In a previous post, we explored data pointing to a homeschool math gap. What comes next? What can homeschooling parents learn from this information? In this article we use stories from homeschool graduates to examine the things that hold homeschooled students back in math, and to explore what can help them succeed. Our goal is to put a personal face on the homeschool math gap, and to give current and future homeschooling parents pointers on what can go wrong—and what can go right.
We should start with a few caveats. First, we know that public schooled students, like their homeschooled counterparts, can and too often do receive a deficient math education. We are addressing homeschooled students specifically, because that is what we do—we advocate on behalf of homeschooled students and work to bring their interests into the conversation. Second, we are aware that math can be done well in homeschool settings and that some homeschooled students can become especially proficient in math. We will turn to some of these individuals’ stories in the end of this article as we look at what helped them succeed.
We asked a focus group of homeschool graduates whose math education was subpar to tell us about their experiences, and to pinpoint the pitfalls they experienced. The information in this article comes from this focus group. In the last section we will cover the input we received from a smaller focus group of homeschool graduates who consider their math education especially excellent.
Parental Limitations
Many of the homeschool alumni in our focus group reported that their parents’ lack of math knowledge hindered them from being effective teachers. Some recounted not asking for help when they needed it because their parents didn’t know the answers either. In some cases their parents simply gave up. Some alumni reported that their parents became angry when they did not immediately grasp mathematical concepts, or interpreted their failure to learn as a sign of disobedience.
Rebecca: My mom’s narrative was that I was just more of an “English” person . . . . However, maybe it was that I wouldn’t ever ask my mom for help with math because she didn’t know how to do it either? . . . I think she just was unable to teach high school math and blamed me for lack of skill instead of helping me.
Acacia: The math I should have been learning was more than my mom remembered how to do.
Shae: My math experience had a lot to do with the fact that my dad was supposed to teach me that subject in middle and high school. He had anger issues, and would yell at me and my sister if we got problems wrong or didn’t comprehend concepts. Because of that, I resisted doing math in order to delay the anger. . . . I feel like I learned other subjects proficiently because my mom made sure I learned those subjects.
Jerusha: [My] parents gave up teaching me algebra. Mom couldn’t teach it and Dad didn’t have time or patience to explain it.
Bethany: It didn’t help that my parents used Roy Lessin’s spanking rituals when we were disobedient which included my not trying. My mother had a short temper and yelled, screamed, and cried when I didn’t get math. My father wasn’t able to teach me math because he never got it himself. . . . Later—much later—I was tested at a local College. I tested 5th grade level for math and I was 26 years old.
Jai: My mom would look at the [problems] I got wrong, spend about 5 minutes looking over the book and then tell me to go find my older siblings because she didn’t have time to re-learn it in order to help me. I had to take one remedial math class in Community College 6 years later in order to get up to Algebra 1 speed.
Katharina: I was fine with math until geometry—I have a bit of difficulty with spatial reasoning, in life as well as in mathematics. . . . So all the shapes just made me reflexively really nervous! My mom is the same way and I didn’t have access to any adults who could explain it well.
We can draw a variety of lessons from these stories. Responsible homeschooling parents need to either teach themselves the material, along with effective teaching strategies so that they can teach it, or seek out tutors or classes for their children. Parents who don’t feel strong in math need to seek out those who are to serve as their children’s teachers and mentors. It’s also important for parents to ensure that their own frustration with the occasional difficulties of teaching not bleed over to the teaching itself. Homeschool parents need to be careful that their own limitations do not limit their children.
The Limits of Self-Teaching
Some alumni reported that their parents expected them to learn from a textbook or worksheets without any help or guidance at all. In many cases this led to frustration or to a failure to fully understand the concepts.
Savannah: My mother gave me workbooks to go through on my own, which were not well-done . . . . Though I am a perfectionist, the lack of quality teaching, lack of resources to go to for help, and habit of parents to push it under the rug and just explain it away as me just not being good at it, meant I ended up never mastering any mathematical concepts.
Anna-Brit: [From] fourth grade onward, I was given Saxon math textbooks with no other help, which worked well enough until trig and calculus. I missed some key concepts with calculus, and no matter how many times I patiently reworked problems and looked at old lessons, I could never get them to come out right.
Liz: Around junior high or so, when it was time to switch to Saxon Algebra 1/2 or 1 or something, math suddenly became super hard for me. . . . Mom didn’t have time to work on math with me any more at this point, or go over the thousands of problems I missed per lesson, so I struggled on through Algebra 1 in Saxon by myself (pretty much the one constant of school during those years was that I HAD to spend a couple of hours a day “doing math”). . . . My senior year, I worked my way through a geometry and a consumer math textbook with no help, and didn’t understand that either. With incredible optimism, I tried to test out of freshman algebra before my first year of college and unsurprisingly failed that test.
