When I'm talking to others, and it comes up that we homeschool - sometimes they start telling me how their local school's test scores are soooo good.

Okay? Cool. My issues are not with teachers, and also not with perceived academic rigor.

I must have one of those faces, because they tend to try and backpedal here, and say, oh, but homeschooling isn't all bad!

They explain how they understand that SOME people, for example, people who live in X area, would want to homeschool, but their district is really great.

Then they insist their kid's school is wonderful, and not like all the others - because they have high test scores.

Personally, I think if a school has high test scores, it's probably an indicator of how much pressure is on those educators to 'produce' kids who are good at test-taking … and that kind of pressure interferes with the organic joy of learning.

I'm really not sure why we all became convinced that test scores alone are indicative of a great learning environment.

Here is a photo of a great learning environment:

It's at an unschooling conference, at a hotel, full of children from age 2-14+ using twisty balloons to have a sword battle.