NYTimes.com | Home Schoolers Content to Take Children's Lead

By Susan Saulny

CHICAGO, Nov. 23 — 'On weekdays, during what are normal school hours for most students, the Billings children do what they want. One recent afternoon, time passed loudly, and without order or lessons, in their home in a North Side neighborhood here. Hayden Billings, 4, put a box over his head and had fun marching into things. His sister Gaby, 9, told stories about medieval warrior women, while Sydney, 6, drank hot chocolate and played with Dylan, the baby of the family. In a traditional school setting, such free time would probably be called recess. But for Juli Walter, the children’s mother, it is “child-led learning,” something she considers the best in home schooling.
[...] As the number of children who are home-schooled grows — an estimated 1.1 million nationwide — some parents like Ms. Walter are opting for what is perhaps the most extreme application of the movement’s ideas. They are “unschooling” their children, a philosophy that is broadly defined by its rejection of the basic foundations of conventional education, including not only the schoolhouse but also classes, curriculums and textbooks.'

NYTimes.com | What it takes to make a student

by Paul Tough
November 26, 2006

An outstanding article summarizing recent US studies (and related school reform efforts) centring on the ways in which apparently social-class- and race-related gaps in pupil achievement mask an array 'non-cognitive' factors such as conduct and family environments. '[I]f poor students are going to catch up, they will require not the same education that middle-class children receive but one that is considerably better; they need more time in class than middle-class students, better-trained teachers and a curriculum that prepares them psychologically and emotionally, as well as intellectually, for the challenges ahead of them. ... Right now, of course, they are not getting more than middle-class students; they are getting less.'