and Reduces Impact of Socio-Economic Factors

TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire - Oct. 4, 2007) - Home schooling appears to improve the academic performance of children from families with low levels of education, according to a report on home schooling released today by independent research organization The Fraser Institute.

"The evidence is particularly interesting for students who traditionally fall through the cracks in the public system," said Claudia Hepburn, co-author of Home Schooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream, 2nd edition and Director of Education Policy with The Fraser Institute.

"Poorly educated parents who choose to teach their children at home produce better academic results for their children than public schools do. One study we reviewed found that students taught at home by mothers who never finished high school scored a full 55 percentage points higher than public school students from families with comparable education levels."

The peer-reviewed report, co-written with Patrick Basham and John Merrifield, builds on a 2001 study with new research and data. It examines the educational phenomenon of home schooling in Canada and the United States, its regulation, history, growth, and the characteristics of practitioners, before reviewing the findings on the academic and social effects of home schooling.

More of the story…

The Superiority of Home-Schooling as an Educational Environment

Provided by Paul LeBoutillier and Sandy Keane

The homeschooling movement is in effect, though certainly not by design - a laboratory for the intensive and long-range study of children’s learning and of the ways in which friendly and concerned adults can help them. It is a research project, done at no cost, of a kind for which neither the public schools nor the government could afford to pay.

- John Holt, “Schools and Home-schoolers: A Fruitful Partnership”, Phi Delta Kappan, Feb. 1983.

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What follows are listings from the growing body of research on homeschooling that address frequently voiced concerns. We chose these listings because they are either frequently cited in other works about homeschooling, or are more accessible to the general reader than other academic studies. Some universities and colleges will allow anyone to use their libraries, and they are more likely to have these journals and books than a public library. Some citations on this list appear in several categories because one study often covers many different questions about homeschooling.

Research that supports the claim that homeschoolers do as well as or better than their schooled peers academically

Greene, S. (1985) Home study in Alaska: A profile of K-12 students enrolled in the Alaska Centralized Correspondence Study. Resources in Education. (ERIC document Reproduction Service No. ED 255 494) Rakestraw, J. (1987) An Analysis of Home Schooling for Elementary School-age Children in Alabama. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL.

Ray, B.D. & Wartes, J. (1991) Academic Task and Socializing. In J. Van Galen and M.A Pittman (Eds.) Home Schooling: Political, Historical, and Pedagogical Perspectives. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Richman, Howard. (1988) Homeschoolers Score Higher - A Replicable Result. (available from Pennsylvania Homeschoolers, RD 2, Box 117, Kittanning PA 16201)

Wartes, J. (1990). The Relationship of Selected Input Variables to Academic Achievement Among Washington’s Homeschoolers, [16109 NE 169th Place,] Woodinville, WA: Washington Homeschool Research Project.

Research that supports the claim that homeschoolers are not deprived of social skills or experiences

Delahooke, M.M. (1986). Home educated children’s social/emotional adjustment and academic achievement: a comparative study. Doctoral dissertation, California School of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles. Dissertation Abstracts International, 47 475A. Montgomery, L. (1989). The effect of home schooling on the leadership skills of home schooled students. Home School Researcher, Vol. 5 (1), 1-10.

Taylor, J.W. (1986) Self-concept in home-schooling children. Doctoral dissertation, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI.

Research that supports the claim that homeschooling parents do not need to be certified teachers to help their children learn

Rakestraw, J. (1987). An Analysis of Home Schooling for Elementary School-age Children in Alabama. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL. Ray, B. (1990) A Nationwide Study of Home Education: Family Characteristics, Legal Matters, and Student Achievement. The National Home Education Research Institute. 25 W. Cremona St. Seattle, WA 98119

Wartes, J. (1990). The Relationship of Selected Input Variables to Academic Achievement Among Washington’s Homeschoolers, [16109 NE 169th Place,] Woodinville, WA: Washington Homeschool Research Project.

Research that supports the claim that the number of homeschoolers is increasing in the United States

Lines, P. (1987). An Overview of Home Instruction. Phi Delta Kappan, March 1987. Lines, P. (1990). Home Instruction: Characteristics, Size and Growth. In Home Schooling: Political, Historical, and Pedagogical Perspectives. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.

Research that supports the claim that homeschoolers encounter no special difficulty in getting into college or finding employment

Barnaby, L.(1984) American university admission requirements for home schooled applicants, in 1984. Doctoral dissertation, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. Dissertation Abstracts International, 47(3), 798A. Webb, J. (1989) The Outcomes of Home-based Education: Employment and Other Issues. Educational Review, 41(2).

