A relatively new report from the Institute of Education Sciences at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows a dramatic 77 percent rise in the number of students who are being home schooled in the nation. In 1999 the report shows 850,000 students were being primarily or completely schooled at home. By 2007, the number had significantly increased to 1,508,000.
The figure below shows the percentage of school age kids made up of home schooled students for the three survey years of the study. 
NCES says the prime reasons for choosing home schooling include,
• Concern about the school environment,
• To provide religious or moral instruction, and
• Dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools.
More home schooling facts are found in a new USA Today article. The newspaper reports:
• The ratio of home-schooled boys to girls has shifted significantly. In 1999, it was 49% boys, 51% girls. Now boys account for only 42%; 58% are girls.
• 3.9% of white families home-school, up from 2% in 1999.
• 6.8% of college-educated parents home-school, up from 4.9% in 1999.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Home School Numbers Rising Sharply
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The enrollment numbers are encouraging and are understated anyway since states such as Texas, Illinois, and Michigan don't require homeschooled students to be registered with the state.
Here are some more points I'd like to add:
Socialization
Here’s more proof that parents can provide a (gasp!) better social environment for their homeschooled students than those available at pubic schools. As the data shows, a huge reason for NOT enrolling students in public school is because homeschoolers want to AVOID the social environment at public schools.
As homeschoolers, we can dictate when, with whom, and how frequently their students will interact with others, not only in their own age group (i.e., Boy/Girl Scouts, after-school team sports, YMCA, etc.), but with others outside of their age group. With appropriate supervision, entire curriculums can be built around interacting with others such as your neighborhood postman, your local grocery cashier, or for older kids, the employees during a local corporate office tour.
In addition, since core lessons don’t typically take 6 hours to teach (like public schools), the student has even MORE time to interact with community groups, non-profit organizations, or whatever worthy social interests the student wants to pursue.
This gives the student opportunities to really build some notable accomplishments that would be tougher to achieve in a public school environment (You can just imagine this exchange from a public school student talking on the phone with her favorite charity, “What? A once-in-a-life-time series of charity events that starts at 10AM and lasts for the next 4 days? Sorry, but I don’t get out of school until 2:30PM”. Bummer).
In fact, if the social environment is designed right, the parent can BETTER prepare their students for college in this respect because college is all about interacting well with people across ALL age groups (like the real world) instead of being forced to interact 99% of the time with people within 1-4 years of the student’s actual age for 12 years of the public school student’s academic career.
ProntoLessons says things I have heard, and sometimes personally observed, with home schoolers. Social skills of these kids are indeed well above average.
While ProntoLessons focused on just the socialization issue, there is also evidence that home schoolers get above average academic educations, as well. National spelling bees are regularly won by home schoolers, for example.
Furthermore, with many talented parents now using their creative talents to offer home school tailored courses on the Web and in print, the ability of this type of education to produce outstanding graduates is growing all the time.
And, as the main Blog item points out, so are the numbers of students who are being educated with this high performance method.
Post a Comment