Since my daughter had to be registered with our local school, she is therefore entitled to receive any materials (i.e. textbooks) that she would be using if she attended that school. Last year, we never received any materials (due to an apparent miscomunication issue), but this year so far we have received some language arts, science and printing practice books. I mainly wanted these materials just to know what her peers in school are learning – I was very curious. Well, to be honest, I wanted to see them to prove that our decision to homeschool was the best option for our daughter. We know that our daughter is very bright and she would definitely not be challenged at all with the materials being used in our local school. She sat down when we came home with the books and read through 3 of the 4 readers in under an hour! She would have continued on with the last but it was bedtime. I initially thought that these were all of the readers they would use for the whole year, but I just found out that there are four more books for later. I am confident though that she would still not be challenged by them and we are considering getting her reading level assessed by a professional to be sure she is reading the proper materials for her ability.

I am not implying that my daughter is fundamentally better somehow than those students in school who may struggle with these books, but, how can any child achieve their best when one teacher has to try to use these same books to teach all students at varying levels? The answer – they can’t! We believe strongly that this is a fundamental problem with our public school system and one that we didn’t want our daughter to get lost in. She deserves to be challenged further when a concept is mastered easily or offered extra help to be sure that she fully grasps everything she is presented with. It really doesn’t matter what end of the spectrum your child falls on (above or below average), it is merely the fact that they are not average which will deny them the attention they deserve.