Sources for more research information

The Moore Foundation, Box 1, Camas WA 98607 (Dr. Raymond Moore) The National Home Education Research Institute, 25 W. Cremona St. Seattle, WA 98119

(Dr. Brian Ray) Articles in academic journals about homeschooling can be accessed using the ERIC database (available in many public and university libraries); when searching in ERIC be sure to look at all the forms of the word “homeschooling” (i.e. home school, home-school, home education, etc.) in order to get the largest number of references. You can also write to the National Home Education Research Institute (see above) for details on how to obtain their current bibliography of home- schooling articles. To obtain a copy of a dissertation, be sure to get correct reference numbers from the University Microfilms International (UMI) Dissertation Abstracts database or books (according to their literature they are “the only central source of accessing almost every doctoral dissertation accepted in North America since 1861″). Contact UMI at 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor MI 48106; 800-521-0600.

Magazines that report or print homeschooling research

Education and Urban Society. Special issue: Understanding Home Schools: Emerging Research and Reactions. J. Gary Knowles, Ed. Volume 21, No. 1, Nov. 1988 Growing Without Schooling, 2269 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge MA 02140

Home Education Magazine, PO Box 1083, Tonasket WA 98855 (Their Jan./Feb. 1991 issue contains a special section on research.)

Home Education Researcher, The National Home Education Research Institute, 25 W. Cremona St. Seattle, WA 98110

The Teaching Home, PO Box 20219, Portland OR 97220

Books that report homeschooling research

Moore, Raymond and Dorothy (1988). Home School Burnout: What it is. What Causes It. And How To Overcome It. Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt.

The Moores have written many other books about homeschooling based on their research and studies; this is their most recent. Some of their other titles are (1979) School Can Wait, Provo, UT: Brigham Young Univ. Press; (1982), Homespun Schools, Waco, TX : Word Books; (1984) Homestyle Teaching, Waco, TX; Word Books.

Van Galen, J. & Pitman, M.A. eds. (1991). Home Schooling: Political, Historical, and Pedagogical Perspectives. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.

Webb, Julie (1990). Children Learning at Home. London, UK: Falmer Press

Books and articles related to, but not specifically about, homeschooling research

Arons, S. (1983) Compelling Belief: The Culture of American Schooling, Amherst, MA: Univ. of MA Press. Studies the conflict between the individual and institutionalism in education, with a section on homeschooling. Farenga, P. , ed. (1991) Homeschooling In The News, Cambridge, MA: Holt Associates. Collection of national print media articles about homeschooling that are not academically oriented. Useful for seeing how the mass media portrays homeschooling.

Holt, J. (1981) Teach Your Own: A Hopeful Path for Education. Bantam/Doubleday/Dell, NY.

McCarthy, Oppewal, Peterson, Spykman, (1981) Society, State, & Schools, Grand Rapids, MI: Eermans. This is a scholarly study that advocates multiple educational systems that tolerate pluralistic worldviews.

Resnick, L. (1987) Learning In School and Out, Educational Researcher, December 1987. 13 - 20. Shows that practically none of the skills learned in school are transferable to the world of work.

Seefeldt, C. ed. (1990). Continuing Issues in Early Childhood Education. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill. Chapters by Dr. Raymond Moore about delaying school entrance and by Susannah Sheffer, editor of Growing Without Schooling, about homeschooling.

Tizard, B. and Hughes, M. (1984). Young Children Learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press. Ample evidence that children of working class parents learn more effectively at home than in nursery schools.
from Paul LeBoutillier, on the OneNet Homeschool Idea/Exchange Conference: Thought some of us might find it useful…

Socialization? No problem! HSLDA’s synopsis of a new research study on adults who were homeschooled, conducted by Dr. Brian D. Ray Every parent who homeschools has been through the drill: “Oh, you homeschool. Aren’t you concerned about your child’s socialization?” Even TIME magazine picked up on the question: “Home schooling may turn out better students, but does it create better citizens?” (“Seceding from School,” TIME, August 2001.) Homeschooling parents have known the answer for years: “No problem here!” But critics demand proof. Today, the first generation of homeschooled students has “grown up,” and there are enough homeschool graduates to begin to see how they are succeeding in their homes, in their work, and in their lives. In 2003, the Home School Legal Defense Association commissioned the largest research survey to date of adults who were home educated. Conducted by Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute, the study surveyed over 7,300 adults who were homeschooled. Over 5,000 of these had been home educated at least seven years, and the statistics in this synopsis are based on their responses. The results confirm what homeschoolers have thought for years: “No problem here.” Full Text

