The Inc.com editors, who picked the winner from at least a hundred entries from across the country, were impressed that the twins took the lemonade stand seriously, "not just something to do on a lazy summer afternoon," said Ron Kurtz, the senior editor at Inc.com who was part of the panel that selected the winner.
"They sort of captured the essence of why we started this contest in the first place," Kurtz said.
He said he wants to improve public schools, including charter schools, while also supporting parents who homeschool their children and advocating vouchers to give more parents the option of sending their children to non-public schools.Congressman holds Town Hall meeting with Burke Co. homeschoolers: Rep. Patrick McHenry met with local home educators recently at Winkler Park in Hickory, as reported by the Hickory Daily Record:
"I'm a big supporter of homeschooling and the rights of parents to homeschool their children rather than leaving that choice up to a bureaucrat," said McHenry, adding, "You shouldn't be punished for homeschooling.""Homeschooling" to play Guitar Hero: The Raleigh News & Observer reported July 27 that 16-year-old Blake Peebles had convinced his parents to allow him to leave a traditional Christian high school to focus on becoming a professional video gamer, majoring in Guitar Hero. He is now being taught at home by tutors, although the paper continued to refer to the change in schooling as "dropping out" or "homeschooling", interchangeably. Blake now spends several hours per day practicing the game and has won about $1000 in prizes so far. The story has prompted widespread interest around the country, including references in Education Week and a video gaming blog that brought the News & Observer a stunning 85,000 visits to the already three-week-old story online.
McHenry said he's in favor of providing vouchers or tax refunds for parents who educate their children at home to pay for expenses related to education because, "The cost to homeschool is significant — this is not free."
But, McHenry said, providing parents who homeschool with relief money is not a main priority for Congress.
"Unfortunately, I don't see Congress doing anything to fix this problem this year," he said.
If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital operating rooms, the whole medical profession would be discredited.
Yet it is common for ordinary parents, with no training in education, to home-school their children and consistently produce better academic results than those of children educated by teachers with Master's degrees and in schools spending upwards of $10,000 a year per student-- which is to say, more than a million dollars to educate ten kids from K through 12.
Nevertheless, we continue to take seriously the pretensions of educators who fail to educate, but who put on airs of having "professional" expertise beyond the understanding of mere parents.
Homeschoolers represented just under 4.5% of all school aged children in the state last year. According to data from DNPE and the Department of Public Instruction, there were 1,423,727 students in N.C. public and charter schools and 97,656 students in conventional nonpublic schools last year, meaning one of every twenty-two was being taught at home.
Friday's announcement means that 169,222 N.C. students, or 10.6%, were educated outside the public school system last year, saving taxpayers over $1 billion in avoided school costs.
(NCHSN Exclusive)
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