Hence the extraordinary and intimidating power of such groups. Some of them appall me, but I know where they are coming from. Charters are the toughest, the frontier experiment. I really want to see them succeed, but they will have to overcome the impersonality common in the public sector and move toward the creation of community. Some of these schools may eventually look like publicly funded versions of Country Day.
Home schooling is fascinating.
A friend has home schooled her son in Berkeley. He is a baseball champ, a ballet dancer and a violinist. They read together and use an entire city as their campus. My children graduated from SCDS and have done wonderfully well. When I imagine what their schooling at home would have been like, I realize they would have missed out on superior teachers like Susan Hirsch, Linda Stettler, Barbara Robertson, David Cole, and Shelly Randall, and some amazing fellow students like Alan Jaffrey, Naz Modir, Francesca Preston, David Brogden and others.