Bulletin
#38 Statistical Reports 10/24/2004
Did you know? In July 2004 a report was released by the
If you’d like to read the report in it’s entirety it is located at http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/2004115.pdf
The very first thing that may come to mind when reading these kinds of reports
is that home schooling seems to be on the rise, and that it tends to have
favorable outcomes in terms of how children do academically. But what
might be more of a concern to the home schooling community at large regarding
these types of studies, is how the statistical information was obtained, and
whether or not the conclusions drawn are valid. It is necessary to
understand what the purpose was for doing a particular study, who is doing the
study, and who is paying any attention to the findings. One must also understand
how statistics can be manipulated to bring about a certain outcome. It is
important to understand the population being studied, and who is being included
or excluded from the sample population.
When reading any particular study it is also necessary to understand the
definitions that are used. For example, here are some studies and how
they have some interesting ways of defining homeschooling:
In the 1998 paper http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/SAI/homeschool/index.html
“Homeschooling is the
education of school-aged children under their parents' general monitoring, and
it replaces full-time attendance at a campus school. Some homeschooling
children enroll part time at a campus-based school, or share instruction with
other families, but most of their educational program is under the direct
oversight of parents. While many activities take place in the home, parents
often draw on their community, neighboring institutions, and travel opportunities
to complete the program. The definition used for this paper includes families
who self-identify as homeschoolers, even if they utilize part-time school
enrollment.”
In the 1999 and 2004 NCES report: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2001033
“Students were considered to
be homeschooled if their parents reported them being schooled at home instead
of a public or private school, if their enrollment in public or private schools
did not exceed 25 hours a week, and if they were not being homeschooled solely
because of a temporary illness.”
The issue of "self identifying" in these studies is interesting in
that even families who engage in “public school at home” (also known as some
types of charter schooling, or e-schooling, or cyber schooling) can define
themselves as homeschoolers for purposes of this study. One can see that
this could be quite problematic and may produce higher numbers of
homeschoolers, and may of course impact the true results.
In the 1999 and 2004 study cited above it mentions enrollment in public or
private school 25 hours a week, or less. It would seem that anyone
enrolled in a program for 25 hours a week would be considered a full time
enrolled student, and not a homeschooler. That seems pretty suspect to
us, in terms of a true definition of a homeschooler for purposes of any
study.
One might wonder what would be gained by the results of these reports.
For starters, if the numbers of homeschoolers in the country are shown to be
rising, then many conclusions can be drawn as to why and what (if anything)
should be done about it, as is discussed in this quote from this particular
study:
"If home schooling continues to grow, demand will grow for the types of
services that are starting to be offered by public schools and distance
education providers. A result will be pressure on schools to design school
curricula that allow students and parents to pick and choose what they like.
According to some observers, another result will be the creation of new
schools and school-like institutions built around the common needs and concerns
of home- schooling families (Hill 2000) and the growth of public school
programs designed specifically for home schoolers (Lines 2000b)." http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n26
So one can see that the results can be used to justify reforms in education,
the need for the state to monitor growing numbers of homeschoolers, demonstrate
that public schools are losing too many students to other forms of education,
and so on. These studies may also be used by people to try to determine
what kind of demographic, if any, is represented by the typical
homeschooler. The most recent study even discussed the homeschooling
family’s propensity for civic involvement. State legislatures and
Departments of Education always seem to have a need to know who we are and what
we are doing. While the studies are interesting, they can be misleading
and they can be misused.
Here is an excellent article Does Homeschooling Research Help
Homeschooling? by Larry & Susan Kaseman - Home Education
Magazine – They see this kind of research as a real threat to the homeschooling
community. http://www.homeedmag.com/INF/FREE/free_rsrch.html
There is a sentiment in national homeschool circles that some of these studies
are intended/designed to show a big growth in the numbers of homeschoolers by
intentionally counting those students who are really enrolled in public/private
schools to inflate the numbers. Although it is quite true that the number of
homeschooling families is rising, the sense is that the purpose of showing a
faster growth may be to create "advocacy statistics" to be used by
people like Patricia Lines to support their advice that public schools form
partnership programs with homeschoolers. One only has to look at the
conclusions drawn by some of these studies to see what suggested ideas may
arise as a result of the studies. This draws homeschoolers in as a part of the
larger school reform process which includes voucher and charter
"choices". Those choices of course may ultimately decentralize
and corporatize public schooling, while making national standards and
assessments a major part those new reforms. This is where we must keep an
eye on how school reforms proceed and how they will ultimately affect the
homeschool community at large.
