I have a project proposal currently floating around at my 3 sons’ high school, in CT.  The basic idea is to bring in a consulting team with Universal Design for Learning training to work with the Social Studies Honors Society students and with High Functioning kids receiving Special Ed support, to design the ultimate “well-being learning environment.”  The project would include developing a budget and comparing cost-effectiveness and learning outcome comparative projections given current trends at Hall High v. implementing their plan.  Their resulting report would provide the National Science Foundation the basis for years 2-5 funding.

I do this stuff professionally and am in the process of retiring so I have time to work on projects that I care about.  That’s why you are hearing about this now, and not 5 years ago when we moved into this community.

If I have not already over-reached your willingness to engage in this Thought Experiment, I also have another schooling/learning idea, about which I would love to get some informal feedback.  If it resonates with other parents, I could do some research to see if there might be a way to get some money to fund it.

In summary, as few as 60% of adolescents in the U.S. are projected to receive a high-school diploma, or that is Ken Robinson’s projection anyway.  It is lower within highly stressed neighborhoods, about 50%, trending more recently toward 40%.  Of those who have opted out, some unknown percentage, perhaps about 5%, and growing by about 5%/year, is pursuing a different pathway to learning.  They are going right from home schooling, producing above average SAT scores, and matriculating right into college and/or information technology mentoring programs.  Over 75% of colleges and universities have established policies for processing applications from home schoolers; probably more than a coincidence that their SAT scores average somewhere between 15 and 30% higher than public school applicants.

Imagine what it would be like for you if you had an option for your special needs kids that you do not now have.  You go to her/his PPTeam Meeting and discover that you have an option to continue receiving education/therapy services as currently delivered, or you could use the educators and/or therapists assigned to your child as consultants and trainers to back you up for services you would deliver as a parent in your own home, to your own kid(s).  If you choose to deliver the services yourself, you will receive a small home educator stipend, representing the savings to the school system roughly comparable to not having to provide transportation and hire a 0.5 classroom aide–probably somewhere around $200/week–with the school system having an assured net savings (not to mention the environment–reducing carbon emissions, burning of fossil fuels, etc.).

If you are still with me, many of us also have insurance-paid home-care service providers to help care for our kids. So, what if we also had an option of continuing to receive services through a private-care provider, or to provide self-care, with training/consulting/case management support from the school nurse.  The school system could bill Medicaid and other insurance 3rd-party payees based on an approved client home-care services plan (just as private home-care service providers do), pay their school nurses for their supervisory/training/case management services out of that revenue source, and pay the parent choosing to provide her/his own services at the rate of a home health-care aide, for the number of hours stipulated in the service contract.

For my situation this is 54 hours/week, at $12/hour.  This would not have been an option I would have chosen before retirement, but, had it been an option about 3 years ago, I probably would have been able to retire earlier and invest full-time in caring for my kids.  This year, finishing my retirement transition plan, it would be a very compelling option for me.  Research indicates that the learning/health outcomes are highest when the nurturing relationship between the primordial caregiver and the child is strongest.  So, better for my kids, more affordable for my family, more affordable for society, and better for the environment.  I don’t see the down side, so long as self-care remains an option for those parents who CHOOSE it.

Given the current “drop-out” rate, current research indicating high pay-offs to society for re-investing in primordial caregivers, and comparatively high learning outcomes for home schoolers, it seems like our educational system is already trending in this direction anyway.  Why not make it work for us more cost-effectively, adding choice, and investing in healthier nurturing caregiver relationships?