Jessica: Around 9th grade I begged for algebra, it was the only higher math I knew about, I literally did not know there were things called geometry, trigonometry, calculus . . . . My mom ordered Saxon Algebra 1 and the answer key, handed them over and that was my class. I was motivated, I wanted to go to college, I loved science and wanted to have the background in math, but that wasn’t enough to teach myself algebra. I gave myself a placement test a few years ago and my math was at a 6th grade level. I couldn’t even pass the GED practice test.
It’s worth noting that sometimes self-taught math can work. Breanne, a participant in the focus group, wrote that she struggled with teaching herself math but ultimately succeeded. Jeffrey, a homeschool alumnus who received a good math education, gave reasons he feels he was successful in teaching himself math.
Breanne: My mom helped with math in elementary grades, but in high school I was just given Saxon books to teach myself. She’d grade the tests. It took me a long time to do math every day because I had to work hard for it. . . . I did end up with A’s and B’s though, because I actually cared about learning.
Jeffrey: I taught myself Calc I and learned it well. . . . [W]hen you write a terrible paragraph, you might not ever figure out how bad it is on your own. But when you get a math problem wrong, you usually can compare it to the answer and immediately find out that it’s wrong. Not that this makes math easy, but it is a significant factor helping self-taught math to be more doable.
Breanne may have learned the material, but she nevertheless described her self-taught math education as a “struggle.” And while Jeffrey was able to use an answer key to figure out the concepts, this is not always possible. In my own experience, the answer key rarely gives any information about how the answer was arrived at, and it’s that process that is so important when learning math. Similarly, different people have different learning styles.
Homeschool parents should not assume that their teenagers will be capable of teaching themselves Algebra or Calculus out of a textbook. Many students need a parent, tutor, or teacher to provide guidance and motivation, especially for a subject like math. Parents who plan to have their children work through a textbook should make an effort to learn the material alongside their children, answering questions and explaining concepts as they go along.
Other options include hiring a math tutor (or arranging a trade with a homeschooling parent who is particularly good at math), or finding a class. In some states homeschooled children are permitted to take one or two classes at their local public high school without enrolling full time. In other states community colleges are open to high school students at a discounted price.
Parental Discouragement
When children attend school, they will likely have a range of teachers that vary in quality. Their teacher one year may be terrible at math or may even tell them that they’re bad at math, but the teacher they have the next year may work to inspire them. For some homeschooled students, however, a parent who dislikes math or discourages them from pursuing the subject may be the only math teacher they ever have. This means what a homeschool parent tells their children about their math ability or about the necessity (or lack thereof) of math takes on an oversized importance.
Some alumni in our focus group reported being actively discouraged from pursuing math by their parents. In some cases this was fairly general—the alumni were told that math was unimportant anyway, or simply that they weren’t good at math—but in other cases it had a gendered aspect.
Rebecca: [My mom] also discouraged me from wanting to study [math] by talking about how useless it was, and that practical math for cooking would be better for me anyway.
Melissa: My mother wasn’t good at math and told me I wasn’t very good at math either.
Jennifer: I was told over and over again from about 3rd grade forward [that I wasn’t good at math] by one or both of my parents. Oh my gosh it made me want to quit altogether.
Jessica: I was in public school from first through fourth grade. My lowest grades were in math,but still ranged in the 90s to a low of 88. For some reason my mom took this to mean math was my weakness. She repeated this to me almost daily my first year of homeschool. She even had me start off in a fourth grade math book to help me “catch up”. I was bored out of my mind by all the divide and check.
Jerusha: [My parents] said I wouldn’t need [math] as a housewife anyway.
Heidi: My mom finally stated that, “Hey . . . what do you need algebra for anyway? You are a girl,” and that was that. At the time I felt happy and relieved. After all, I was going to marry and have babies happily forever after . . . what did I need it for?
Breanne: Mom always said [that] girls’ brains aren’t wired for math. That made things worse, it felt like my struggling was futile.
Homeschool parents need to be aware of the oversized input their feedback has on their children’s math motivation and ability. Parents who don’t like math themselves need to be careful not to pass that on to their children, even accidentally. Children need to be inspired to thoroughly pursue each subject as they search for things they like and are good at. Giving children a negative outlook concerning math closes doors that should remain open.
Learning Disabilities
Some children have learning disabilities. Unfortunately, while teachers are trained in recognizing learning disabilities and providing intervention, many homeschool parents may not understand that they are dealing with a learning disability until much too late. Homeschool parents need to educate themselves in warning signs that may point to learning disabilities and be willing to have their children tested for learning disabilities should such signs appear. Once a learning disability is identified, parents need to provide support and look for resources.
