Posted on 10/15/2001 6:14:36 PM PDT by Clive
Children who are educated at home have better social skills and achieve higher grades on standardized tests than students in private or public schools, according to a new report.
Contrary to the popular belief that children educated at home are disadvantaged because of a lack of peers, the study by the Fraser Institute shows they are happier, better adjusted and more sociable that those at institutional schools. The average child educated at home participates in a range of activities with other children outside the family and 98% are involved in two or more extracurricular activities such as field trips and music lessons per week, the report says.
Home-schooled children also regularly outperform other students on standardized tests.
Children taught at home in Canada score, on average, at the 80th percentile in reading, at the 76th percentile in languages and at the 79th percentile in mathematics, the report shows. Private and public students perform, on average, in the 50th percentile on mandatory tests in the same subjects.
In the United States, students educated at home also achieve the highest grades on standardized tests and outperform other students on college entrance exams, including the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), according to the study.
Parents of home-schooled children in both countries are generally higher educated when compared to the national average.
They tend to be in two-parent families and have a higher-than-average number of children than the overall population.
Patrick Basham, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a conservative public policy group in Washington, and author of the report, said he was surprised to see such positive results linked to home schooling.
"People think these children are neurotic, unsocialized and can't function in normal society. But the opposite is true. I think the fact children educated at home do better than private school students would also surprise people. It is not something that is widely debated or studied," he said.
Home-schooled children are still a tiny minority in Canada, although an increasing number of parents are opting for this style of education. In 1979, 2,000 children were educated at home. By 1996, 17,500 students -- 0.4% of total enrollment -- were home schooled. The most recent figures show the number has risen to 80,000 children.
Parents educate their children at home for a variety of reasons, including the desire to impart a particular set of beliefs and values, an interest in higher academic performance and a lack of discipline in public schools, says the report.
"Although parents home school their children for myriad reasons, the principal stimulus is dissatisfaction with public education," said Claudia Hepburn, director of education policy at the Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based conservative think-tank.
Home schooling is legal throughout Canada, but most provinces require parents comply with provincial education legislation, which means they must provide satisfactory instruction. Alberta is the only province that funds home-based education.
None of the provinces requires that parents have teaching qualifications. However, having one parent who is a certified teacher has no significant effect on the achievement of students educated at home, the research shows.
Gary Duthler, executive director of the Federation of Independent Schools in Canada, the association for non-public schools, said children educated at home likely do better and are more sociable because of the smaller student-teacher ratio and the fact students of all ages learn together.
"In institutional schools, there is social pressure for 10-year-old children to behave like other 10-year-olds and they tend to not play with any older children at school.
"In a home setting, that same pressure is not there, so it helps the children mature."
He said they probably also do well because they have access to education resources and teaching expertise over the Internet but their parents are controlling their education.
LOL! I thought that was funny, too, when I read it.
Maybe homeschooled children are better "socialized" because they interact with people of all ages? Ya think? We need a study to figure this out? Sheesh.
A great critique of mass-schooling here.
My comment indicated that a large fraction of home schooled children were doing so badly in government schools that the parents had to act. These kids were either behavior problems (having the intelligence to rebel against bureaucratic tyranny and endless psychobabble) or they had developmental or genetic disabilities that the bureaucratic system would not or could not address. Removing them raised government test scores and lowered home-school test scores (at least temporarily :).
In sum, if both home-schools and grubbamint-schools were given the same population of kids, the spread in test scores in favor of home schools would be even larger. Think of what would happen if home-schooled kids were offered the same financial resources.
BTW, my kids are upstairs spontaneously singing America the Beautiful as they get ready for school.
I guess they like the song.
Well, duh!
By definition, the average will be the 50th percentile.
So is one of mine.
BTW, my kids are upstairs spontaneously singing America the Beautiful as they get ready for school.
Times like that, don't you just want to get down on your knees and thank God, pinch yourself, cry, hug them 'till they squeak, or all four? Happens a lot with HSing, other things being equal. I just took my two oldest HSed boys (6 and 15) to the mountains, staying in friends' guest house. The adults we were around kept remarking about what great kids they were, specifically praising their attitude and behavior.
Honesty forced me to agree. (c8 Glory to God.
Dan
Duh! I'm no statistician, but Translated, this says: "The median of the the entire set is exactly in the middle." This guy must have gone to public school.
That is priceless! Thanks for the flag - great article to share with my definitely-warming-to-the-homeschooling-idea husband. :)
The seven-year-old is not quite as far along, but is doing very well indeed. She is a more synthetic thinker than her sister (who is very analytical). I suspect she will come on strong later in her developmental curve. We'll see.
School is 8:30-5, five days a week with NO after-dinner homework. That's FAMILY TIME. (We do Bible readings and discuss current events, etc. at dinner. I drop anything I am doing to answer a question.) School lasts all year except for vacations and other stuff. I spend less time teaching these kids than I used to spend commuting them and helping them with stupid homework when they were already tired. I am hoping that the elder will soon be the COO of the family business. (I just finished writing a book.)
I wish to add that these are otherwise perfectly normal kids. In fact, I don't think that they have extraordinary ability or have done anything amazing at all. This is what we should be EXPECTING out of public schools AND MORE. There are certainly opportunities that schools could offer that I would like my kids to have or do and the lack does complicate what we do here. But the point stands, public schools have degenerated to the point that NONE are producing an acceptable product. If you have ever seen a sixth grade reader from the 19th century you would certainly understand and agree.
My, what a cute display of unabashed pridefulness.
I used to believe that home schooled children would have that lack of 'socialization' that people talk about, but I have come to realize that opinion was based on the typical liberal thought process (which doesn't exist). I was just parroting what I had heard.
Since joining FreeRepublic, I have paid close attention to the threads involving home schooling and I support it ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!!!
You go homeschoolers!! Give the kids the ability for independent thought (bad word in public schools), some logic and reasoning ability so that when they run into their public school peers on a political discussion (or any other for that matter) they will have the upper hand because their argument will be based on those qualities rather than how they 'feel', or what someone else has told them.
The number of blind lemmings in our society is astounding.
Once again, GO HOMESCHOOLERS!
No one will regret homeschooling, you more then make up in closeness with your kids, for anything you have to do without because mom doesn't work. I highly recommend it.
Becky
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