programs, colleges of education and alternative licensure programs will track their graduates' entry and retention in teaching and their contributions to growth in student learning. Challenge grants will encourage the adoption of successful practices across the entire enterprise of teacher preparation. Teacher preparation programs will be further strengthened if they are guided by a high-quality, nationally-available teacher performance assessment that measures actual teaching skill in content areas. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will fund the development of such an assessment, which, unlike current examinations used for licensing, will do more than merely measure basic skills and subject matter knowledge via paper-and-pencil tests. It will collect evidence about how prospective teachers plan and teach in the classroom, evaluate student work, and adapt their teaching to student learning needs. ...The typical school day is a throwback to America's agricultural era and is not on par with that of other developed countries around the world. We expect students to learn more today than ever before and many experts agree that additional learning time, particularly for struggling students, is important to gaining knowledge and skills for the 21st Century. Longer school days or longer school years can help provide additional learning time for students to close the achievement gap."
