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.

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.

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.

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?

“…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!

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.

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.

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.

Why would all whites who chose to take the SAT be such a low bar to aim for?

When you’re comparing against all home-schoolers who chose to take the SAT, it’s less than awe-inspiring.