Bethany: My learning disability got in the way of my ability to learn math. . . . For a short time when I was in grade school, I had a specialist teach me math and I performed well. . . . He seemed to understand me and my dyslexia. He had me doing math above my grade. I fell behind again when I was homeschooled. Later–much later–I was tested at a local College. I tested 5th grade level for math and I was 26 years old. I went to the class they held as the lowest one could take in college. I felt deep shame. . . . Like my earlier learning specialist, they seemed to get my brain. I aced the class. . . . The bottom line was that I require explanations and practice that are more suited for my manual brain.
Melissa: There is no doubt based on what I do on a day to day basis that I am fairly mathematically inclined, though I think it’s possible I have some kind of learning disability since I can be a bit slow at times to pick certain things up. Based on kids I’ve worked with I think I may have dyspraxia, which would explain why I suddenly seemed so skilled once I had access to computers, since people with this disorder have trouble with writing out equations and that kind of thing.
Jennyfer: I have dyscalculia. My private school couldn’t deal with it, the public school in the area would have put me in the special ed holding tank, so I was homeschooled due to it. I was never able to achieve more than 5th grade, even with lots of tutoring. They eventually just gave up.
Some children are homeschooled due to learning disabilities. In these cases, parents hope to give their children better than what they were receiving in the local public schools. But doing this isn’t easy, and requires a lot of effort and the willingness to look for a new solution when one thing isn’t working. Homeschooling parents of children with learning disabilities need to be careful not to give up before they have sought out and exhausted the resources available.
Choosing a Curriculum
Homeschool parents have a variety of math curriculum available to them, and can easily shop around online or at homeschool conventions. Parents need to work to educate themselves on best practices and ensure that they thoroughly review each curriculum they choose. Some alumni in our focus group spoke of using curricula or math programs that simply did not work for them.
Melissa: My mother’s version of math education was . . . not good and mainly focused on memorization, which never stuck anyway. My mother said I had to do them over and over again because “you won’t always have a calculator.”
Liz: Eventually, Mom purchased this program at a homeschool conference called “Algebra VideoText”, where the instructor explained everything on VHS tapes and there was a hotline to call if you had problems. For the rest of high school I slogged through that program by myself, dutifully watching all the videos and completing the modules, and eventually “completed” it, without understanding much of what was being presented or retaining it at all. The help-line guy was MEAN (“What’s the matter with you? This is basic! There’s no reason you shouldn’t understand this!’) and after a while, I quit calling him.
Once a curriculum has been selected and purchased, homeschool parents need to pay attention to whether or not it is working for their children. This can be more difficult when a child is working more independently, but should be possible through frequent communication and through working through a curricula alongside a child. Homeschool parents need to be willing to changed their curriculum plans when a given program is not working.
Then Came College
In many cases, homeschooled students who struggle with math may have the ability to do well but not the interaction or resources they need to excel. This was the case for a number of alumni in our focus group, who were eager to speak of their experiences in college, where having a class and a teacher turned things around for them.
Jerusha: I tested into a remedial class and loved it. Turns out I’m really good at learning algebra from a teacher.
Jai: I had to take one remedial math class in community college six years later in order to get up to Algebra 1 speed, but I had a teacher that was amazing and spent time to answer my questions and look over my work with me.
Katharina: Having a teacher and college tutors really changed things for me.
Liz: The math course I had to take in college was what my mom called “math for dummies,” but I did OK in it because there was an actual teacher who explained stuff. I think I got an A.
Acacia: The summer before I entered public high school, I had to go to Sylvan Learning Center to catch up on everything I missed, even though I was relatively good at math and picked it up way faster than they expected.
Impacted Futures
Unfortunately, while many homeschool alumni who previously struggled with math may find themselves able to succeed with an actual class and teacher once in college, this does not mean that their deficient homeschool math education does not shape their future and their career choices.
Melissa: I LOVED science, so I wanted to be good at math. But I didn’t have a good background in math or how to study it, so I floundered once I got to school in high school and ended up giving up on my dreams of being a scientist. In college I was finally able to take some remedial classes, but still didn’t quite catch up. By accident I ended up doing tech for a living, which I do OK at, but I feel I regularly get passed up for promotions and have hit a ceiling because of my deficient background.
Anna-Brit: There was 110 point gap between my critical reading and math scores on my SATs. I ended up minoring in statistics in college, but fear of the prerequisite four levels of calculus prevented me from majoring in it, to my shame.
Liz: To this day, I stay far away from math. Maybe I would be good at it if I’d had some actual instruction, I don’t know.
Heidi: I went on to conquer statistics for my Bachelors and am now happily working on my Masters. But to pass the algebra I got help from everyone I could think of . . . school tutor, my drummer from worship team, and my baby brother who also put himself through school.
