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(by Kevin Swanson)
While the cost of education has increased and academic performance has fallen nationwide there has been one bright star shining over America's academic landscape and that is home education. While the public schools pay $5,325 per student to achieve an average 50 percentile academic performance, about 1.5 million homeschooled children cost families about $400 per student to achieve an average 75 percentile academic performance (according to the recent Rudner report).
Academic Success
The outstanding academic performance of the home school is perhaps its most impregnable feature. A study performed by the Oregon Department of Education in 1998 put the average home schooling student at the 75th percentile. In the largest research study to date performed by Dr. Lawrence Rudner, the average 8th grade home school student performs four grade levels above the national average. In this study of about 21,000 students, homeschoolers tested above their counterparts in public and private schools in every subject, in every grade, first through twelfth. The study also found that there was no statistical difference between the academic performance of a child taught by state-certified teachers and those students taught by parents without teacher certification. Similar studies have shown that there is no statistically significant difference in the academic performance of students who reside in states with heavy regulation of homeschools versus students who reside in states that have little or no regulation of homeschools.
In terms of academic performance, the study also found that students "who have been homeschooled their entire academic lives have the highest scholastic achievement. The difference becomes especially pronounced during the higher grades, suggesting that students who remain in homeschool throughout their entire high school years continue to flourish in that environment."
The strong academic success of home-based education has been attributed to three major reasons. The first is parental involvement. Educators everywhere will tell you that it is almost impossible to achieve success in education without cooperation, re-enforcement, and abiding interest registered by parents. In most homeschools, parents have committed themselves to a significant interest in their children's education.
Another reason for exceptional academics in the home school is one-on-one teaching. This is especially important during the early years of educational development for children. Almost every family whose children do homework in the evenings already knows what it is to home school! The amount of one-on-one time spent with children, either in the class room or outside of classroom, often is an indicator of the success those children will enjoy in education. With home schooling, parents are inevitably drawn into one-on-one tutoring work with their children, especially as they work through phonics programs and early arithmetic.
The third reason for exceptional academics is the fact that each child can be treated as an individual. No two children are exactly alike. Unfortunately, as education becomes increasingly centralized and bureaucratized, the inevitable direction approaches a "one-size-fits-all" curriculum and classroom structure. Parents tend to be very capable of understanding their child's abilities and learning styles and tailor make the curriculum to the student, maximizing the educational experience for each child. The home school can be very flexible, adapting itself to the needs of each child. Students progress at their own pace in each subject. If one curriculum is ineffective for the student's learning style, the parent can change the curriculum. Each child has his own abilities and potentials and in the home school classroom the student remains challenged without being overwhelmed. There is no common denominator to which some students are reduced and by which others are intimidated. These factors have produced phenemenal success in home education.
As homeschooling continues to exercise itself in the free market it is fast becoming the wave of the future in education. Now technology is giving homeschool parents tools that they never had before. CD-ROM curriculum, video curriculum, satellite feeds, and on-line tutoring are bringing the best teaching tools and methods into the home.
Bringing Families Together
Not only is home education re-inventing the way that we do schools, but it is re-inventing the way we do families. Homeschooling is bringing families together. As one home school mother told me recently, "Since we've been home schooling, my teenager daughters and I can really talk to each other." It is re-building relationships in a society where the nuclear family has seen some fragmentation.
Christian Education
Another important blessing of the homeschooling movement is the extension of Christian education into a wider segment of society. All education is religious in the sense that it is rooted in basic presuppositions concerning God's existence, origins, purpose of life, the nature of man, and so on. Therefore, it is only a question of which religion basically undergirds the education that is provided our children. The predominant educational approach today presents a point of view that accepts man as god, ethics as arbitrary and relative, and scientific theories as absolute truth. Homeschooling parents have the opportunity to choose their own curriculum and many are concerned to establish a biblical foundation in their children's education. Also, many parents find that homeschooling can provide great opportunities for discipling their children "as they rise up and as they walk along the way." (See Deut. 6.)
There is much in education that has the potential to change culture. As the old saying goes, "ideas have consequences." Over the last 40 years, we have watched the rates of social problems among our youth climb while SAT scores fall and American school children rate near third world nations in literacy rates and in science and math. Although homeschooling may not be for everyone, it has been found to be a great avenue for families to break out of the dominant ideological trends, re-assert the importance of the family, raise the standards of academics, establish an education on biblical principles, and work to produce children of strong character and integrity.
Socialization
The most common accusation raised against home education is the question of socialization. Ironic enough is the fact that social concerns relating to problems with certain peer groups and various social situations are driving more families away from conventional schooling into home education. Home schooling children have several advantages with socialization. The fact that they have regular interaction with adults and often with siblings of various ages, gives them an advantage later in life, when they interact with people of varying backgrounds and cultures. Dr. Larry Shyer's study reported that the "child's social development depends more on adult contact and less on contact with other children." In all the serious research that is done on home school socialization by professional pyschologists, it would be difficult to find a single one that finds homeschooled children coming out under their counterparts in public or private schools. Dr. John Wesley Taylor's nationwide revealed that the self-concept of home school students was significantly higher than that of public school students for the global and all six subscales of the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale. The Galloway-Sutton Study (performed in 1997), showed that from five success indicators (academic, cognitive, spiritual, affective-social and pyschomotor), comparing with public and private schooled students, "in every success category except pyschomotor, the home school graduates excelled above the other students."
The bottom line on socialization is that it is not generally learned in a classroom setting, but usually in a properly supervised social environment (such as one would find in the family or in extracurricular activities). The opportunities for social experiences are important to homeschoolers and recent studies have shown that 98% of homeschooled children are involved in two or more social/community beyond the home each week, including such things as Scouts, Ballet classes, 4-H, Bible Clubs, Music Classes, Group Sports, field Trips, and Sunday School. Homeschooling is shifting the distribution of academic performance in America up 25 percentage points.
Homeschools are setting new standards for academics, character, social skills, creativity, independence from the state, and a commitment to God and family. The true impact of homeschooling on the country's social, business, economic, and political institutions will be felt 20 years from now and I believe it will set new directions for the way education is done for the next ten generations.
Kevin Swanson is Executive Director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado. He may be reached at 720-842-4852 or 1-877-842-CHEC or office@chec.org. Christian Home Educators of Colorado provides introductory workshops, conventions, resources, this website (www.chec.org) and a news magazine for those interested in home education. |
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