eBay prohibits textbooks for homeschool teachers
A new policy by Internet trading behemoth eBay that bans homeschool teachers’ texts from its auctions is prompting a tirade of complaints from the company’s faithful customers.
“Really the homeschooling community is a huge participant in eBay when you get to thinking about it,” said one customer who was identified as ”angels*wings” on an eBay blog. “We buy textbooks naturally but we also purchase items like microscopes, slides, globes, maps, manipulatives, educational games, reading books, supplies for our classrooms … stickers, idea books, folders, sheet protectors, school supplies, software, educational movies, models, post cards … the list is enormous.”
The policy, which is inclusive of all teachers’ texts, was made known recently as those who were auctioning various books watched as their postings were deleted.
#8 >>”It is the higher education that a homeschooler receives”
>> Can you show me the scientific evidence to that please?
I have always been under the impression that home schoolers generally do better than public school kids. But I realize I’ve mostly heard that from pro-homeschoolers.
I found this one (seemingly objective) survey of the research from the International Review of Education.
>> One study concludes that home-schooled children have neither an advantage nor a disadvantage (Tipton 1990). Three studies show home-schooled children to be at a small-to-medium advantage (ACT; Calvery et al. 1992; Sutton and Oliveira 1995). One study points to a medium advantage (Galloway 1995). Of the remaining three studies, one indicates a medium-to-large advantage (Rudner 1999), the other two a large advantage (Ray 1994, 1997).
http://www.alternative-learning.org/sal/performance-in-homeschooling.pdf
ALL
depends on the teacher, and HOW they teach…
#38, joshua, sorry, but I think your whole post is bogus. As is your habit, you throw numbers around with no regard to where they came from. Is this what you learned to do being home schooled or did you learn it at your prestigious university? If you can’t cite your source, don’t expect to be taken seriously. I won’t research your material for you.
Another advantage to citing your source is the editors don’t cut all the meat from your argument. Then again, do you expect anyone to read a paper here at DU?
#41, GregAllen, sorry, but I can not seriously consider any study as unbiased that openly purports in the title:
Performance in Home Schooling; An Argument Against Compulsory Education in the Netherlands.
My only concern about “home schooling” is whether it’s goal is a thorough well rounded education or attempt to brainwash children by limiting their exposure to knowledge/alternate ideas while constantly hammering home the parents “moral” belief system. If their “education” focus is largely religious teachings that cause them to be sequestered from their peers/society then it is more parental misconduct than “school”.
OTOH, the one aspect of home education that I think is valuable is being segregated from the opposite sex while you’re trying to learn. I did very well until I hit puberty. After that, it was very difficult to concentrate on the teachers and homework. : )
You folks have been busy
I have been trying to get some objective data on Home Schooling. What I find on ~95% of the links is within the first paragraph the discussion of God and religion come up. So lets stop pretending it is about education. It is about indoctrination! Look up those two words. They have different meanings.
Now back to the topic of the post
Ebay is not required to allow those books to be sold. It is not discrimination because they apply it to everyone! If you want to take on the challenge of HS then good for you but don’t expect special treatment like discounts because you can’t afford to by the books at full price. This is what the public school system has been complaining about for years. Where were you when they said they need to raise taxes to improve the schools?
If you can’t afford the books Tough! Get a job! because you obviously have enough time to spend preaching to your children about god Then go and send your kids to school!
Setting aside all the debate about homeschooling and how best to test and help students learn…
The teacher in the original article made the point that she has to present her credentials as a teacher before the publisher will sell her a teacher’s edition textbook. That means that this item is restricted in who it can be sold to. Ebay doesnt want to be a party to violating that restriction. Rather than accept responsibility for IDing teachers, they simply decline to carry the item.
You can argue the wisdom of allowing publishers to restrict sales of these books. From Ebay’s perspective, however, it’s a logical decision. The headline makes it sound like Ebay has some kind of vendetta against homeschoolers.
Surely the solution is to have teachers that know the material they are teaching. Make the test papers a separate thing. It is madness to assume that the answers to standard text published questions does not get out. The internet almost demands that standard questons and answers are published – we need to educate the young to think and gain knowledge – not just know how to answer standard questions.
This is not meant to put down teachers but a system like this surely must lower the bar.
343…Mr. Fusion….my home schooling has taught me to be kind to those who can’t see beyond a certain mindset.
And usually my figures are based on what I have seen in goverment studies or by reputable universities or research groups. Not, as many of yours seem to be from liberal blogs and associated sites. I do referance conservative sites or newspapers or magazines, but I rarely say they are the unvarnished truth as you do with such blogs as The Daily Kos or whatever that name is….or NPR or Slate.
