This post is one in a series related to my research on homeschooling.
The National Center for Education Statistics is part of the US Department of Education devoted to collecting and publishing statistics on education in the United States. In their report Homeschooling in the United States: 2003 they present statistics gathered from surveys given to households in the US, not just to children enrolled in public schools or registered with the government as homeschooled.
According to the statistics presented, nearly 1.1 million children, roughly 2.2 percent of all school-aged children in the United States, are homeschooled. The average homeschooled child is White, with two parents living in the home, only one of whom works. (S)He has 2 or more siblings and at least one of the parents has more than a high school education. Household income and region of the US were not significant factors.
Although this is the typical student, there are many minority children (African American or Hispanic), children whose parents both work, children of single parents, children with fewer than 2 siblings, etc who are homeschooled. You should see table2 in the publication for more detail.
Additionally, homeschooled children usually out-perform public school children on standardized tests. There is no doubt that parents who choose to educate their children at home do a good job.
There are some things that I wanted to know that I could not ascertain from the presented statistics. For example, for homeschooled students with only one parent, what is the educational attainment of that parent? What is the household income? What is the ethnicity of that parent? For minority households that homeschool, what is the educational attainment? What is the household income?
Another statistic which I could not find anywhere was the choice of college majors of homeschooled children. One of my concerns about homeschooling is that mathematics and science tend to be overlooked by all parents because they are not as easily understandable as history, English, literature and other Liberal Arts/Humanities courses. So I wonder how homeschoolers are dealing with their ack of knowledge in or fear of these subjects. One of the ways to determine that is to see what the children of homeschooling choose as career paths.
Some other things that I wanted to know and could not find were related to parents who choose not to homeschool. I'm not talking about every parent, but those who have thoughtfully considered it and decided against it. What were their reasons? Also, how many parents have attempted homeschooling but decided they were not able to continue and returned their children to public education? Why did they feel they failed? What would have made the difference for them?
My research began with the intention of finding something that unequivocally says "Ha, not everyone can homeschool." What I have found instead is information that says, "Not everyone does homeschool, and here are the kinds of people who do." But I don't have any information about what kinds of people don't homeschool and why they don't.
I'll update you if I find any more statistical information.
2 comments:
Some parents are educating special needs children because they think they can do it better than the public schools. Some parents are homeschooling after removing their children from an obviously destructive public school environment. Some of us have it in our hearts from early on that we want to be the ones to raise our children.
An aquaintance of mine is giving up homeschooling her Eighth grade daughter next year. She is sending her to a protestant private school. Her reason for homeschooling in the first place was that she couldn't find a private school she liked here, and she has never embraced homeschooling as a lifestyle. It's just a time consuming chore to get through. So I wasn't surprised that she has decided to quit, and I think her other kids will be in the same school by the following year.
You probably aren't going to find much in the way of comprehensive statistics on homeschoolers. Most areas don't keep track of us too well. I'd suggest, instead of looking for statistics, that you look at homeschooling as a parent. Imagine that you are going to homeschool Angie. How are you going to do it? What materials are you going to use? Where are you going to find support?
And one last thing. Every homeschooled child learns math. Even if their moms are scared or think they don't understand it themselves. The math programs on the market are very parent-teacher friendly. Science is trickier. There is no "curriculum" available, per se. Lots of suppliers, but the closest I've seen to a curriculum is from Apologia Ministries. They have highly regarded high school level science texts, and they are starting to come out with elementary levels, too. I own the elementary botany text, and it is very well done.
I'm scientific by nature, and so, when I research something, the first questions that come to my mind are ones that can be answered (hopefully) numerically. You can learn a lot from statistics, if they are the right statistics.
This is only the tip of my research, and I am actively investigating homeschool education from many perspectives: professional educators, homeschooling parents, homeschooling parents who've failed or sent their kids back to public school at some point, homeschooling parents who took their kids out of public school, curriculum materials, support services, etc.
This post was only my first endeavor.
Coincidentally, the statistics cited here also talk about the primary reasons for homeschooling, which are mainly two: to impart the parents own belief system or because the environment at school is not desirable. The next runner up was academics, and that received only half as many responses as either of the first two.
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