Homeschool Achievement Outperforms National Average
By Sun Kyu Bae |
Published August 14, 2009 |
Articles |
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Read all about a 2009 study confirming that homeschool achievement outperforms the national average!
Some Thoughts
Now what I'm about to say doesn't take anything away from the homeschool achievement scores, but I must disagree with one statement in the report regarding homeschooling costs. Specifically, the report states that "[Homeschooling] shows that children can be educated to a standard significantly above the average public school student at a fraction of the cost-the average spent by participants in the Progress Report was about $500 per child per year as opposed to the public school average of nearly $10,000 per child per year…"
The mathematics of this statement may very well be true, but I'll bet that the $500 per child per year for homeschooling does not include any kind of compensation for the parent to teach the student while the comparable $10,000 figure includes teacher salaries. I don't think NHERI calculated costs this way to mislead, but rather to present literally the dollar costs into each education approach. Nevertheless, there is a glaring apples to oranges comparison issue here that needs some equalization.
And the closest thing to equalizing the homeschooling cost equation with an analogous expense to teaching salary is to add on what salary the parent(s) are foregoing in exchange for taking time to homeschool their child. Anywhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 to $80,000 is not unreasonable so if you add those costs onto the $500, well, homeschooling doesn't seem too inexpensive after all.
But of course, homeschooling is NOT just about how cost-effectively you can provide the best education to your child (and no one said those costs won't be significant). To be completely honest, homeschooling is an expensive option because at least one parent likely sacrifices income that he/she could have made if it weren't for homeschooling (see my article, "How Much Does Homeschooling Cost?" for details).
But even given these significant costs, what do you think are the costs for not homeschooling and would you be willing to bear those costs?
Wow. All this talk about achievement scores and I guess we didn't tackle the age old question of why. So, why did the homeschool kids score so much higher than their public school peers? Is this nation too soft on public school students? Are we, as homeschool parents, too hard on our kids?
My personal thoughts are that, overall, families that homeschool have values focused on meeting family goals (not just financial goals or goals focused only on a particular member of the family, but real goals that benefit the entire family) - this is not to say that families whose kids are in public schools do not have these same goals, but if you compare the two groups at the highest level, I believe that there is a greater percentage of homeschooling families that pursue and live towards meeting genuine family values and goals compared to the public school family group as a whole.
The hard work and effort into meeting these goals do not go unnoticed by homeschool students, who realize that they too have a role to fulfill. Homeschool students realize their parents actively chose a different path for them and took on the commensurate sacrifices. So this desire to fulfill their role becomes the self motivation required to fuel a successful academic career. If you're further interested in this topic, I wrote an entire article called "Secret of Academic Success", which discusses this one critical factor in depth.
One last thought before signing off - having logged a scorching 7% growth per year over the last ten years, homeschooling will soon become a competitive differentiator of academic excellence (read: colleges and universities will actively seek homeschoolers for their student enrollment) in the years to come. In fact, already, some top universities are starting to notice that homeschool kids are a different breed that merit a closer look for spots in their enrollment rosters.
And this recent study further supports that promising future.
See you next time!
- Sun
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