But, if your really interested in knowing where most of my info on homeschooling came from here is the link to primary source.
I also got some from a wikipedia article that has some obvious bias, but for the most part is pretty factual and has links to sites that aren’t biased if you care to read them.
http://nces.ed.gov/nhes/homeschool/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
The Rudner study done in 1998/99 is at this site.
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/
My section that I pasted in was primaritly from the Home school legal defense Associaton….or HSLDA…….a group that helps home schooling parents in fights with goverment or school districts. This is their link.
http://www.hslda.org/research/ray2003/
What I have discovered is this…..if an article is done by a liberal it cites religion as the primary reason for homeschooling…..but when the article or study is done by goverment or a non-biased group religion becomes the second or third reason given of approximatly 30% of homeschool parents The primary reason usually given is the enviroment or quality of learning at the homeschoolers local school choices, approximately 33%….when you add all reasons other than religious or moral you end up with well over 50% and even over 60% of why homeschoolers do it.
Hope this satisfies you, I know it won’t, but then nothing short of citing your personal opinion will satisfy you most times.
joshua
The first one has no data on how the education compares.
The second one is wikipedia. LOL
The third one “Rudner” Does have a credible source except you should have read it.
From that study
“this group of home school parents has more formal education than parents in the general population; the median income for home school families is significantly higher than that of all families with children in the United States”
Not true of all home school parents. Just this group.
“Because this was not a controlled experiment, the study does not demonstrate that home schooling is superior to public or private schools and the results must be interpreted with caution.”
Wow great link to back up your argument.
AND The last link Can you say BIAS!
Geez J….I guess all those little sub titles along the left side of the page on the first link are blank…or maybe you couldn’t read that that many words, since you seemed to miss large portions of my post.
I did mention that one of the sources was a wikipedia article and it showed some bias, but had some good links. And the socialization part of the Wiki article cites federal goverment studies. And are more up to date than Rudner.
Apparently you work for either a politician or CNN as a day job. I know this because you cherry picked parts of sentences as well as parts of paragraghs, but forgot to mention the whole of the paragraghs or sentences or for that matter the entirety of the article itself. The whole states that homeschooled were far above average in the Iowa tests and SAT’s. And yes, it also said that the parents weren’t poor, but I didn’t realize this discussion had gone into economics.
And I do believe, if I can read my own typing that I gave the name and purpose of the third link. But that link has links to goverment sponsored studies.
All in all, you fail the test. While your ability to pick and choose should get you a job at the daily Kos along side Mr. Fusion.
joshua
Those little sub tittles along the left side of the first page hyperlink jump to different parts of the same article. They don’t include any information on how home school children compare to public school children the last one is a PDF which also does not contain any comparative information about the education.
You obviously didn’t read your own post but that is par for the course.
“I did mention that one of the sources was a wikipedia article and it showed some bias, but had some good links.”
So instead of putting the wikpedia link why didn’t you just link directly to those links? Considering there are hundreds of links on the wikpedia page most of which link back to wikpedia. I shouldn’t have to do your work for you. Most of the research links at the bottom are for pro home school websites So quite being dense
“Apparently you work for either a politician or CNN as a day job. ”
No I don’t and yet you seem to “KNOW” I do. Typical right wing religious zealot!
“the study does not demonstrate that home schooling is superior to public or private schools and the results must be interpreted with caution” THEY SAID IT NOT ME!!!!
It is you that is cherry picking only what you want to see in the report. The authors of the report say to INTERPRET WITH CAUTION!! That means everything in the report!! Not just the data that doesn’t agree with your conclusion!
What they did is called a disclaimer! They do it so people like you don’t try to use it as proof.
“And yes, it also said that the parents weren’t poor, but I didn’t realize this discussion had gone into economics”
You must have been home schooled because you don’t understand what a research sample represents.
“And I do believe, if I can read my own typing that I gave the name and purpose of the third link. But that link has links to government sponsored studies.”
Once again! Why did you not list them instead? I shouldn’t have to do your work for you.
Ebay’s policy is ridiculous. You can buy these homeschool items all across the land NEW. These items aren’t used in Public Schools as they aren’t PC or dumbed down. Most homeschool teachers have the answer books, but they are SMART enough to keep them away from their children. I guess we should just buy the student’s edition, then let everyone guess if the answers are correct. Better yet, there are no wrong answers, as that would just hurt student self-esteem.
This action is most likely pushed for by publishers of new curriculum, in my opinion. You can get around the policy by putting “Parent Guide” on the listing.