Posted on 10/20/2006 1:24:53 PM PDT by achilles2000
"Post this research, please. I'd like to see..."
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/
I wasn't really intending it in the way that it came across. Sorry about that..
Apparently you are a complete failure in reading comprehension.
I postulated that there are various reasons why homeschooled kids are succesful. I then stated that I'd like to see the test scores of homeschooled kids whose parents have only a high school diploma.
Your reply: [Your thesis that the homeschool children whose parents are only high school graduates lack a quality education is not borne out by the data.] Well, you are wrong.
This is Rudner's study (which seems to be all the almighty authority for pro-homeschool FReepers).
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/
I researched how many homeschoolers have parents who are educated, and lo and behold 66.2% of homeschooled students have one parent with at least a bachelor's degree. Only 10.5% have parents with a high school diploma or less.
Money also seems to be a factor: 70.1% have incomes of $40,000 or higher. 21.6% have incomes of $75,000+. Homeschool students whose parents make a higher income have better scores than public school students. Those whose parents have average income or less did only marginally better than public school students.
Table 3.12 indicates that homeschooled students do NO better (at at some levels worse) than public school students when their parents do not have a college degree.
Quite simply, the data shows that homeschooled kids who have parents that are well-educated and have above average income do better than the national averages of public school students, whereas homeschool students educated by uneducated parents do the same or worse than public school students.
So much for your theory, huh?
Again, that link does not support unspun's claim that homeschooled "CHRISTIAN" students are better. Since Rudner's research composed of 93.8% Chrisitan students, religion is a non-factor. Other factors, such as income and parents' education level seem to be the real clincher.
Patterson was a nice guy and a dedicated Christian with an excellent reputation back in High School. Havn't seen him since though.
This part of the thread seems a bit odd. The academic issues were settled long ago. The ed establishment no longer raises them as they once tried because it is simply too embarassing. Patrick Basham is a very solid public policy analyst, and his summary of the research as of six years ago is here: http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/books/files/homeschool.pdf
If you look at the final paragraph of page 11 carrying over to 12 he makes it quite clear that Rudner shows that while homeschool parents with college degrees do better than those without, even children whose mothers lack a high school degree do better than children in the public schools, including public school children whose parents have college degrees.
The SES point that you keep raising, which as Basham points out may not even be true (although it could be), is irrelevant (this is a good example for illustrating that correlation does not equal causation). Homeschoolers, rich or poor, spend relatively little money compared to any public school. What they do spend on their children in abundance is their time. This, and not being shackled by the idiot educational theories and other pathologies of the government schools, is what makes the difference. Many successful homeschoolers are low income because they are single income families. More single parents are finding ways to homeschool, too. In the last 5 years blacks have been the fastest growing demographic in homeschooling. While there is only one Virginia study, that study indicates that homeschooling largely closes the gap between white and black academic achievement. More research is planned in that area - but black parents are sufficiently convinced by the facts on the ground that they are moving strongly toward homeschooling.
I agree with you that a decision to homeschool doesn't magically result in higher academic achievement. It is the decision coupled with the concommitant change in priorities, values, and lifestyle that does it - and of the beneficial changes the academics are the least of the benefits. In fact, I would homeschool even if the academics were mediocre; it is far easier to fix an algebra roblem than a moral or spiritual problem. A bright kid with a drug problem is just a druggie.
Right now there is some "churn" in homeschooling: more and more parents are getting fed up with their local government school, and because they have heard of something called homeschooling, decide they will "homeschool." Unfortunately, in many cases they don't know what homeschooling is, so they try to recreate a public school classroom in the home (without the cucumbers and condoms), and they burnout almost immediately. Others discover that they just don't have the priorities to homeschool. The homeschool community needs to connect better with these people to help them become better "socialized" for homeschooling.
Dr. Brian Ray collects all of the research on homeschooling and conducts some of it. If you are really interested, you could direct your questions to him, and he might clear things up for you (www.nheri.org). I hope this helps.
Now, can we talk about the ever-popular "socialization" question? ;-)
As a teacher, I can categorically say that public school has done NOTHING in regards to equipping American Children academically. For that reason alone, people should abandon public schools in favor of private education. But beyond that, the demand of public schools to teach things contrary to the core values and beliefs of the parents of those children should cause parents to impeach the politicians who help prop up such institutions and revoke the licenses of teachers who promote liberal and anti-Christian garbage from the classroom.
Good teachers should be rewarded. Good school systems as well. Good teachers I can find. Good schools systems are few and far between.
Then where are all those college students who go on to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, technicians, accountants, dentists, stock brokers, judges, pharmacists, politicians, and teachers coming from?
Home schooling is more than education from books. It's about quality time with your children teaching character. You get a dose of religion, which I think is most important, but you get a child that is an asset to the country. Many people today spend less than 20 minutes a day talking to their children, and that is mostly yelling. She's not perfect by any means, but there isn't any rap music ho's and gangbang music, she isn't a sneak or a liar, no dope, no law trouble, she a self starter and a leader, etc. She is beyond the "kid" games the young people play, as a matter of fact, she is studying psychology and explains to her friends why they are wrong and what will happen to them next. They think she is psychic.
As far as the money lost to home schooling, my wife left her job to do this, but we did just fine. As a matter of fact, I retired at 50 and make more money now than I did working trading stocks and options at home. So far, God has taken care of the money my wife gave up for home schooling. My daughter is now in college, but my wife doesn't want to go back to work.
I just believe there are multitudes of good caring parents out there than can do better than the government schools. You don't need to be certified to do this, just basic skills. We used Abeka tapes that were taped in a classroom and they were excellent. The main thing you will miss is sports and school functions. We could have even gone into those, as we were taxpayers, but there was alot of bad blood from the school district most of the time for home schoolers. We started when you didn't even tell people what you were doing or you would get a visit from the truancy people. It has eased up since then.
