Public Schools Are Not Making the Grade: a Discussion on Alternative S

Now more than ever parents in the United States have become very disgruntled with their children's education. The main reason behind this massive dissatisfaction is that public schools are not living up to parent's expectations. The standards which the public schools that today's parents, and their parents, attended are quiet different from the ones their children are now attending. It is widely felt that public schools are not performing their basic civil duties. With this, parents are now taking their children's education and future into their own hands, and doing so quite efficiently. Many parents are turning to alternative means of educating to school their children. One option is home schooling. Home schooling is simply the education of school-aged children at home rather than at school. There is another sector, which opts for private school systems. Parents are choosing home schooling over public because public schools are not meeting their children's academic, individual, and special education needs.
First, parents expect that their children will know how to read, write, and acquire basic math skills by the time they graduate. However, public schools throughout the United States are failing to teach these basic academic skills. The French Commission for American Education reported that: "If there be a nation which has expected everything from…education… that nation certainly is the people of the United States" (160). It seems that not much has changed. Recent studies show that of the 2.4 millions who graduate, as many as twentieth percentiles cannot read or write at the eighth grade level. This is a tragic statistic for a nation claiming to be so developed. There are more opportunities to education in the United States than any other country in the world, yet evidence shows that the United States ranks "at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing, and arithmetic." In addition, students are ranking lower than ever on Academic... [continues]

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