Savannah: This experience [failure to teach myself high school math from a textbook] has ingrained my fear and hate of all things math and science related, and in turn pushed me away from higher education in embarrassment of my skills.
Final Focus Group Thoughts
While experiential learning can often be extremely helpful, it should not be a replacement for more academic study of math. There is only so much math that can be learned from cooking, or from balancing checkbooks. For most children, higher-level math like algebra will require more than experiential learning.
Jerusha: One year my “math” was to make an answer key for an antiquated book on arithmetic for agriculture. I think it was used by the Amish. Balancing my parents’ checkbooks, paying the bills, and keeping my dad’s business ledger also counted as math.
In some cases, children’s success in other areas may mean that their parents do not notice their struggles and deficiencies in math. Parents need to be proactive and pay close attention to their children’s progress in math.
Katharina: I do remember feeling quite defeatist in high school, and my poor math skills were the reason I never finished my chemistry course either, too much math…but as my outstanding strengths were in verbal reasoning/writing, it never occurred to me or my mom to address those deficits, you know?
Finally, while a deficient math education can hold young adults back and make their lives more difficult, some will push through in spite of it all.
Savannah: I have turned a new leaf and am in my first ever math class (remedial college course) catching up with things I never knew! I am determined because I am sure once I am able to understand it from a qualified teacher, I will cease to be so unnerved!
Successful Stories
And now we turn briefly to our smaller focus group of homeschool alumni with good experiences. Our main focus in this article has been how things can fail, so we want to finish with a brief picture of how things can go well
Emilie: My mom was passionate in teaching all subjects, and mathematics was no exception. In elementary school, she used a conceptual math curriculum which we worked through together using manipulatives and other various real life examples to understand arithmetic. We were not tied to this curriculum, however, as we found its algebra book confusing. For algebra and geometry we carefully switched to another program that was well-reviewed and also emphasized conceptual understanding. For my last two years of high school, I took Precalculus Algebra and Trigonometry, followed by Calculus I and II at the community college, as they were beyond my mom’s expertise. The teaching I received there was excellent and allowed me to take Calculus III and Differential Equations as a freshman. (My younger sister also took calculus-based physics and an introductory engineering class while still in high school.) Mathematics may not have been my mom’s favorite subject, but it ended up being mine, and she opened all the necessary doors for me and my siblings to explore it.
Nathan: I was mostly self-taught from Saxon textbooks, my parents weren’t in a position to teach me anything advanced. I joined a MathCounts team made up of other students from our regional group. There was one engineer dad in the group who really accelerated our progress, and some of the other parents were really good at teaching us to assess every problem from a logical perspective and find not just the solution, but the best, fastest path to that solution. Everybody on that team was a total math dork by the end. We even took turns teaching each other on occasion (with supervision), because it helped us solidify the concepts in our own minds AND helped us all pick up things that the others were good at, which improved both our math skills and our ability to optimally function as a team during the cooperative portions of the competition.
Isaac: In retrospect, I think the mathematical education provided by my parents was highly successful. I think there are two particular aspects of my math instruction that were unique and provided immense benefit. First, my parents had a strong emphasis on understanding my learning style and providing curricula tailored to me. My parents were not tied to a single textbook and were attentive to my feedback, as well as maintaining their own assessments and backing them up with external standardized tests. Second, my parents stringently insisted that I absolute master a concept before moving on. I was able to take Algebra early, but struggled with the abstract concepts and was required to re-take the entire course. With a different curriculum and another semester to work on the material, I began to thrive and even enjoy the concepts. Having now worked with professional mathematicians, I see some of my parent’s weaknesses; they could have focused more on enabling independent discovery as a child and answering my sometimes more probing questions in deeper ways. However, they recognized their limitations and sought professional external math instruction after Algebra, which was also superlative and placed me in the very beneficial relationship with math I enjoy today.
Strong levels of parental involvement, a willingness to change curriculum to suit a child’s learning style, community college courses, math clubs or other extracurriculars—these things can provide children with the guidance and motivation they need to not just succeed at math but actually excell. Yes, all of these take more effort than simply handing a child a textbook and telling them to learn it. But then, whoever said homeschooling would be easy?
Last Updated: 20 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
Statement on the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai
October 14, 2014
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — Coalition for Responsible Home Education Executive Director Rachel Coleman issued the following statement regarding the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai:
“In its decision to honor two key figures in the fight to empower children, the Nobel Committee has signaled that children’s right to an education is a critical battleground in the global struggle for justice. CRHE’s belief in this same important global cause is what drives our efforts to promote and protect the educational rights of homeschooled children.
