Were the parents involved in the students daily education? Be honest. How many parents today, have the time, the education, the financial ability, or the patience to educate their children.
I have no idea if the parents were involved in their kids education while we were teaching over Zoom. I know that some parents listened to or watched the classes because they were also home.
I have homeschooled 3 children while working full time and while also being on a very tight budget.
So based on my personal experience:
Do they have the time? Yes, just throw away the TV and you will have the time.
Do they have the education? I think Elementary school is the most important, so yes, they have the education to teach elementary school level material to their children. As for JHS they might want to hire a tutor for Math if they are terrible at math, but otherwise, I would think so. I don't think HS is that important. The Bible says train up a child right and they will not depart from the path. I think you can do that by 8th grade.
Financial ability? I paid next to 0. The only thing I bought was 1 computer and about $200 worth of educational software and that was for 5 years of homeschooling. So yes they do.
Do they have the Patience? If you need a lot of patience you are doing it wrong.
1. My oldest two children came to the US from Taiwan and did not speak a word of English. I taught them by starting with the simplest baby books, A is Apple, B is Bat. The books were at the library, you could take out 25 books per library card. At first we would walk out with 50 books and go through those over the week. The library had many books on tape, so I would get those for them as well. Once we got up to the Charlotte's web level they would have about 5 books a week to read, again some are books on tape so they can listen to a tape while they read the book. I also checked out all kinds of movies: historical documentaries and science movies. It took us about ten months to get to books considered 6th grade level (and they were in sixth grade). By the 8th grade they were reading college level books. Math was taught with a wonderful program that taught algebra. They also used Where's Waldo for geography, it was extremely helpful in teaching them the english names of countries, cities, etc. Music was spent going to the church where they both played the violin. Gym was also spent going to church where they had Karate classes, in the three years they both got their black belts.
All I did was answer an occasional question they might have and pick out the books each week (but they were allowed to pick half their books). I also created the reports the city needed and I administered the tests they wanted.
They both went to NYC public high schools and both graduated as Valedictorians of their respective schools and no one at the school knew that English was not their first language. In fact principles at both schools first learned they spoke Chinese when they were seniors a few months before graduation and both were shocked at how good their Chinese was.
2. My youngest son had many complications at birth and it seemed he would be "Special Ed" his whole life. By homeschooling him we were able to spend hours each week teaching him violin and as a result he no longer needed a speech therapist, developing perfect pitch and he no longer needed an occupational therapist as his fine motor skills improved greatly. He still needed a physical therapist because they feared he would be knocked over by other students or fall down the stairs. So I took him hiking up mountains in the Adirondacks. After a few mountains he no longer needed a para to escort him around the school. So by the time he entered HS he did not need any of his therapists. He wound up graduating as an honor student.
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