Posted on 08/03/2013 10:45:53 PM PDT by grundle
The best educated children in America don't go to school.
Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, compared home schoolers and public school students on the results of three standardized tests -- the California Achievement Test, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Stanford Achievement Test -- for the 2007-2008 academic year. With public school students at the 50th percentile, home schoolers were at the 89th percentile in reading, the 86th percentile in science, the 84th percentile in language, math and social studies.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
I don't know what research would show today, but when my wife and I began homeschooling in about 2000, the research showed that the median family income of homeschoolers was lower than the population as a whole, primarily because homeschooling families seldom have a second wage earner in the household.
Other than that, the “criticisms” you list are valid. Sort of. Except that they're irrelevant.
The reason why folks do this kind of research is because critics have often said that homeschoolers just can't be providing a quality education for their children.
How can folks who are not professional teachers, they say, not rigorously trained in the pedagogical sciences, do a better job of teaching than professional teachers, who spend grueling years learning and honing their craft (ROFLMAO)?
This research answers the question: Yes, we DO manage to overcome all our handicaps and lacunae in the pedagogical sciences to produce superior educational results.
One of the other accusations against homeschoolers is that we're all just trying to skirt the truancy laws, that we're likely to be LESS involved than other parents.
In fact, the laws of many states are punitive toward homeschoolers with the excuse that the state must heavily regulate homeschoolers to make sure that 1) the children will receive a quality education and 2) that parents won't just goof off and make no effort to educate their children, and take homeschooling as an excuse to be less involved with their children.
It's a little hypocritical for the non-homeschooling folks to then say that this research “means nothing” because, of course we'll do a better job, because, well, obviously, homeschoolers are MORE involved with their children than other parents.
sitetest
I very much agree with that. I think I'm a lot saner because I refuse to get sucked into their orbits.
The stat doesn’t mean “nothing”.
The report really does communicate useful information about a sample. It’s a logical fallacy to assume that just because a sample differs from the population at large that analyzing the sample is worthless.
Now, it would also be a logical fallacy to assume that education can significantly improve outcomes - that subjecting the wider population to the conditions of the sample population would elicit the same results.
“All this stat means is that home schooled kids likely have involved, intelligent parents who are likely wealthier and smarter than the average parents.”
That’s one of the useful things the study illustrates.
Given that recent studies of twins reared apart indicate that adult IQ is somewhere in the range of 70%+ to 90% genetically determined, and that childhood IQ variations due to educational environment tend to disappear in adulthood, and given that the 30% to 10% of IQ that is environmentally determined is determined least by education and far more by childhood nutrition and gestational environment (fetal alcohol syndrome for example), then one of the better predictive measures of a person’s cognitive power would be to look at said person’s biological parents and rate them on intelligence and involvement.
Much like looking at, for example, Eagle Scouts, home schooling isn’t necessarily about the effects the program would have on a child or young adult so much as the fact that the sieving process involved in completing the process weeds out a lot of individuals without the necessary self-discipline and inherent ability.
That doesn’t mean that actually quantifying the difference in test scores between home-schooled children and the wider population is worthless, far from it. Even if a sieving process is responsible for the massive differences noted, it is still useful to have an objective categorization that places home-schooled students somewhere on the spectrum from latch-key kids to pampered preppies.
For example, imagine that as an employer you have limited time and resources available for interviewing potential new hires. As you sit at your desk and sift through a pile of resumes for a new entry-level position, you compare and contrast two resumes. Both applicants have the requisite 4-year degree for the position (both from state colleges), however one applicant is a home-schooled Eagle Scout with an honorable discharge from the Air Force, and the other applicant is a Detroit Public School graduate.
Which person would you schedule for an interview first? Do you think that knowing home-school graduates tend to score highly on achievement tests, and tend to be raised by intelligent and involved parents as well, has some value for a decision-maker?
Exactly, it's that sacred lifestyle gets in the way. Got to have their stuff, their trophy home and a second car shining in the driveway, made possible by the dear government babysitters. Welfare you pay for, welfare you're entitled to!
I have no idea.
The real effectiveness of homeschooling and the real effectiveness public schooling would be shown if you took a sampling of homeschooled kids and compared them to a sampling of public school only kids whose parents had no involvement in their education.
The public school kids who do well, do so in spite of the public education, not because of it. They are the ones whose parents are involved and we will hear teachers time and again, even the public school defenders who come on these threads and harass homeschoolers, admit that the kids whose parents are involved at the ones who do better.
They themselves tell us that it’s the parents, not their own system of education which is the difference.
An indictment of their chosen profession if I ever heard one by their own admission.
And you know that how?
Just what exactly makes a person *qualified* to teach?
You can't honestly think that it's a teaching degree, because we know better. Teaching degrees don't teach aspiring teachers to teach and I have had teachers tell me that to my face.
And they are proved wrong every single time the stats come out.
Homeschoolers not only can but DO.
There was someone on FR not too long ago whose accountant husband showed a co-worker that if she stayed home with her kids, that she would be coming out ahead financially by dropping her job and staying home with the kids, going from a two income family to a one income family.
Dropping into a lower tax bracket, fewer expenses for work clothes, gas, convenience foods, babysitting, etc, all gave them MORE expendable income instead of less.
Most children have a desire to learn; a desire that it takes years to stifle.
I taught mine more music than I am “qualified” to teach. Often on instruments that I scarcely know one end from another.
I’m convinced a hopeless dyslexic could teach a child to read. All one needs is reading material and encouragement. Parental attention is the essential sunlight.
A big part of the reason for the high scores is that home schooled kids have exceptionally knowledgeable and talented faculty.