“Pakistan and India are not the only places where children’s right to an education is not guaranteed. There are children in the United States today who are being deprived of an education through laws that enable homeschooling parents to legally neglect their children’s educational needs. In some cases, homeschooled children have been subject to gender-based educational discrimination or exploited for their labor. CRHE believes that safeguarding children’s right to an education is critical to ensuring their access to an open future, no matter what country they live in.
“I am excited that the Nobel Committee has chosen to bring attention to this crucial issue. Like Malala Yousafzai, many young homeschooled Americans are struggling today to have their educational needs met. This award should inspire Americans to guarantee that all homeschooled children have access to an education.”
The Coalition for Responsible Education is a national organization dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices. For more information, contact info@responsiblehomeschooling.org or (617) 765-7096.
Last Updated: 20 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
The Homeschool Math Gap: The Stories
In a previous post, we explored data pointing to a homeschool math gap. What comes next? What can homeschooling parents learn from this information? In this article we use stories from homeschool graduates to examine the things that hold homeschooled students back in math, and to explore what can help them succeed. Our goal is to put a personal face on the homeschool math gap, and to give current and future homeschooling parents pointers on what can go wrong—and what can go right.
We should start with a few caveats. First, we know that public schooled students, like their homeschooled counterparts, can and too often do receive a deficient math education. We are addressing homeschooled students specifically, because that is what we do—we advocate on behalf of homeschooled students and work to bring their interests into the conversation. Second, we are aware that math can be done well in homeschool settings and that some homeschooled students can become especially proficient in math. We will turn to some of these individuals’ stories in the end of this article as we look at what helped them succeed.
We asked a focus group of homeschool graduates whose math education was subpar to tell us about their experiences, and to pinpoint the pitfalls they experienced. The information in this article comes from this focus group. In the last section we will cover the input we received from a smaller focus group of homeschool graduates who consider their math education especially excellent.
Parental Limitations
Many of the homeschool alumni in our focus group reported that their parents’ lack of math knowledge hindered them from being effective teachers. Some recounted not asking for help when they needed it because their parents didn’t know the answers either. In some cases their parents simply gave up. Some alumni reported that their parents became angry when they did not immediately grasp mathematical concepts, or interpreted their failure to learn as a sign of disobedience.
Rebecca: My mom’s narrative was that I was just more of an “English” person . . . . However, maybe it was that I wouldn’t ever ask my mom for help with math because she didn’t know how to do it either? . . . I think she just was unable to teach high school math and blamed me for lack of skill instead of helping me.
Acacia: The math I should have been learning was more than my mom remembered how to do.
Shae: My math experience had a lot to do with the fact that my dad was supposed to teach me that subject in middle and high school. He had anger issues, and would yell at me and my sister if we got problems wrong or didn’t comprehend concepts. Because of that, I resisted doing math in order to delay the anger. . . . I feel like I learned other subjects proficiently because my mom made sure I learned those subjects.
Jerusha: [My] parents gave up teaching me algebra. Mom couldn’t teach it and Dad didn’t have time or patience to explain it.
Bethany: It didn’t help that my parents used Roy Lessin’s spanking rituals when we were disobedient which included my not trying. My mother had a short temper and yelled, screamed, and cried when I didn’t get math. My father wasn’t able to teach me math because he never got it himself. . . . Later—much later—I was tested at a local College. I tested 5th grade level for math and I was 26 years old.
Jai: My mom would look at the [problems] I got wrong, spend about 5 minutes looking over the book and then tell me to go find my older siblings because she didn’t have time to re-learn it in order to help me. I had to take one remedial math class in Community College 6 years later in order to get up to Algebra 1 speed.
Katharina: I was fine with math until geometry—I have a bit of difficulty with spatial reasoning, in life as well as in mathematics. . . . So all the shapes just made me reflexively really nervous! My mom is the same way and I didn’t have access to any adults who could explain it well.
We can draw a variety of lessons from these stories. Responsible homeschooling parents need to either teach themselves the material, along with effective teaching strategies so that they can teach it, or seek out tutors or classes for their children. Parents who don’t feel strong in math need to seek out those who are to serve as their children’s teachers and mentors. It’s also important for parents to ensure that their own frustration with the occasional difficulties of teaching not bleed over to the teaching itself. Homeschool parents need to be careful that their own limitations do not limit their children.
The Limits of Self-Teaching
Some alumni reported that their parents expected them to learn from a textbook or worksheets without any help or guidance at all. In many cases this led to frustration or to a failure to fully understand the concepts.
Savannah: My mother gave me workbooks to go through on my own, which were not well-done . . . . Though I am a perfectionist, the lack of quality teaching, lack of resources to go to for help, and habit of parents to push it under the rug and just explain it away as me just not being good at it, meant I ended up never mastering any mathematical concepts.