From the Extreme to the Mainstream
2nd edition
by Patrick Basham, John Merrifield, and Claudia R. Hepburn

Of the thousands of studies published by The Fraser Institute, Patrick Basham’s 2001 study Homeschooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream has had almost unique popularity and longevity. In 2006, five years after it was published, the study’s PDF was downloaded from our website more than 10,000 times, making it the most frequently viewed study apart from the newly released school report cards and the Tax Freedom Freedom Day calculator. This second edition builds on the original with new research and data. The paper considers the educational phenomenon of home schooling in Canada and the United States, its regulation, history, growth, and the characteristics of practitioners before reviewing the findings on the academic and social effects of home schooling.

The paper finds:

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Yvona Kostelecká
Universita Karlova v Praze Pedagogická fakulta Praha 2003 Školitel: Doc. Dr. V. Smetáek, CSc. DIZERTANÍ PRÁCE

"Charles University" in Prague Czech republic

DOMÁCÍ VZD
LÁVÁNÍ
Yvona Kostelecká
 

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An Argument Against Compulsory Schooling In The Netherlands By HenkBlok Senior Researcher in the SCO-Kohnstamm Institute for Educational Research at the University of Amsterdam Abstract – Although home education is a growing phenomenon in many Western countries, it is almost non-existent in the Netherlands. Under Dutch educational law, children must be educated in the school system. Home schooling is thought to endanger children’s development. This study examines – primarily American – analyses of performance in home schooling. Its leading question is: How do home-schooled children develop in comparison with school pupils? It concludes that home-schooled children perform better on average in the cognitive domain (language, mathematics, natural sciences, social studies), but differ little from their peers at school in terms of socio-emotional development. This positive finding may be attributed partly to socioeconomic factors. However, it is also suggested that the quality of the learning environment, including one-to-one tutoring, could also be a contributing factor. Full Text

Norwegian Norsk av Christian W. Beck Forskningsrapport Pedagogisk forskningsinstitutt Det utdanningsvitenskapelige fakultet Universitetet i Oslo Forord Denne forskningsrapporten bygger på et spørreskjema som ble sendt ut til flest mulig hjemmeundervisere i Norge i 2002. Jeg fikk kr 30.000,- i forskningsstøtte fra mitt arbeidssted Pedagogisk forskningsinstitutt UiO. Det er jeg glad for. Hjemmeundervisning er et omstridt tema. Derfor er det i rapporten lagt vekt på å gjengi resultatene og analysere data så tett opp mot rådataene i spørreskjemaene som mulig, uten mer teori og ideologisk innpakning enn de nødvendige valg av metode gir. Jeg takker alle hjemmeunderviserne som har bidratt ved å svare på spørreskjemaet. Undersøkelsen er ellers et typisk enmanns arbeid.

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by Christian W. Beck

In the USA modern home education started in the late 1960s. There are today more than one million home educators in the USA. Norway is a small country. Home education appeared here much later, at the beginning of the 1990s. There are few home educators in Norway, both absolutely and relatively in comparison with the USA. Home education has a very different status in these two countries. It is of interest to compare them:

A comparison of social background for a sample of 128 home educated pupils with corresponding information for the Norwegian population is made:

Circumstances	The Sample	The Population
The household’s income (NKR)	271.250	517.800
Percentage living in urban areas	25,2	77,3
Living with both fathers and mother (%)	88	77
Number of brothers and sisters	3,6	1,7
Mother’s education (1)(Some or completed secondary school in %)	49,6	55,2
Mother’s education (2)(Only compulsory school / comprehensive school in %)	17,1	8,0
Father’s education (1)(Some or completed secondary school in %)	53,6	55,8
Father’s education (2)(Only compulsory school / comprehensive school in %)	12,7	8,8

(1) The data for the population are from Statistisk Sentralbyrå (The National Bureau of Statistics). Income is for the population take-home pay for households with children from 9 – 16 in 2000. The income of the selection is also take-home pay. The educational data from the population is for the group from 30 to 39 years of age in 2000. The data on home education is collected from a survey on Norwegian home educators, Beck (2003).

Home educating families in this survey-investigation have little less education than the corresponding group in the population. One should especially notice that there is a relatively larger group of home educating mothers that have only compulsory school than there are in the population.

The income of the home educators lies at a lower midlevel. About 60% of the home educating households earn from 175 000 NKR to 350.000 (20.000 – 40.000 euro) a year. They have an average income less than half of what the corresponding groups in the population got.

