Because (once again) empirical evidence shows that on average, homeschooled kids blow public schooled kids out of the water.  Check out these results from the latest aggregated analysis of homeschoolers vs. public school kids, with results normed for PSKs.

Drawing from 15 independent testing services, the Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics included 11,739 homeschooled students from all 50 states who took three well-known tests—California Achievement Test, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and Stanford Achievement Test for the 2007–08 academic year. The Progress Report is the most comprehensive homeschool academic study ever completed.

Overall the study showed significant advances in homeschool academic achievement as well as revealing that issues such as student gender, parents’ education level, and family income had little bearing on the results of homeschooled students.

National Average Percentile Scores
Subtest	Homeschool	Public School
Reading	89	50
Language	84	50
Math	84	50
Science	86	50
Social Studies	84	50
Corea	88	50
Compositeb	86	50
a. Core is a combination of Reading, Language, and Math. b. Composite is a combination of all subtests that the student took on the test.

There was little difference between the results of homeschooled boys and girls on core scores.

Boys—87th percentile
Girls—88th percentile

Household income had little impact on the results of homeschooled students.

$34,999 or less—85th percentile
$35,000–$49,999—86th percentile
$50,000–$69,999—86th percentile
$70,000 or more—89th percentile

The education level of the parents made a noticeable difference, but the homeschooled children of non-college educated parents still scored in the 83rd percentile, which is well above the national average.

Neither parent has a college degree—83rd percentile
One parent has a college degree—86th percentile
Both parents have a college degree—90th percentile

Whether either parent was a certified teacher did not matter.

Certified (i.e., either parent ever certified)—87th percentile
Not certified (i.e., neither parent ever certified)—88th percentile

Parental spending on home education made little difference.

Spent $600 or more on the student—89th percentile
Spent under $600 on the student—86th percentile

The extent of government regulation on homeschoolers did not affect the results.

Low state regulation—87th percentile
Medium state regulation—88th percentile
High state regulation—87th percentile

[snip]

In short, the results found in the new study are consistent with 25 years of research, which show that as a group homeschoolers consistently perform above average academically. The Progress Report also shows that, even as the numbers and diversity of homeschoolers have grown tremendously over the past 10 years, homeschoolers have actually increased the already sizeable gap in academic achievement between themselves and their public school counterparts-moving from about 30 percentile points higher in the Rudner study (1998) to 37 percentile points higher in the Progress Report (2009).

As mentioned earlier, the achievement gaps that are well-documented in public school between boys and girls, parents with lower incomes, and parents with lower levels of education are not found among homeschoolers. While it is not possible to draw a definitive conclusion, it does appear from all the existing research that homeschooling equalizes every student upwards. Homeschoolers are actually achieving every day what the public schools claim are their goals—to narrow achievement gaps and to educate each child to a high level.

Let’s keep in mind that what was being compared here was performance on standardised testing that is normative for public school kids at various grade levels.  The homeschooled kids were not taking special or different tests – these numbers are direct comparisons between homeschool and public school academic preparation – this is all apples with apples stuff.

Several choice gems I would pull out from this data:

1) All of the usual excuses used by politicians, bureaucrats, teachers’ union representatives and the like as to why homeschooling should be heavily regulated (with a view towards making it so onerous that no one will do it) appear to be completely bogus.  The parent being a credentialed teacher appears to have no effect on academic performance vs. non-credentialed people teaching their kids.  Government regulation doesn’t seem to affect quality of education at all.  Even the education level of the parents appears to be a very small effect, and a lack of college degrees on the part of both parents still produces homeschooled kids who far exceed public school peers. 

2) Spending per students appears to have minimal impact.  The same can likely be said for public schools, which is why (as decades of experience ought to show us) you can increase public education spending all you want, and reap almost no benefits in increased academic performance.

3) Homeschooled kids, on average, scored at the 86% percentile in science, a little over a full standard deviation better than public school kids.  It must kill the lefties and evolutionuts and whatnot to see all these dumb, ignorant, redneck hillbilly homeschooled kids learning about creation, and blowing away the PSKs being indoctrinated into the Church of Darwin.

Given the religious circles I travel in, I know quite a number of homeschoolers.  Almost without exception, these kids are bright, eager to learn, happy, sociable, and successful.  They stack up very favourably to the public school kids I routinely encounter in my area – and let’s keep in mind that the county I live in is urban/suburban, very liberal, well-educated, spends a ton on schools per pupil, has the reputation of being the best district in the state, etc. etc. 

Homeschooling is superior, in my opinion, because it allows you to tailor education to the child’s strengths, and allows you to better build them up in their weak areas, and can spend one-on-one time with each student.  The public school notion of cramming yea-so-many students into a classroom and educating them like this was still the early industrial age will hopefully go by the wayside sooner rather than later.  

Tags: Education, homeschooling

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Academia, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.