AERO E-News December 2008. Important New Resources for Alternative Education

Some great new resources from AERO. Source: E-News 18.12.2008

Two Incredible New Resources!
After a gap of 14 years, the AERO database, now consisting if over 12,000 educational alternatives, is now being made available again to the public. This list of schools and descriptions originally appeared in the 1994 hard cover book, The Handbook of Alternative Education, published by Macmillan, selling for as much as $110 each! Later it appeared in the Almanac of Education Choices, published by Macmillan and Simon and Schuster in 1995. There were 6,000 entries. We were going to follow up with more volumes, but as the list grew, we thought we should just put it on the internet. We spent many thousands of dollars developing the site, but it too much longer than we thought it would. Now, at last, it is ready to be used! In conjunction with this database we also developed a site for alumni of alternative schools to meet and to take part in supporting our movement. Almost anyone we’ve met who went to an educational alternative, including homeschooling, believes in this approach. But the latter will also include schools that have closed.

We need all readers who are interested to check out the sites below and edit entries, some of which are very out of date. Right now all of this is free. Eventually we hope to support it with advertising so we do not have to charge for access to the sites.

Please check them out and let us know what you think!

AERO’s database of over 12,000 education alternatives is now online with 2 new websites, www.educationfinder.net and www.alternativealumni.com.  

Educationfinder.net is an all new way to help families find the education alternatives which are right for them. It contains a map search as well as the traditional form search. You will find everything from homeschool groups to public alternatives, democratic schools and colleges. We have tested the site over the past few months with our member group and are now ready to release it to the public. Educationfinder.net has been in development for several years and now thanks to the hard work of Peter Christopher and many others is finally a reality. This service is free for subscribers at present and will always remain free for alternative school staff to update and add new entries. Sign up today and send us your comments. We are always looking for current information on education alternatives so this website is always open to allow you to keep it up to date.