An example of articles which use those statistics is this one: The New Face of
Homeschooling, which opens with this line: “As their ranks increase,
homeschoolers are tapping public schools for curriculum, part-time classes,
extracurricular services, and online learning” Harvard Education Letter Mar/Apr
2001
http://www.edletter.org/past/issues/2001-ma/homeschool.shtml
Charter Choice advocates also
use the studies to their advantage as in this article put out by the Friedman
Foundation http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/news/2004-08-20.html and
http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/quorum.pdf
The Friedman Foundation
website is at : http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/index2.html
Now, bearing all of this in mind, we might also be concerned about any
definitions used in government studies, however any definition regarding
homeschooling used in a government study is not very meaningful. The only place
it is meaningful is in federal statute (from a federal standpoint). For any
"definition" to become the "government" definition, it must
appear in the federal statutes, not just in a "study". NHELD
does agree it is troubling. A definition will come, of that we have no
doubt. We need to develop a strategy and backup plans. We need to
inform everyone, as we have been. We need to call what we do "sovereign".
We need to be prepared to fight a "government" definition in the
federal court. We need to inform our state legislators, now, most
importantly. It is imperative that each state retains its own definition
of "home schooling". We need to gather political support from
powerful people and interests. We need to do fundraising to hire
researchers to get the evidence to prove the unconstitutionality of any
"federal" "definition" if it comes to that. We need
to do all of this now.
For the type of surveys that the NCES does here is a sample 2003 survey
questionnaire: Parent and Family Involvement in Education http://nces.ed.gov/nhes/pdf/quex/pfi/pfi03.pdf
It is interesting to see the
kinds of questions that are asked, as well as how those questions are asked.
Here are a list of several studies regarding homeschooling which have been done
over the years. They make interesting reading.
1998 Lawrence Rudner study – “Scholastic Achievement and Demographic
Characteristics
of Home School Students in 1998”. ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/
Homeschoolers: Estimating Numbers and Growth - National Institute on Student
Achievement, Curriculum, and Assessment Office of Educational Research and
Improvement
U.S. Department of Education Web Edition, Spring 1999 (paper written in
1998)
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/SAI/homeschool/index.html
Homeschooling in the
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2001033 and
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/HomeSchool/
see also Homeschooling - ERIC
Digest 151, September 2001 http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1068
Sept 2000 - Issues Related to
Estimating the Home-Schooled Population in the United States with National
Household Survey Data http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/2000311.pdf
Description:
This report compares two studies that have yielded disparate estimates of the
rate of home schooling in the
The Cato Institute, 2001 - Homeschooling: From the Extreme to Mainstream
http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/pps/51/homeschool.pdf
Education Policy Analysis Archives, Volume 10 Number
26,
May 16, 2002, Home Schooling in the
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n26.html
CT Office of Legislative Research - HOME
SCHOOLING IN CONNECTICUT AND OTHER STATES (This
is a flawed report in our opinion, the information is not entirely correct) report
2002-R-0036.HTM
search on OLR web page: http://search.cga.state.ct.us/dtsearch_olr.html
Karl Bundy’s website offers statistical information by state as well as other
interesting commentary http://learninfreedom.org/homeschool_growth.html#LocalStats
“Support for Home-Based Education: Pioneering Partnerships Between Public
Schools and Families Who Instruct Their Children at Home " Is a book
used as a Guide for State Policymakers, Local Boards of Education, and School
Administrators and here is a snippet of information: http://eric.uoregon.edu/pdf/homeschool.pdf P.
Lines also demonstrates some of the advantages to school districts of provision
of support for homeschooling. As a concrete reminder of the fact that they are
"all our children," she informs us that the average tenure of
homeschooling is probably about two years, meaning that, de facto, the public
schools share educational responsibilities with most, though not all, homeschooling
families.
The Journal of College Admission, Fall 2004, had a special homeschool issue
which contained some interesting studies regarding homeschoolers and
college.
For further clarification or information regarding any of the NCES surveys
feel free to contact:
Chris Chapman, Statistician, Early Childhood and Household Studies (ECICSD)
Chris.Chapman@ed.gov Telephone:
(202) 502-7414
National Center for Education Statistics
1990 K Street, NW
Room 9020
Washington, DC 20006
Specialties and Functions: National Household Education Survey (NHES)
Attorney Deborah Stevenson - Executive Director of National Home Education
Legal Defense. –
www.nheld.com
or email : info@nheld.com
Judy Aron - Director of
Research, NHELD – imjfaron@sbcglobal.net