The home-schooling movement has grown steadily over the past 25 years. Lines (1996) estimates that approximately 500,000 U.S. children, or slightly more than 1 percent, are home schooled on any given day. Some proponents of home schooling, such as Meighan (1995), place this number closer to 1 million. Either way, home schooling has become a significant, often controversial, force in the American educational landscape. On one side are those who support home schooling—ranging from liberal proponents of educational reform to conservative families driven by religious convictions (Knowles et al. 1992); on the other side are those who believe that a traditional school structure provides children with greater opportunities for cognitive and affective development.
Why do parents choose home schooling? Van Galen (1988) places home schoolers into two categories: ideologues and pedagogues. Ideologues adhere to traditional school techniques and materials, but adapt the curriculum to their specific values and beliefs. For example, an ideologue parent might teach creation science in lieu of evolution. Pedagogues seek new ways of teaching to replace traditional instruction. Although the early growth of the home-schooling movement was generated mainly by reform-minded pedagogues, subsequent growth has been largely attributed to ideological parents, many of whom belong to the Christian Right (Knowles et al. 1992).
Critics of home schooling attack it on many fronts, arguing that children are not taught by qualified professionals, homes often do not possess the resources of schools, home-schooled children tend to be isolated from their peers, and systematic evaluation of children's learning rarely occurs in the home (Simmons 1994). Yet research evidence suggests that student outcomes in home schooling are at least equivalent to, if not better than, those for students in a traditional school environment.
Ray and Wartes (1991) reviewed several studies of cognitive and affective development for home-schooled students. The research they cited consistently found that achievement scores on standardized tests were somewhat higher for home-school students than their peers. For example, they examined Stanford Achievement Test series scores for home-schooled students in Washington State for 1986, 1987, and 1988. Compared with national norms, the home-schooled students' median scores were typically above the 60th percentile in math, science, and verbal skills.
Similarly, Ray (1989) found several studies indicating that home-school students' social development is comparable to or more advanced than that of public school students. One such study used the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale with home-schooled students from grades 4-12 across the United States. The home-school students scored significantly higher than public school students, indicating a higher self-concept; the author concluded that insofar as self-concept reflects socialization, home schoolers are not socially deprived.
Ray and Wartes (1991) urge caution when interpreting such results, however. Home-school students are not randomly drawn from the population; such students may come from an extremely able subset of the population, and would outperform their peers even more if placed in a traditional school setting. Further, home-school parents are strongly committed to their children's education. This close parental support might well enable home-school children to perform equally well in a regular school. And as Cizek (1994) points out, religiously inspired home-school parents may consider their most important educational goal to be imparting their spiritual and moral values, not increasing their children's standardized test scores. For this reason, he considers academic and socialization outcome measures essentially irrelevant for a large percentage of home school families.
Clearly home schooling is not for everyone; many families may lack the time or desire to take full responsibility for the education of their children. For those who do elect to home school, though, the most important issue is probably not so much whether the method works better than traditional schooling, but rather how to make home schooling as effective as possible. Perhaps the most promising path is one that combines home schooling with available resources from traditional schools. Dahm (1996) describes how the Des Moines, Iowa, public school system works in partnership with home-schooling parents, allowing students access to school computers, extra-curricular activities, and classes that appeal to them, as well as assigning teachers to offer parents guidance (if requested) with curriculum development and student evaluation. This cooperative partnership is a promising model for helping to make home schooling a successful experience for all involved.
