Education is about parental involvement. You would find the same results if you gathered statistics of similar demographic students in other educational environments.“The edu-fascists will not like this”
If you excluded urban minorities, for instance, you’d see a similar statistical disparity in achievement.
If you excluded welfare recipients, you’d see a statistical disparity in achievement.
It’s an exercise in self-selecting statistics.
I agree with that - as far as it goes. But what are the implications? If in fact the kids of involved and well-educated parents do equally well whether homeschooled or institutionalized, exactly what is our return on investment in those institutions? Apparently, pretty small - if not slightly negative.The virtue I see in homeschooling is that it unites responsibility and authority - however much the schools may preen themselves over their concern for the education of your child, their "concern" is a mere passing thought as compared to your own actual concern if you're not sure your kid is learning at the level you would expect. Consequently if you homeschool then the adult who is most concerned with the result is the one who is in control of the process leading to that result. And that adult is under no illusions that the issue "is being handled by experts."
Those "experts" are entirely capable of selling your child's future down the river for their own self interest, while telling you that they are doing the best for him/her. By, for example, using textbooks which are long on Political Correctness and astonishingly short on content. My brother had the experience of volunteering his time to help a boy who was lost in math class. He looked at the math book, and there was no actual mathematics in it - just a bunch of PC.
I recently read a book entitled (approximately) Why Kids hate school. And altho the book contained a few PC allusions of its own about Bush and Cheney (which probably helped with its target audience, teachers), I thought it was a pretty damning critique of schooling. One thing he noted was that "teaching self esteem" (he never used that term) actually makes kids dumb. Point being, that actual education is merely the child actually thinking about the subject matter - and telling a child that he is smart is actually telling him that effort is irrelevant. The implication being that if he has to work to get the subject, that would imply that he is dumb. So the child does not work - and, sure enough, that makes him dumb.
“I agree with that - as far as it goes.”
The point is not that homeschooling is good or bad, it is that you can’t say it is preferable over another educational option based on the statistics.
It is the parents choice, and should remain so.
A large amount of public schooling - especially for urban school districts is warehousing - and it is not cost effective.
The argument is not about education, it is about yet another aspect of government getting involved and not accomplishing its supposed goal at great cost.
Responsible parents will educate their kids the best way they can.
Homeschooling is simply another option, but it is not the panacea for every child, every situation. Self-selecting statistics simply state that removing lower-performing students from a statistical pool, on average, leads to higher average performance of the remaining pool. It’s nonsense to say it means anything.
It does make homeschooling parents feel better though, and if public school has taught me anything, it’s that self-esteem is important!