Anna-Brit: [From] fourth grade onward, I was given Saxon math textbooks with no other help, which worked well enough until trig and calculus. I missed some key concepts with calculus, and no matter how many times I patiently reworked problems and looked at old lessons, I could never get them to come out right.
Liz: Around junior high or so, when it was time to switch to Saxon Algebra 1/2 or 1 or something, math suddenly became super hard for me. . . . Mom didn’t have time to work on math with me any more at this point, or go over the thousands of problems I missed per lesson, so I struggled on through Algebra 1 in Saxon by myself (pretty much the one constant of school during those years was that I HAD to spend a couple of hours a day “doing math”). . . . My senior year, I worked my way through a geometry and a consumer math textbook with no help, and didn’t understand that either. With incredible optimism, I tried to test out of freshman algebra before my first year of college and unsurprisingly failed that test.
Jessica: Around 9th grade I begged for algebra, it was the only higher math I knew about, I literally did not know there were things called geometry, trigonometry, calculus . . . . My mom ordered Saxon Algebra 1 and the answer key, handed them over and that was my class. I was motivated, I wanted to go to college, I loved science and wanted to have the background in math, but that wasn’t enough to teach myself algebra. I gave myself a placement test a few years ago and my math was at a 6th grade level. I couldn’t even pass the GED practice test.
It’s worth noting that sometimes self-taught math can work. Breanne, a participant in the focus group, wrote that she struggled with teaching herself math but ultimately succeeded. Jeffrey, a homeschool alumnus who received a good math education, gave reasons he feels he was successful in teaching himself math.
Breanne: My mom helped with math in elementary grades, but in high school I was just given Saxon books to teach myself. She’d grade the tests. It took me a long time to do math every day because I had to work hard for it. . . . I did end up with A’s and B’s though, because I actually cared about learning.
Jeffrey: I taught myself Calc I and learned it well. . . . [W]hen you write a terrible paragraph, you might not ever figure out how bad it is on your own. But when you get a math problem wrong, you usually can compare it to the answer and immediately find out that it’s wrong. Not that this makes math easy, but it is a significant factor helping self-taught math to be more doable.
Breanne may have learned the material, but she nevertheless described her self-taught math education as a “struggle.” And while Jeffrey was able to use an answer key to figure out the concepts, this is not always possible. In my own experience, the answer key rarely gives any information about how the answer was arrived at, and it’s that process that is so important when learning math. Similarly, different people have different learning styles.
Homeschool parents should not assume that their teenagers will be capable of teaching themselves Algebra or Calculus out of a textbook. Many students need a parent, tutor, or teacher to provide guidance and motivation, especially for a subject like math. Parents who plan to have their children work through a textbook should make an effort to learn the material alongside their children, answering questions and explaining concepts as they go along.
Other options include hiring a math tutor (or arranging a trade with a homeschooling parent who is particularly good at math), or finding a class. In some states homeschooled children are permitted to take one or two classes at their local public high school without enrolling full time. In other states community colleges are open to high school students at a discounted price.
Parental Discouragement
When children attend school, they will likely have a range of teachers that vary in quality. Their teacher one year may be terrible at math or may even tell them that they’re bad at math, but the teacher they have the next year may work to inspire them. For some homeschooled students, however, a parent who dislikes math or discourages them from pursuing the subject may be the only math teacher they ever have. This means what a homeschool parent tells their children about their math ability or about the necessity (or lack thereof) of math takes on an oversized importance.
Some alumni in our focus group reported being actively discouraged from pursuing math by their parents. In some cases this was fairly general—the alumni were told that math was unimportant anyway, or simply that they weren’t good at math—but in other cases it had a gendered aspect.
Rebecca: [My mom] also discouraged me from wanting to study [math] by talking about how useless it was, and that practical math for cooking would be better for me anyway.
Melissa: My mother wasn’t good at math and told me I wasn’t very good at math either.
Jennifer: I was told over and over again from about 3rd grade forward [that I wasn’t good at math] by one or both of my parents. Oh my gosh it made me want to quit altogether.
Jessica: I was in public school from first through fourth grade. My lowest grades were in math,but still ranged in the 90s to a low of 88. For some reason my mom took this to mean math was my weakness. She repeated this to me almost daily my first year of homeschool. She even had me start off in a fourth grade math book to help me “catch up”. I was bored out of my mind by all the divide and check.
Jerusha: [My parents] said I wouldn’t need [math] as a housewife anyway.
Heidi: My mom finally stated that, “Hey . . . what do you need algebra for anyway? You are a girl,” and that was that. At the time I felt happy and relieved. After all, I was going to marry and have babies happily forever after . . . what did I need it for?
