July 2, 2000

HOME SCHOOLING'S GROWING APPEAL

The home-schooling group Christian Home Educators of Colorado held their annual convention June 22-24 in Denver and the crowds in the exhibition hall -- including, on Saturday, flocks of beautifully behaved children -- testify to parents' enthusiasm and dedication to the education of their children.

Research testifies to their success.

Home schooling is popular in Colorado. Janice Quitmeyer, publicity coordinator for CHEC, told me the organization has about 10,000 families in its data base, with some 40,000 children. Roughly a quarter of them have chosen to register with their local school district; the rest either don't have to register because they have a parent or relative who is a certified teacher, or have enrolled in an independent school that allows them to be taught at home.

Because states differ widely in how strictly they control home schooling, no one knows exactly how many children are taught at home. The Home School Legal Defense Association, based in Virginia, estimated 1.2 million in 1996.

(It also notes that the number of hoops through which states require home-school parents to jump has no measurable effect on the academic success of their children.) The association funded a 1998 study by Lawrence Rudner, director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation, who analyzed data from more than 20,000 home-schooled students (his article appears in the online journal Educational Policy Analysis Archives at epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8).

Rudner is careful to point out that the demographic profile of home-schooling families in his study differs from the population as a whole in many ways. Parents in nearly all of them, more than 97 percent, are married couples. They have more education; more than half of parents have at least a bachelor's degree. So their children's success is to some extent predictable.

Home schooling, however, skews a lot of predictions -- for the better. A 1997 study of 5,000 home-schooled students by Brian Ray found average K-12 scores at the 87th percentile. Parents' education had scarcely any effect, though it's a huge factor for public-school children, and neither did family income.

Rudner also found that the gap between home-schooled children and their age-level peers grows over time. By eighth grade, the median home-schooled child is four grades above the national average on a comprehensive battery of standardized tests, and that's conservative because nearly a quarter of children are enrolled one or more grades above their age level.

Both academic results and the opportunity to craft an education rooted in their faith are important to the people who come to the CHEC conference.

Patricia Greely of Aurora, Colo., who's not satisfied with her 15-year-old son's progress, plans to start a home school in the fall. "With 25-30 kids in a class, each one gets a few minutes a week," she said. "One-on-one sounded real good to me."

Greely is a single mother, and she said she was hoping to find others in her situation who can help her manage the additional demands on her time. She plans to work evenings or nights so she has days available for teaching.

"That's the sacrifice you make," she said. "I believe this is something the Lord is telling me to do."

Rudner's study probably oversampled families with a religious reason for home schooling, he says, but there's no reason to think those who chose it for secular reasons would do worse. Give it some thought.

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