No One Child Left Behind.

Federal law promised an education for every child in the United States. Not so for the children of contractors working overseas for the Department of Defense.

As the dependent of a contractor, our son Chris received all services on a strictly 'space available' basis. In June 2003, the Department of Defense Dependent Schools refused to enroll Chris because there wasn't enough 'space' for him in the public school.

Without recourse or any assistance from DoDDS, we began home schooling our son that September. This section of BigPlum.com was devoted to Chris's efforts to receive a quality education at home.

In May 2004, Chris received the results of his Terra Nova testing. While his scores at Grade Level 6.7 were similar to his scores at Grade 5.7, Chris did improve by one percentile in both Math and Social Studies and thus raised his total score from the 97th to the 98th percentile.

We will not know the full affect a year of home school will have on Chris for some time to come. Certainly he did not suffer academically, but I wonder what will come of our year together as teacher and student. It was hard work. Something good, I pray.

I'm proud of you, son. Thank you for teaching me how to be a teacher.

Love,
Dad.