I'm not casting doubt on the achievable success of homeschooling. If I were a parent, I'd find it an attractive option to public schools.

But I am wondering about the overall success of homeschooling across the population. One would assume by default that it would be a somewhat normal distribution. But then it would be biased by factors like the characteristics of parents who would choose homeschooling, etc, etc.

Just out of curiosity, are there roughly reliable statistics on the "success" (how would one even measure this?) of homeschooling across a broad population?

1. SAT/ACT scores
2. Admittance rate to tier 1 / tier 2 colleges on scholastic ability (not, for example athletic scholarship).
3. Factors that have a high, first order influence on success. Like, scholastic achievement of one or both parents, at least one stay at home parent (which may influence schooled kid as well).
4. How to ensure a well diversified academic curriculum. For example, the teaching parent may be a math major but may not be able to teach history or English well. I doubt I could effectively teach 5 different subjects well.

One hears about success stories for home schooling but is the broad reality that good?

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
I'm not casting doubt on the achievable success of homeschooling.

One hears about success stories for home schooling but is the broad reality that good?

A friend of mine, his daughter now works for NASA as an engineer.
I took her for a ride in my Beech and let her fly it. She was hooked.
She was home schooled and was admitted to USF and got an aeronautical engineering degree.
Graduated with the top of her class.

We decided to home school our three sons because we realized that God gave them to us to raise, not the State. 30 kids in a classroom versus 3 . A teacher who has to be responsible for daily plans for 30 as well as discipline kids from various home situations .
30 kids waiting in line learning what? They learned patience at home .We accomplished in two-three hours what it takes six or seven hours in a class room. The rest of the day they spent in play, sports, music and art, and more play. We were a part of a home school association which arranged field trips and get-togethers for so-called socialization.We also had a neighborhood full of children they played with.
Our three sons are in their 40s and 30s now. They have children of their own. Now they homeschool their kids for the same reasons. Common sense . Our kids, our responsibility to prepare them for adulthood .

I'm sure there are successful cases. Actually, all I hear about are successful cases.

But if one looks at 10,000 home schooled kids, what are the success rates and how would it be measured?

What are the characteristics that make home schooling successful or failure?

Are we talking about home schooling through just elementary school? Or all the way through high school? I might be able to get through elementary school. But I don't think I would be successful in home schooling through high school subjects. Topics like biology and chemistry were challenging for me to learn, let alone teach it.

quote:

Originally posted by Bentonville:
We decided to home school our three sons because we realized that God gave them to us to raise, not the State. 30 kids in a classroom versus 3 . A teacher who has to be responsible for daily plans for 30 as well as discipline kids from various home situations .
30 kids waiting in line learning what? They learned patience at home .We accomplished in two-three hours what it takes six or seven hours in a class room. The rest of the day they spent in play, sports, music and art, and more play. We were a part of a home school association which arranged field trips and get-togethers for so-called socialization.We also had a neighborhood full of children they played with.
Our three sons are in their 40s and 30s now. They have children of their own. Now they homeschool their kids for the same reasons. Common sense . Our kids, our responsibility to prepare them for adulthood .

100%

No teacher, no matter how dedicated, is going to care more about your kids than you do. My wife put her heart and soul into teaching our kids. She was plenty smart, which certainly helped. But, it was her love and commitment that made the difference.

As Bentonville notes, homeschooling is much more efficient than public or even private schools. Over the years we talked to teachers who would tell us how much time is spent (wasted) getting kids to/from classes, dealing with disruptions, etc.

But, what I liked best about homeschooling was its flexibility. In a classroom, it's often necessary for the teacher to set a certain pace. The smarter kids have to wait for the rest of the class to catch up.

In our homeschool, my wife was able to tailor the curriculum to each child's strengths and weaknesses. For example, one of my sons was very proficient at math, so my wife kept giving him more advanced math materials. At one point, he was doing math two full grade levels ahead of his year in school.

I can say this, if I see a young engineer that was home schooled, instant offer letter. From my experience, they are smart and have fantastic work ethic.

quote:

Originally posted by SW_Sig:
My three children were home schooled for several years.

My oldest has 2 BS, 2 MS, and a PHD, all in six years. She was the valedictorian of the department of chemistry and biochemistry as well as food science for her dual undergraduate degrees.

My middle daughter finished her BS and MS in four years on a full academic/athletic scholarship. She was a D1 swimmer and was nationally and world ranked. Competed in US Olympic trials as well as SEC and National Championship every year.

My son, youngest, had a full scholarship and completed is BS in CIS. He is currently a captain in the US Army and a company commander.

My children have far exceeded me.

Homeschooling is all what you as parents put into it with your children. Public schools are the same.

We knew some really strange home school families, same with public and private school families.

This. We know lots of home schooled children who are accomplished adults in various trades, lines of work, and professionals in medicine and law. Good lord where the hell does this shit come from. Some of you guys must still be living in the stone age.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:

But if one looks at 10,000 home schooled kids, what are the success rates and how would it be measured?

