January 9, 2009 10:43 AM
Homeschool numbers up, higher test scores too!
Homeschooling goes boom in America
74 percent increase in number of families teaching own children
By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDailyA homeschooling movement is sweeping the nation - with 1.5 million children now learning at home, an increase of 75 percent since 1999.
The Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics reported homeschooling has risen by 36 percent in just the last five years.
"There's no reason to believe it would not keep going up," NCES statistician Gail Mulligan told USA Today.
A 2007 survey asked parents why they choose to homeschool and allowed them to provide several reasons. The following are the most popular responses:
* Concern about the school environment, including reasons such as safety, drugs or negative peer pressure - 88 percent
* A desire to provide religious or moral instruction - 83 percent
* A dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools - 73 percent
* Nontraditional approach to children's education - or "unschoolers" who consider typical curriculums and standardized testing as counterproductive to quality education - 65 percent
* Other reasons, such as family time, finances, travel and distance - 32 percent
* Child has special needs (other than physical or mental health problems) that schools cannot or will not meet - 21 percent
* Child has a physical or mental health problem - 11 percent
Read entire article here
And here's a helpful tidbit for those whose friends and families need convincing that homeschool works:
"The home educated in grades K to 12 have scored, on average, at the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized academic achievement tests in the United States and Canada, compared to the public school average of the 50th percentile," the report states.Three studies also show that demographics, income and education level of homeschooling parents are generally irrelevant with regard to quality of education in a home setting. On average, homeschoolers in low-income families with less formal education still score higher than state-school averages.
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Comments
This is so encouraging! We are homeschooling our 4-year-old and would like to continue at least until she's in 1st or 2nd grade. I have often second-guessed whether this is the right decision, especially when nearly all of her peers are in a preschool. She's showing strong skills though, and hearing reports such as this make me more sure it's the right decision for us, at least for now. Thanks.
Posted by: Addie | January 9, 2009 3:14 PM
While I am planning on homeschooling my daughter (almost 8 months old) for a variety of reasons, I also think that there are factors at work that no survey can account for. All homeschoolers care about their children and are invested in their lives and education; the same is not true for all parents of public school children. You can account for educational level, but that's not the same as intelligence. I can't say I learned much of consequence in college, and unless a person took courses in early childhood education, I don't think he or she would have learned anything that pertained to pre-high-school homeschooling. But I'm betting most homeschoolers are more intelligent than average, even if they don't have specific pieces of paper testifying to that. I appreciate that these sorts of tests show homeschoolers are capable, but I don't think they are comparing apples to apples.
Posted by: ycw | January 10, 2009 6:29 AM