Breanne: Mom always said [that] girls’ brains aren’t wired for math. That made things worse, it felt like my struggling was futile.
Homeschool parents need to be aware of the oversized input their feedback has on their children’s math motivation and ability. Parents who don’t like math themselves need to be careful not to pass that on to their children, even accidentally. Children need to be inspired to thoroughly pursue each subject as they search for things they like and are good at. Giving children a negative outlook concerning math closes doors that should remain open.
Learning Disabilities
Some children have learning disabilities. Unfortunately, while teachers are trained in recognizing learning disabilities and providing intervention, many homeschool parents may not understand that they are dealing with a learning disability until much too late. Homeschool parents need to educate themselves in warning signs that may point to learning disabilities and be willing to have their children tested for learning disabilities should such signs appear. Once a learning disability is identified, parents need to provide support and look for resources.
Bethany: My learning disability got in the way of my ability to learn math. . . . For a short time when I was in grade school, I had a specialist teach me math and I performed well. . . . He seemed to understand me and my dyslexia. He had me doing math above my grade. I fell behind again when I was homeschooled. Later–much later–I was tested at a local College. I tested 5th grade level for math and I was 26 years old. I went to the class they held as the lowest one could take in college. I felt deep shame. . . . Like my earlier learning specialist, they seemed to get my brain. I aced the class. . . . The bottom line was that I require explanations and practice that are more suited for my manual brain.
Melissa: There is no doubt based on what I do on a day to day basis that I am fairly mathematically inclined, though I think it’s possible I have some kind of learning disability since I can be a bit slow at times to pick certain things up. Based on kids I’ve worked with I think I may have dyspraxia, which would explain why I suddenly seemed so skilled once I had access to computers, since people with this disorder have trouble with writing out equations and that kind of thing.
Jennyfer: I have dyscalculia. My private school couldn’t deal with it, the public school in the area would have put me in the special ed holding tank, so I was homeschooled due to it. I was never able to achieve more than 5th grade, even with lots of tutoring. They eventually just gave up.
Some children are homeschooled due to learning disabilities. In these cases, parents hope to give their children better than what they were receiving in the local public schools. But doing this isn’t easy, and requires a lot of effort and the willingness to look for a new solution when one thing isn’t working. Homeschooling parents of children with learning disabilities need to be careful not to give up before they have sought out and exhausted the resources available.
Choosing a Curriculum
Homeschool parents have a variety of math curriculum available to them, and can easily shop around online or at homeschool conventions. Parents need to work to educate themselves on best practices and ensure that they thoroughly review each curriculum they choose. Some alumni in our focus group spoke of using curricula or math programs that simply did not work for them.
Melissa: My mother’s version of math education was . . . not good and mainly focused on memorization, which never stuck anyway. My mother said I had to do them over and over again because “you won’t always have a calculator.”
Liz: Eventually, Mom purchased this program at a homeschool conference called “Algebra VideoText”, where the instructor explained everything on VHS tapes and there was a hotline to call if you had problems. For the rest of high school I slogged through that program by myself, dutifully watching all the videos and completing the modules, and eventually “completed” it, without understanding much of what was being presented or retaining it at all. The help-line guy was MEAN (“What’s the matter with you? This is basic! There’s no reason you shouldn’t understand this!’) and after a while, I quit calling him.
Once a curriculum has been selected and purchased, homeschool parents need to pay attention to whether or not it is working for their children. This can be more difficult when a child is working more independently, but should be possible through frequent communication and through working through a curricula alongside a child. Homeschool parents need to be willing to changed their curriculum plans when a given program is not working.
Then Came College
In many cases, homeschooled students who struggle with math may have the ability to do well but not the interaction or resources they need to excel. This was the case for a number of alumni in our focus group, who were eager to speak of their experiences in college, where having a class and a teacher turned things around for them.
Jerusha: I tested into a remedial class and loved it. Turns out I’m really good at learning algebra from a teacher.
Jai: I had to take one remedial math class in community college six years later in order to get up to Algebra 1 speed, but I had a teacher that was amazing and spent time to answer my questions and look over my work with me.
Katharina: Having a teacher and college tutors really changed things for me.
Liz: The math course I had to take in college was what my mom called “math for dummies,” but I did OK in it because there was an actual teacher who explained stuff. I think I got an A.
Acacia: The summer before I entered public high school, I had to go to Sylvan Learning Center to catch up on everything I missed, even though I was relatively good at math and picked it up way faster than they expected.
Impacted Futures
Unfortunately, while many homeschool alumni who previously struggled with math may find themselves able to succeed with an actual class and teacher once in college, this does not mean that their deficient homeschool math education does not shape their future and their career choices.