As far as the education level of home schoolers, most are very bright, but that is just my opinion. Look and see how many won the last few spelling bee's and geography bee's.
"The teachers spend most of their time with the stupid kids (I am not politically correct) and subsequently can't challenge the smarter kids."
I'm not politically correct, either. I view political correctness as an ideological evil. I think it's possible to remain polite while using terminology that is both descriptive and accurate.
Teachers have to teach to the lowest common denominator. There is no other way that I'm aware of for one person to attempt to teach a group of 20-30 children. I think that the idea that one person can effectively teach 20-30 same aged children borders on the idiotic, but that's the paradigm that the government schools as well as the private schools are operating on. The big difference in academics between the private and government schools in my view is that the private schools are generally teaching to higher common denominator. If you think about it, the really bright kids in the private schools are being academically shortchanged as well, although not to the same extent that they would be in the government schools.
As for your wife's experience with home education. Are you sure that what she's being exposed to are not simply truants who are invoking the words "home school" as a sort of talisman to ward off the truant officer? I think that's a problem, and one that is being exacerbated by government school administrators who are being pressured to deliver better results. One way to improve the numbers is to suggest to problem kids that they simply leave the government school to be "homeschooled." The kids in question aren't going to receive any further education. There's even a term for these kids; it's called being a "pushout."
Playing this sort of game is a win-win scenario for the government schools. They get rid of the problem kids and/or their families, their statistics improve, and they have some convenient homeschooling failures that they can point to. The kids are happy, too. At least until they realize sometime later that they're going to spend their lives on the economic trashheap.
I think you are correct that public schools would love to get rid of some of the kids "pushout", but that doesn't solve the problem. Those kids still need to get some kind of education and they aren't going to get it at home (or they wouldn't be a problem in the first place).
If I understand it correctly, the single largest determining factor for childrens literacy is if their parents read. The parents don't even need to read to their children. They just need to read. My wife says she can tell after talking to the kids for less than five minutes whether or not their parents are educated.
I think any form of education can work, if the child is motivated to learn. I also think that whatever gives the child the most learning options is the best. Many teachers send their own children to private schools, so they can be challenged.
Since the generation of the Founding Fathers, there have been great religious shifts in the United States. The Episcopal, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and Congregationalist denominations that were so important and prominent in the colonial era were eclipsed in popular support by the rising Baptist, Methodist, and Complete churches, which sent preachers to the frontiers and conducted widespread revivals during the 19th Century. There was the rise of new faiths that deviated in many respects from historic Christianity: Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, Christian Science, etc. European immigration caused massive growth in the Lutheran, Catholic, and Orthodox churches, whose presence was minimal, or in the case of Orthodoxy, nonexistent in early America.
However, the revivalist oriented churches, especially the Baptists, were rooted in Reformation theology. The Baptists in early America were strongly Calvinistic for the most part, disagreeing with the Presbyterians mainly on the issues of infant vs. believers baptism and church government. Methodism, in the footsteps of its founders, John and Charles Wesley, deviated from Calvinist doctrines of total depravity, election, and eternal security, areas in which the Wesleys followed the Dutch theologian Arminius. However, their roots in Anglicanism were reflected in Methodist theology.
Baptist and Methodist theology, as well as the historic doctrines of the other Protestant denominations, were drawn on the positions of the Reformation theologians. (One major change was in the area of eschatology, where dispensationalism promoted the concept of a distinction between national Israel and the church in terms of their respective role in God's plan for the future. Previously, Protestants, along with Catholics, taught that the church had replaced modern Israel.) The modern mainline churches, such as the Episcopalian Church, USA, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, etc., abandoned classical Protestant theology starting in the late 19th Century. The mainline churches may carry the old Reformation era names, but their teachings are not those of Calvin, Luther, Knox, and Zwingli, but those of liberal theologians like Schleiermacher and Niebuhr. The churches that call themselves evangelical in our time are in the Reformation tradition and teach (with the principal exception of eschatology) the doctrines that the Founding Fathers would have heard from the pulpits of their era.
So very true about the elementary schools and, go Baptist!
But what will we do when it becomes education from the colleges? This is where the most,(hate America) comes from.
There is a Bible college close to my home and, it is funded with Christian money.
I have learned of late that this college has several liberal teachers promoting their propaganda.
The only way to prevent these teachers from getting to our children is to do our duty at home.
An article I read recently shows a study proved that an early start on your children's beliefs are necessary.
"Those kids still need to get some kind of education and they aren't going to get it at home (or they wouldn't be a problem in the first place)."
And here's the politically incorrect reality: most of these kids simply aren't going to get much of an education. Hopefully they will decide later on to finish school. Most will simply go on to join the 20-30% of our adult population that is illiterate and innumerate.
Freedom to succeed also means freedom to fail. It's sad that parents allow their children to fail, but absent the imposition of a nanny state that would make socialists weep for joy, there isn't a whole lot to be done about it. And I doubt that would work, either. You can't force people, especially adults, to not be willfully ignorant.
I couldn't agree with you more.
China and India.
Two factors that can steal away the hours in homeschooling:
(a) slow learners that require more oversight
(b) fast learners planning to excel competitively
(c) number and age of learners in the environment
(d) the rigor of the curriculum
(e) the number and intensity of extra-curricular activites such as sports or music
(e) the occupational demands, aptitude, and discipline of the parents as well as all other circumstances and events which vie for time
Sounds like a good argument to teach Latin, Greek, French, German, Chinese, Arabic, or what have you. Milton said to learn the languages which contain the most wisdom.
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