A friend at work home schooled his daughter up until high school, and one of the reasons he mentioned for sending her to public school this year was that she wanted to be involved in the band. That got me thinking. He pays taxes just like everyone else in the county. Why does his daughter have to accept an entire education that is inferior to the one he can provide her at home just to participate in band?
Then I really started thinking. Why can’t parents pick and choose which courses their children receive from public schools and omit the ones they don’t want? And isn’t disallowing a home schooled child the opportunity to take a single class that their parents don’t feel comfortable teaching them, say calculus, without enrolling in the full curriculum a denial of services afforded to all residents by the Constitution of the State?
I know the initial response to this is that state funds are tied to enrollment, but why can’t the school count students fractionally based on the number of courses (services guaranteed by the State) they use?
I’ll have more to say about this in the future, and I don’t want to jump completely off the cliff until I have time to think about it more and read a little, but this sounds like a reasonable proposition to me. In fact, I wonder if there would be grounds for a lawsuit against a county/state if a parent attempted to try something like this. I’m no lawyer, but it seems reasonable.
What do you guys think?