Thanks Chrysalis,
The home school debate is interesting, but as an education researcher myself (it's my job) I'm not convinced. I think it's important to contextaulise home schooling a little bit as the term "home schooling" is a contested term.
There's an increasing body of research addressing home schooling given the considerable numbers of students we are talking about: over 2 million in the US alone (Apple, 2002), though the term home schooling means different things to different people. For example, most home schooled students don't get instruction from parents in specialist subjects as they mature into senior years - they get instruction through local schools but do so in a flexible manner. They often attend field trips with local schools and get SAT coaching from local teachers. Local teachers grade their assessments and provide feedback. Their point of difference is that they access these courses on a flexible nature according to their own timeline. In reality - the bulk of the teaching resources are not developed or delivered by the parent as the students approached late middle - upper high school (Duggan, 2009).
Similarly, many homeschooled student's parents create registered schools for the sole purpose of having their children study at home with a large proportion of these doing them for religious purposes (Apple, 2002).
A key factor when looking at homeschooling is breaking down the demographic: research increasingly demonstrates clearly that most home schooled students are white, middle class pupils, up to 95% (Apple, 2002; Duggan, 2009). When viewed broadly against students of their own demographic, home schooled students do no better than their peers. The American Council of Education keeps great statistics and the results are clear. The indicators for success for the vast majority of students are the student's back ground, external commitments, institutional support or a combination of these. The point being if you take middle class white kids, whose parents take an interest in their education, then you are covering the indicators for success. When you couple this with the fact that most parents don't perform the actual schooling in upper middle and senior years, the argument that home schooling is somehow a miracle just doesn't hold water. Areas where home schooled students score well, and significantly higher than non-white or minority kids is in emotional support and feelings of safety in their school environment. This isn't rocket science though.
Lubienski (2000) is quite scathing of home schooling in his critique. The crux of his first argument revolves around social capital - parents remove their kids from the public school system. This removes funding, stops schools from being able to tap into impetus for change and in Lubienski's view contributes to the decline of public education and reduced outcomes for those students remaining within the system. Characterising this as selfish, Lubienski points to the doubel standard. Parents need teachers and local schools to help them home school their children, prepare them for university entrance and so forth, but don't want their children to "be in the building" so to speak.
I guess the last thing is how the media portrays homeschooled success stories. They love crying loudly about how great these kids are and so on.... but don't look at the overall stats, or even successful individuals who aren't home schooled. Look at Taylor Wilson for example (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ar-fusion-physics-science-innovation-prodigy/)
Not home schooled, off the charts, but how many people outside of TED viewers have seen his work?
I don't buy the home school hype. It's just empty anecdotes and very rarely do people bother to look at actual research before proclaiming how good it is. Truth of the matter, home schools in Australia get government funding (I was involved in a research project looking at this) and rely on the existing school system for curriculum and testing support. No parents can prepare their students for senior years work alone, in which case, it it really home schooling or just a protest against going to school as an actual location?
Refs:
Apple, M. (2012). Away with all teachers: The cultural politics of home schooling. International Studies in Sociology of Education. Issue 10, no 1, p60- 81.
Duggan, M. (2009) Is all College Preparation Equal? Pre- Community College Experiences of Home-Schooled, Private-Schooled, and Public- Schooled Students, Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 34:1-2, 25-38
Lubienski, C. (2000) Whither the Common Good? A Critique of Home Schooling, Peabody Journal of Education, 75:1-2, 207-232
