Home-schooling has spread far beyond religious or counterculture families, writes Gregory Millman, a home-schooling father of six, in the Washington Post.
We joined a Shakespeare troupe founded by a single mother who was a college professor of literature. She taught the children to find the characters through the language, and they staged a complete Shakespeare play every year. Other members of that troupe founded a home-schooled robotics team, building robots to compete in regional, national and international events. We founded a debate and speech team that continues to compete at the middle school and high school levels.
The results? Studies have shown that home-schooled children outperform the conventionally schooled not only on standardized academic tests but also on tests of social skills.
Home-schooled students outperform conventionally schooled students on college admissions tests, and earn higher grades in college, according to admissions officers at Indiana University-Purdue and at Georgia’s Kennesaw State University.
Associate Dean Joyce Reed of Brown University has called home-schoolers “the epitome of Brown students,” telling the university’s alumni magazine that “they are self-directed, they take risks, and they don’t back off.”
Home-schooling parents are, by definition, highly motivated, education-first people so it’s not surprising their children tend to do well.
Just imagine if they had teaching certifications!
The better comparison would be to compare homeschooled children with private schooled children whose parents have the same level of education and in the same income level. I remember reading that the mean SAT score for home schooled children was statistically the same as for all white children.
Where did you find the mean SAT for homeschoolers, superdestroyer? I know the College Board must have that information, because homeschoolers have to put in a special code for their school, but I’ve never seen the mean score released.
We actually belong to the same home school co-op as the Millmans. They are a very nice family. I know only their younger children, all boys. They’re very typical of home school families, neither wunderkids nor backward anti-socials. I was a bit surprised to see Greg’s article in the Wapo. I really liked his analogy comparing current public school’s to the rust belt of the ’90’s. It is dated and a relic of the past, we can’t seem to recognize and move on.
I just want to also add, that home schooling is an incredibly freeing experience for both parents and children. Think about, for a moment, freeing your family from all the petty expectation that interfer with really educating yourself and your kids. It’s a wonderful experience. I recommend it, if you can arrange it.
It’s nice to hear that someone at Brown is enthusiastic about home schooled kids. I hope that the same is true of other top schools by the time our eldest is ready to apply. My wife talked to admissions people from Harvard and Stanford last year at some local high school function, and said they were fairly hostile.
It’s odd that the Harvard and Stanford people were hostile to homeschoolers. I’ve corresponded with the parents of several homeschoolers admitted to Harvard. I know the mother of a homeschooler now at Stanford. There are homeschoolers at every top college nowadays. I’m on an email list with many parents of homeschooled teens, but I rarely hear of hostility to homeschoolers from admissions offices of private colleges. Pomona is the exception– they make homeschoolers jump through ridiculous hoops.
Among publics, the UCs make it difficult to be admitted as a homeschooler, though again, I know of several homeschoolers who have been admitted.
For homeschoolers,
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/hslda/200312/200312040.asp, IN 2002 the average SAT score for homeschoolers was 1092.
Form http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html
for all whites the average score was 1068. For all Asian, the average was 1091.
For all indepedent private schools, http://www.capenet.org/Outlook/Out9-03.html#Story5, the mean SAT scores 1023.
So, for one adult giving up a paying job which could be used to fund private schools, the home schooled children get a education that is about the same as for all whites. If home schooling parents want to brag, the least they can do is pick something other that the absolute lowest bar to compare themselves with.
Superdestroyer…
The mean SAT score for independent private schools is 1123, not 1023. From your link -
“Combined scores (verbal and math) for public school students were 1020, while combined scores for religiously affiliated and independent schools were, respectively, 1065 and 1123.”
As for your mean scores for whites and asian-americans, they are from 2005, not 2002. Absolutely no one (even the College Board) claims that scores from different years can be compared.
Even if the data were from the same years, you cannot compare the data on ALL homeschoolers against the data of a racial subgroup unless you can show that all the homeschoolers are of those racial subgroups. Unless you have done so, you must compare the success of individual racial subgroups across the populations (public vs private vs homeschool) or must compare the overall results. From your first link-
“In 2002, homeschoolers averaged 1092, 72 points higher than the national average of 1020. In 2001, homeschoolers scored 1100 on the SAT, compared to the national average of 1019″
Differences of 70-80 points on the SAT are significant.
Now we get into the issue of whether the SAT is the supreme all-encompassing assessment of educational success. In my personal opinion, while it is a good reflection of the basic skills learned in school, it does not fully relect all the skills learned in school that can lead to success in college or the workforce.
Moreover, many of the reasons that individuals homeschool have nothing to do with math and verbal skills, but more to do with safety. The fact that homeschoolers, who generally lack the millions of dollars’ worth of resources and personnel that districts possess, can even provide an education equal to or superior to (as your own links suggest) a public school is either a testament to homeschoolers’ commitment or a condemnation of our public schools’ failures. Either way you interpet it, homeschooling comes out on top.
SD: Why would all whites who chose to take the SAT be such a low bar to aim for?
Cardinal Fang, I’m sure that it’s the case that not everyone in admissions at Stanford is hostile to home schooled kids. A little over
a year ago my daughter made an appointment and spent an hour talking to someone in admissions about coming there, and this person was quite encouraging. The only Harvard admissions contact we’ve had has been the person my wife met.
