by Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.
Maybe just rich people homeschool. Or, as storyteller Garrison Keillor of “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show fame might imply: “Maybe homeschooling is the realm, simply by nature’s design, where ‘all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”1 And perhaps this is why their children consistently score above average in readin’, ’ritin’, and ’rithmetic. (Oh, and science and social studies.) This is one hypothesis the negative critics of home-based education have that is worth considering.
Context
Multiple studies over thirty years have consistently found positive things associated with homeschooling. Some critics—both of the research and of home-based education—claim, however, that almost no research tells us anything significant about the academic achievement of the home educated.2
One of the most recent studies on home education, by academics Sandra Martin-Chang, Odette Gould, and Reanne Meuse, however, supports the hypothesis that at least a certain form of home-based education causes higher academic achievement than does public schooling.3 Their research, titled “The Impact of Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Homeschooled and Traditionally Schooled Students,” is worth a close look.
Martin-Chang and her colleagues considered some of the limitations on research to date and worked for a design with more built-in controls. For example, they chose solely home-educated and solely public-schooled students, and matched homeschool and public school students on variables such as geographical area in which they lived, did fresh achievement testing of both groups, and found that all but one of the mothers were “married or living in committed relationships.” In other words, the researchers tried to make sure that the children’s families were very similar on variables that are typically significantly related to academic achievement. Some of these are parental education level, household income, and marital status of parents.
Although the sample sizes involved probably appear small to a lay audience—37 homeschool and 37 public school students of ages 5 to 10—it should be kept in mind that having a “large” sample size is not necessarily more important than carefully controlling for certain variables. For example, the researchers statistically adjusted test scores for the mothers’ educational attainment and household income, even though “mothers’ education and median income were slightly higher for the public school group” (p. 6). In a sense, they used a matched-pair design and were exploring for causal relationships.
Findings
Once into the study, the researchers found that “structured” and “unstructured” homeschoolers—regarding how the parents delivered curriculum and education in general to their children—were two distinct groups. The authors focused their analysis on comparing students from structured homeschool settings with public school students.
The children who received structured homeschooling were superior to the children enrolled in public school across all seven subtests (p. 5). The seven subtests were these: Letter-Word, Comprehension, Word Attack, Science, Social Science, Humanities, and Calculation. Further, the researchers reported the following:
To gain a broad perspective of the level of standardized achievement in each group, we conducted a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) that included the scores from all seven Woodcock-Johnson subtests. . . . Thus, all seven subtests were used as dependent variables, and schooling group (public school and structured homeschool) was the independent variable. . . . all the variables showed a medium or strong effect. . . . In conclusion, when comparing the test scores of the children attending public school and children receiving structured homeschooling, it becomes clear that the latter group has higher scores across a variety of academic areas. Moreover, there is no evidence that this difference is simply due to the family’s income or the mother’s educational attainment. (p. 5)
The researchers reported a very small sample size for the unstructured homeschool-family students. Based on this, they wrote that “. . . our exploratory analyses suggest that the unstructured homeschooled children generally score below their expected grade level on the standardized test, and that even with this small sample, performance differences are relatively substantial” (pp. 5–6).
One should keep in mind, however, that the sole measure of learning in this study is standardized tests and the students are rather young. The researchers wisely hypothetically wondered “. . . whether the children receiving unstructured homeschooling would eventually catch up, or even surpass, their peers given ample time” (p. 7).
Conclusions
Martin-Chang and her colleagues concluded that the “. . . evidence presented here is in line with the assumption that homeschooling offers benefits over and above those experienced in public school” (p. 6).
It will be fascinating to see whether future research that incorporates more careful controls as did these researchers continues to find an academic homeschool advantage. Are home-educated children doing well simply because only strong women, good-looking men, and above-average children choose to homeschool or because there is an advantage to home-based education that causes good effects?
Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., is president of the National Home Education Research Institute, a nonprofit research and education organization. Dr. Ray is internationally known for his research on homeschooling, and he often serves as an expert witness in courts, testifies to legislatures, and is often interviewed by the media. Brian is married to Betsy and they have eight children and four grandchildren. The Ray family lives on a small farm in western Oregon. Please feel free to send your questions about research related to home-based education and raising children to mail@nheri.org.
Endnotes:
1. Retrieved October 31, 2011, from prairiehome.publicradio.org/about/podcast.
2. Ray, Brian D. (2010, February 3). Academic achievement and demographic traits of homeschool students: A nationwide study. Academic Leadership Journal, 8(1). Retrieved February 10, 2010 from http://www.academicleadership.org/emprical_research/Academic_Achievement_and_Demographic_Traits_of_Homeschool_Students_A_Nationwide_Study.shtml.
3. Martin-Chang, Sandra; Gould, Odette N.; Meuse, Reanne E. (2011, May 30). The impact of schooling on academic achievement: Evidence from homeschooled and traditionally schooled students. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, pp. 1–8.
Copyright, 2012. Used with permission. All rights reserved by author. Originally appeared in
The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, January 2012. Read this digital, interactive magazine free by visiting:
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I signed up for the Cultural Exchange at the Little Red Farm this year. The aim of this exchange is sharing information about the country you reside in with other families in your allocated group so they can get the feel for the culture of that country. This is achieved by sending a package to the family (usually addressed to the child or children) with bits and pieces that you have chosen to give a good overview of what it is like to live there.