How about applying the above with public schools? Especially with big cities, urban areas, blue counties/states.

Yes, it would be good to compare. And I feel you're misinterpreting my curiosity. I'm not opposed to home schooling. Again, in general, I favor it.

I'm just wondering what the general success rate is since I have not seen any metrics other than anecdotes of successful cases. I'm curious what it takes to successfully home school.

I'm not in favor of public schools if that's what you think.

quote:

Originally posted by oddball:

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:

But if one looks at 10,000 home schooled kids, what are the success rates and how would it be measured?

How about applying the above with public schools? Especially with big cities, urban areas, blue counties/states.

I don't think home schooling is entirely about comparative statistical results. If you get good results with public schools good for you, if you don't home schooling may be an option, or maybe not. We all do the best we can, parenting doesn't seem to come with a reliable or predictable instruction manual, so we all do the best we can. In the long run it's mostly about the young people themselves, those destined for success will do so regardless of their path, more or less, other things being equal.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
I'm curious what it takes to successfully home school.

Not as much as you might think. With all of the online (and other) resources available nowadays, one doesn't need a PhD, or even close, to educate children far better than the government schools.

For konata:

https://apps.legislature.ky.go...ooling%20Handout.pdf

Homeschooling leads to significantly better results.

How does it work? Is there a prescribed curriculum online and you just buy the course materials (textbooks and such)? Is the parent assumed to have some subject matter expertise? Or is it just reading and homework - no real lectures by the parent? The parent just administrates tests?

What about lab materials - biology and chemistry labs and such?

quote:

Originally posted by Aglifter:
For konata:

https://apps.legislature.ky.go...ooling%20Handout.pdf

Homeschooling leads to significantly better results.

Interesting! Thanks. Seems there are statistically signifcant percentile improvements (although normalization seems difficult).

I would bet a nickel that there is some selection bias at work among the highly-successful who were home schooled. Unless there’s some nefarious reason why certain parents do it, such as mentioned by RogueJSK, people who home school their children are more likely to be intelligent, successful, and have other good attributes such as being concerned about their children’s success. Intelligence has a strong genetic component (i.e., smart people tend to have smart kids), and being raised in the right kind of household is a big benefit later in life as well even without formal teaching.

As for the quality of the teaching, it’s my understanding that there are standardized curricula available for use and may even be required. “Yes, but do the parents really know how to teach them?” Good question, but based on my K-12 experiences many decades ago, and supposedly before public education went to hell in a handbasket, there were plenty of teachers who didn’t know how to teach well and/or didn’t understand the subjects they were teaching very well—something that was obvious to me even way back then. I cannot imagine it’s any better today, and strongly suspect the contrary.

Regarding socialization, I also believe people tend to see what they expect, and even when it’s a valid judgment, causation or correlation? I was considered to be odd and different in many ways from the kids who had lots of friends, were interested in all the interests of the time, active in groups, had less interest in “fitting in,” etc. I was also not home schooled, and many of those characteristics are true of me today.

I’ve never been in the position of having to decide how any offspring should be taught, but like most things there can be good homeschooling, bad homeschooling, and in-between homeschooling.

Interestingly, the stats seem to indicate that “teaching” degrees have a negative value, but that may be a result of the differences in the “teachers”.

(It would be interesting to compare the education/IQ/etc of the average home school parent vs average teacher.)

Now, the homeschool families which I know, all have either very educated parents, or private tutors, or online private tutors.

(The biggest benefit is time. Kids get their school done in 2-3 hours, and get to have more time to play/work/take music/dance/etc.)

The kids I know do take online tests, to track progress.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:
I'm sure there are successful cases. Actually, all I hear about are successful cases.

But if one looks at 10,000 home schooled kids, what are the success rates and how would it be measured?

What are the characteristics that make home schooling successful or failure?

Are we talking about home schooling through just elementary school? Or all the way through high school? I might be able to get through elementary school. But I don't think I would be successful in home schooling through high school subjects. Topics like biology and chemistry were challenging for me to learn, let alone teach it.

I would guess that I know between 50-100 who have been homeschooled over the last 20 years with no real failures. A couple were not the best students and would have been d average students (in public) but they are both grown, one doing well in the Navy and the other is happily married, another a piep fitter who works at the North Pole. Even the ones that I think could have done better all move out and support themselves.

Some of the successes - Naval officer, local police officer (I consider him a success since he has the second highest all time score on the Texas TCOLE test), College professor, Research scientist, lawyer, Chem Engineer, etc. etc.

There is no way it is 100% success, I am curious to your question too. I would like to know what the real numbers are.

I wasnt homeschooled, but I did go with dad on service calls, including drilling wells, wiring pumps, piping, threading metal pipe, installing water tanks, interior plumbing, sprinklers, and sewage…

That kid will be going places, if he takes up the trade

I have two nephews home schooled, Mother was a former teacher. Both graduated from Vanderbilt University towards the top of the class.
Both very liberal but have a good heart.