I’ve traveled all over the United States over the course of the last thirty-five years, and generally, wherever I go, I can spot homeschooled kids in a crowd. They’re much better behaved. They interact much better with adults and other children. They’re a lot more attentive to what is going on around them. They act like the decent, individual, unique persons God made them to be.
Institutionalized kids on the other hand usually seem to be living in a completely different reality. You have to work at it to get their attention long enough to feel like they’re in contact with reality.
Just my opinion and observations.
Not true!! I counsel home-educators about it and about parenting and have run email lists and chats with homeschool authors and more. Not only by far, but virtually everyone who homeschools struggles financially to provide this for their children. We just give up some things in order to do this though. That one aspect alone shows that you are not coming from a position of knowledge, but of assumption, and wrong ones.
I know of plenty of moms who have more than five squalling brats that homeschool successfully. Lots. Because you had parents that weren’t the most successful at parenting doesn’t mean that others have similar failings. Most parents, yours included, don’t start out with all their abilities tuned toward educating their children. Most of us were public schooled, although we are now getting some homeschooled parents carrying on the tradition. The important thing is that we grow as we learn ourselves. We grow into being educators, not schoolteachers, but educators. We learn to teach the way that children learn, not just warehousing them. Now if I had 25 or even 30 children, I would surely struggle. Oh ...wait....
I’m glad my successful children were educated at home, it gave them skills and strengths that they just would not have had otherwise. Intelligence is about more than reading early.
The government school defenders ( GPDs) are the first to blame parents for their non-involvement and the resulting academic failure of their children. Well...If government institutional schooling was genuinely effective it would produce positive results regardless of the involvement of the parents.
Studies have **never** been done that show **where** children are learning ( home or institutional classroom) or **who** is doing the teaching ( parent, child himself, tutors, or institutional teacher). Without this information it is ***UNKNOWN** if government schools teach anything at all! Can any GSD honestly defend government institutionalization of children at up to $30,000/year if it is unknown whether institutionalizing children is effective?
It is entirely possible that the only thing government institutional schooling is doing is sending home a very, very, very **expensive** curriculum that academically successful children are following IN THE HOME!!!!
Also...It is my anecdotal observation that there is **no** difference between academically successful homeschoolers and successful institutionalized children in the amount of time spent IN THE HOME in “at the kitchen table” study. Also, both sets of parents share very similar attitudes regarding education and both maintain well organized homes with healthy sleep, eating, and exercise habits. So?....Is is possible that the real learning is due to the parents and child IN THE HOME and has absolutely nothing to do with institutionalized classroom attendance? Yes! It is possible!
There is one very important difference between academically successful homeschoolers and academically successful institutionalized children. The institutionalized kids seem exhausted.
(I am careful about using acronyms since there are government school defenders who manage to see porn in everything and are quick to report any imagined porn to the moderators rather than clarifying the matter with the poster.
When I lived in CA, it was like that. I even lived in one of those huge fancy homes for a couple of years. What it cost was that my husband only came home on weekends for several years (military) He lived too far away! We eventually moved into base housing and I knew a different set of friends. One family I remember, had been in the middle of the internet startup craze and had made millions. It was a fairly young couple (early 30s) and the dad was retired, both had a hand in educating their children full time. :)
‘All this stat means is that home schooled kids likely have involved, intelligent parents who are likely wealthier and smarter than the average parents’.
Involved, yes.
Intelligent, often. You can’t be dull and homeschool.
Wealthier,....you don’t know many homeschoolers, do you? These are common folks who have made decisions in favor of their kids, simple as that.
‘At any rate, my Dad worked and my mother didn’t have time with sometimes four or five squalling brats running around the house’.
Four or five is not easy, but certainly, in baseball terms, minor leagues. And why let them squall for more than 4 or 5 seconds?
Even if government institutionalization for schooling were effective, ( and no one knows if it is), in many of these prison-like institutions the environment is soooooo toxic and dangerous that it would be better for the child to remain illiterate and innumerate than to ever attend. I **seriously** mean this!
Illiteracy and innumeracy can be fixed. A dead or permanently damage child can't be.
Your points about homeschooled kids make sense in that most are the products of stable, two parent families that are committed to raising their kids. These families rarely are on drugs or into crime or divorcing or etc., all the negative things that can badly affect a child.
Also many, not all! are Christians or Christian oriented, so there is the church attendance and reinforcement.
There are exceptions and variations, of course, and home schooling is not a panacea, anyway. It is just a result of parents who sacrificially give it up for the best of their kids, and there is an obvious fruit from that.
But as for you comment of wealth, ha ha, you are way off. Among the many things homeschooling parents give up is MONEY. I’ve known but a handful of wealthy homeschool parents. Do you not realize that we give up the yearly full time income of one parent for decades in order to home school? Virtually all the families I’ve known have one (or no) car, don’t own a home, don’t eat out, wear hand me downs, have no real vacations - well I make it sound miserable, and it’s not, but trust me, we are NOT usually wealthy in any American view of the term.
My son just got his first cell phone (at age 19). We’ve never had cable. Anyone who wants anything electronic has to earn it and pay for it (my kids work, from babysitting to housecleaning to soccer reffing to fast food etc., from the time they are like 13. Younger than 13 collects recycling for pin money). No allowance, I never bought anyone a car. If they want a drivers license they have to pay for all the courses and etc. They have even had to pay for their own lap tops even though they use them educationally, especially for college, and speaking of college, they have paid their own way through grants, scholarships, saved money, work, and loans. We sign for any loans, but they pay them. There is no college fund.
That said they have all gone to college so far, and early, too. Because normally, homeschooling produces remarkably capable kids.
If you can’t home school, you can’t, and your kid may end up very competent and great. I’ve seen it. But there is no question that homeschooling your kids, usually, is really good for them.
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