Typical for Norwegian home educators is that they live out in the countryside. Home educating families often have a number of children. Home educated children have an average of 3,6 brothers and sisters. However, there is a great variety. 40% of the home educated children have two brothers and sisters or less. Home educated children to some extent live together with both parents, than what is the case in the population as a whole, Beck (2003).

A survey has been done, based on three great investigations about home educating families in the USA. One has then compared the home educating families in these investigations with data from the population in the USA, Bauman (2002).

The greatest difference between Norwegian and American home educators is that American home educating families earn somewhat above the average of the American population and that they have some higher educational level than the average American population. The number of single mothers is the same as among Norwegian home educators, however the Americans differ more than the Norwegians as the national average is concerned. In the US the home educators are most numerous outside the big towns and suburbs dominated by a white population, and less numerous in central areas in big towns, Bauman (2002).

An analysis of average figures on variables in the Norwegian investigation gives the following picture of the common home educator:

The tendency is that home educators start home education on a basis connected to a certain events in school, for example bullying. If they continue home education for a long time, they get a more principal view on their own home education.“The home educating teacher” is the mother. In a few cases the father takes part in the teaching, then mostly in mathematics and practical subjects. A number of home educators give their children practical tasks and practical project work in addition to teaching them basic subjects. The most common teaching form is an effective theoretical teaching from the parents This is often combined with that pupils to a different extent work with the subjects themselves, solves problems and cooperates with brothers and sisters or sometimes with other home educated children.

The majority of the home educators are generally satisfied with their home education. The parents are fairly satisfied with the progress their pupils make in the core subjects mathematics, reading and writing.

Many parents do home education on a broader basis of values than purely education. Research from the USA throughout a number of years, shows that home educated children get high scores on final tests, Ray (1997); Rudner (1999) and Bauman (2002). The average home educated pupil scores way above the average school pupil. These results must be corrected because of the differences between the home educating population and the national school population.

The home teaching parents in the USA have some higher education and income than the parents of the school pupils, and there is a greater part of white middle class families with both parents in the household. In spite of such corrections the conclusion that home educated children are doing very well at exams, is maintained.

It is difficult to obtain an objective and justifiable answer on how well Norwegian home educated pupils are doing on their exams. Home educated pupils in Norway do not have a obvious right by law to get a certificate with marks, when they finish compulsory education as home educated pupils. Such a right is a matter of conflict in Norway. A number of home educators do not wish to have marks on the certificate. The right to be admitted to further education does not depend on a certificate from compulsory education containing marks.

Experience from several single cases over several years does indeed give the impression that we in Norway have the same situation as in the USA. Home educated pupils often get good marks on tests and exams.

A conclusion must be: The phenomena Home education/homeschooling is quit the same in two different countries like USA and Norway. But there are some interesting differences in social background for home educators in the two countries.

An Overview of the Contemporary Situation

Thomas Spiegler Department of Sociology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg D-35032, Germany

This paper gives an overview of the situation of home education in Germany. The first results from a predominantly qualitative research project are presented. This combines participant observation, content analysis and qualitative interviews for a thorough sociological analysis of the German home education movement. Compulsory school attendance exists in Germany and home education is not allowed. Contraventions are regarded as an administrative or an indictable offence. Nevertheless, about 500 children are home educated. This takes place in secret, with tacit toleration by the local authorities or with legal consequences, ranging from a fine to partial loss of child custody, or even the possibility of a prison sentence. The parents who educate their children at home differ concerning their sociodemographic characteristics, reasons and learning concepts. Several networks exist which are either in their initial stages or expanding. This paper gives insight into the legal position, describes how home education in Germany is practised and explains the existing main areas of tension. In the conclusion it is pointed out, why, even if the conditions do not change, the field of home education is expected to grow. Keywords: home education, Germany, compulsory school attendance Full Text

IES National Center for Education Statistics

A First Look. Initial Results From the First Follow-up of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002)

This report presents initial findings from the first follow-up of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002). ELS:2002 is the fourth major secondary school longitudinal study sponsored by NCES, closely reflecting the research purposes and design of its three predecessor studies, NLS-72, HS&B, and NELS:88. ELS:2002 began with a nationally representative sample of 10th-graders in 2002. In the first follow-up, this sophomore cohort was studied 2 years later (2004), and the sample freshened to provide a representative sample of 12th-graders. This ED TAB report summarizes the demographic and educational characteristics of the high school senior class of 2004. It also reports on the senior cohort’s mathematics achievement, their expectations for eventual educational attainment, the importance to them of various institutional characteristics in choosing a college, and their values and plans.

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