My daughter is profoundly gifted, extraordinarily hardworking, and entirely self-motivated, so it’s a no-brainer that she’ll succeed anyplace that will take her, but it’s not obvious to me that she’ll get consideration by some schools.
When you’re comparing against all home-schoolers who chose to take the SAT, it’s less than awe-inspiring.
Another comparison based upon test scores and this time, for the same year.
From http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/olderkids/CollegeTests.htm
For the 2007 Act tests, there were about 10,000 home-schoolers who took the test had an average score of 22.3.
From http://www.act.org/news/data/07/pdf/one.pdf
For all white students the average score is 22.1 and for Asian students the average score is 22.6.
If I had to guess, whatever the Asian-American community is doing, even though they are at the bottom of the home schooling movement, produces the same results as the home-schoolers without the opportunity costs of a college educated parent giving up a career and with probably fewer books in the home than a home schooling family.
Considering that home schooling families are whiter than the general student population, they should be outperforming all whites by a large margin instead of producing statistically the same scores.
For the purposes of this argument, it doesn’t matter whether homeschoolers outperform the schooled population by a lot or by a little. The context of this article is the California decision about homeschooling. The question is, are homeschoolers getting an adequate education? As far as the SATs are concerned, the answer is, yes, homeschoolers are doing just fine.
Hardlyb, don’t worry. Your daughter will be fine. Top colleges love top homeschoolers. This year on my email list we’ve got, so far, a Yale acceptance, two MIT, two Caltech, one Harvard and two University of Chicago. Stanford decisions aren’t out yet.
I’m always sort of amused at the university-accept-homeschooler discussions. Reality:
1) Universities are fighting each other over brains. There is a global hunt for the very best students, and schools are begging and paying them to come. They couldn’t care less if they were green and taught by monsters. They need talent, and America is short of it these days. Homeschoolers aren’t begging the schools, it’s the other way around.
2) Due to grade inflation, only fools care about GPA anymore. Sure they claim to, but not really. How can you use GPA when you are looking at an international pool of applicants? One of the smartest guys I met in engineering was a guy from China who was homeschooled his entire life who had little “activities” on his application. How do you compare him? The school who got him got lucky.
3) For homeschoolers, the university game is SAT, SAT, and SAT. Any school who dares to take a 4.0 high school student with an average SAT score over a high SAT scoring homeschooler who can write well will soon be out of business. Cal Tech remains Cal Tech only because they get the best brains.
4) The best line in the article was Conventional schools are like the nation’s Rust Belt companies, designed in the 19th century but struggling to meet the standards of international competition today. Homeschooling is, to my mind, nothing special, just merely a response to the failure of institutional schools to get with the times.
But we shouldn’t be surprised at this denial. It’s natural. Just as the Big Three auto companies fought for government protection and had to nearly go broke before they finally outsourced, broke the unions, and completely changed to match the real world, the monopoly of public school will not go gently into the night, either. But go they eventually will.
“So, for one adult giving up a paying job which could be used to fund private schools”
“…produces the same results as the home-schoolers without the opportunity costs of a college educated parent giving up a career…”
What’s with the weird obsession over one parent not having a career? Maybe for those homeschooling parents who leave a career to come home it’s *gasp* not about the money!
Even if a college educated parent says it is not about the money, the long run is still about the money. That stay at home parent is not adding to a 401K, is not paying for health insurance, and it not saving for the children’s college education. Even though there are government mandates that offset some of the opportunity costs, they do not make up for all of them.
If homeschooling is going to sold as a great alternative instead of just another alternative, then all of the costs should be included. That home teachers could be lowering their standard of living in their old age, making themselves more vulnerable to divorce or illness, and saving less in order to educated their children. Where is the risk management is that?
Superdestroyer - regarding your discussion of the “costs” of homeschooling… in many situations the costs you accurately described are offset by the benefits of providing a solid education for children. Quality education is the doorway to college education and the workforce beyond.
There are presently many stories of parents who are supporting adult children because of poor job markets or simply because the child had a poor education and has no skills. Parents may also be insulating their children against the corrupting influence of urban pop culture, which places no importance on education or a hard work ethic.
There is also a trend of adult children taking care of their parents. Even the most financially-secure couple can have their savings wiped out by the illnesses that accompany old age.
Plain and simple, by “investing” in their child’s education, homeschoolers are improving the odds that their children will be self-sufficient and maybe even able to help support the parents when they’re older.
Supersub,
The reasons parents are supporting their adult children has little to do with educational achievement in college and much more to do with the the difference in pay between entry level jobs and large metropolitan areas. It also has to do with the need for graduate school/professional school jobs and with extended low paying internships.
However, the difference between a college educate parent working and paying for their kids private prep school versus a parent staying home and home schooling, the economic benefit for both the parent and child would be from the private school (higher average SAT score, better college, influence of being around many other driven students.
When home schoolers are comparing themselves to minorities in inner city public schools, they are sitting the bar too low. A stay a home teachers versus $50K a year job is an elite private school price to pay.
Bottom line is home education self-selects for involved, resourceful parents. There are folks who ‘try it out’ for a year or so, but those who realize that they aren’t cutout for homeschooling send their kids back to public schools or pay for private school. It is great to have choices, isn’t it?
So far there is no evidence to contradict that home education is a viable and valuable option for families, only irrational fears and “What if” questions with no basis in reality.
Cardinal Fang, what email list is that? I’d be interested in learning more about this.