Homeschooling in America: Capturing and Assessing the Movement
I really enjoy reading research as long as it comes from a credible, uncorrupt, objective source. I just like truth. So this book was enjoyable for me for that reason. There are tons of books that will slant either way, toward public school or (more likely) toward home education. This one is basically just a comprehensive review of research, and answered some questions I've been curious about for some time.
The first 2/3rds of the book was old news for me, having already read a lot of research online and in other books, but the last three chapters were definitely worth my time. A few statistics I was interested to learn:
The average number of library visits per month for homeschool families is 3.8.
36.4% of homeschool families watch no television at home. Wow! I knew it would be high, but never would have guessed that high!
I've already mentioned this in previous posts, but homeschool kids overwhelmingly score higher academically than public schooled kids. While I try not to focus on grades and scores, this is still a telling fact. Sean and I both come from lower-income families and parents who were able to gain little or no college education, so even more interesting on a personal level is the fact that children from both low-income families and families with parents with lower levels of education do much better than children from similar families whose children go to public schools. I also found it interesting that the race, income, parental education, and gender differences that sadly have a profoundly negative impact on achievement in public schools are muted or almost nonexistent with homeschooled children from the same backgrounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment