NMSC

This came in the mail today:



Tim is a National Merit Scholar! He took the PSAT last year and scored high enough to be a semi-finalist. For the next level, he needed, among other things, a letter from his school (our umbrella school principal) and he had to write an essay. And he advanced to the final level!

(His full name is on the certificate - but, for privacy, I blurred all but the Tim part.)

Sometimes parents wonder if Ambleside Online or a Charlotte Mason education will provide what it takes to prepare a student to get into college. Tim is a good student, self-sufficient, organized, disciplined and able to manage his time, motivated. But his only schooling since fourth grade has been Ambleside Online (we did Sonlight for his first three years). He's had no formal creative writing, language arts, no math tutoring, no supplemental courses or projects to boost his knowledge of history or anything. So I think that a CM/AO education is enough for any student. Not that a CM education can guarantee the same results, but no education, not even a public school education (since that's the standard that homeschooling is held up to!), can make that kind of guarantee.

Homeschoolers Qualifying for the National Merit Scholarship program

Found on HomeschoolBuzz.com. This is from an article in the Washington Times:

"...Home-schooling has developed an impressive track record. In particular, home-schoolers are consistently achieving in the arena skeptics believe should be out of the range of average parents, which is preparing students for college.

If parents can successfully prepare children for college, then the rationale for heavily subsidizing public schools weakens significantly. Recent results from ACT show home-schoolers have scored above the national average for the past 10 years, which helps show that home-schoolers are well-prepared for college.

But there's another program in which home-schoolers are making their presence known — the National Merit Scholarship Program.

The NMS program has seen a dramatic increase in the number of home-schoolers who place as finalists. Of the 248 home-schoolers among the 2003 semifinalists, 129 of these students advanced to finalist standing, receiving the National Merit Scholarship.

As noted by Kate Grossman, a reporter with the Chicago Sun-Times, the number of home-schoolers receiving National Merit Scholarships has increased more than 500 percent: from 21 in 1995 to 129 in 2003. Recently NMS announced that for 2008 there are 237 home-school semifinalists..."

Read more here.