Melissa: I LOVED science, so I wanted to be good at math. But I didn’t have a good background in math or how to study it, so I floundered once I got to school in high school and ended up giving up on my dreams of being a scientist. In college I was finally able to take some remedial classes, but still didn’t quite catch up. By accident I ended up doing tech for a living, which I do OK at, but I feel I regularly get passed up for promotions and have hit a ceiling because of my deficient background.
Anna-Brit: There was 110 point gap between my critical reading and math scores on my SATs. I ended up minoring in statistics in college, but fear of the prerequisite four levels of calculus prevented me from majoring in it, to my shame.
Liz: To this day, I stay far away from math. Maybe I would be good at it if I’d had some actual instruction, I don’t know.
Heidi: I went on to conquer statistics for my Bachelors and am now happily working on my Masters. But to pass the algebra I got help from everyone I could think of . . . school tutor, my drummer from worship team, and my baby brother who also put himself through school.
Savannah: This experience [failure to teach myself high school math from a textbook] has ingrained my fear and hate of all things math and science related, and in turn pushed me away from higher education in embarrassment of my skills.
Final Focus Group Thoughts
While experiential learning can often be extremely helpful, it should not be a replacement for more academic study of math. There is only so much math that can be learned from cooking, or from balancing checkbooks. For most children, higher-level math like algebra will require more than experiential learning.
Jerusha: One year my “math” was to make an answer key for an antiquated book on arithmetic for agriculture. I think it was used by the Amish. Balancing my parents’ checkbooks, paying the bills, and keeping my dad’s business ledger also counted as math.
In some cases, children’s success in other areas may mean that their parents do not notice their struggles and deficiencies in math. Parents need to be proactive and pay close attention to their children’s progress in math.
Katharina: I do remember feeling quite defeatist in high school, and my poor math skills were the reason I never finished my chemistry course either, too much math…but as my outstanding strengths were in verbal reasoning/writing, it never occurred to me or my mom to address those deficits, you know?
Finally, while a deficient math education can hold young adults back and make their lives more difficult, some will push through in spite of it all.
Savannah: I have turned a new leaf and am in my first ever math class (remedial college course) catching up with things I never knew! I am determined because I am sure once I am able to understand it from a qualified teacher, I will cease to be so unnerved!
Successful Stories
And now we turn briefly to our smaller focus group of homeschool alumni with good experiences. Our main focus in this article has been how things can fail, so we want to finish with a brief picture of how things can go well
Emilie: My mom was passionate in teaching all subjects, and mathematics was no exception. In elementary school, she used a conceptual math curriculum which we worked through together using manipulatives and other various real life examples to understand arithmetic. We were not tied to this curriculum, however, as we found its algebra book confusing. For algebra and geometry we carefully switched to another program that was well-reviewed and also emphasized conceptual understanding. For my last two years of high school, I took Precalculus Algebra and Trigonometry, followed by Calculus I and II at the community college, as they were beyond my mom’s expertise. The teaching I received there was excellent and allowed me to take Calculus III and Differential Equations as a freshman. (My younger sister also took calculus-based physics and an introductory engineering class while still in high school.) Mathematics may not have been my mom’s favorite subject, but it ended up being mine, and she opened all the necessary doors for me and my siblings to explore it.
Nathan: I was mostly self-taught from Saxon textbooks, my parents weren’t in a position to teach me anything advanced. I joined a MathCounts team made up of other students from our regional group. There was one engineer dad in the group who really accelerated our progress, and some of the other parents were really good at teaching us to assess every problem from a logical perspective and find not just the solution, but the best, fastest path to that solution. Everybody on that team was a total math dork by the end. We even took turns teaching each other on occasion (with supervision), because it helped us solidify the concepts in our own minds AND helped us all pick up things that the others were good at, which improved both our math skills and our ability to optimally function as a team during the cooperative portions of the competition.
Isaac: In retrospect, I think the mathematical education provided by my parents was highly successful. I think there are two particular aspects of my math instruction that were unique and provided immense benefit. First, my parents had a strong emphasis on understanding my learning style and providing curricula tailored to me. My parents were not tied to a single textbook and were attentive to my feedback, as well as maintaining their own assessments and backing them up with external standardized tests. Second, my parents stringently insisted that I absolute master a concept before moving on. I was able to take Algebra early, but struggled with the abstract concepts and was required to re-take the entire course. With a different curriculum and another semester to work on the material, I began to thrive and even enjoy the concepts. Having now worked with professional mathematicians, I see some of my parent’s weaknesses; they could have focused more on enabling independent discovery as a child and answering my sometimes more probing questions in deeper ways. However, they recognized their limitations and sought professional external math instruction after Algebra, which was also superlative and placed me in the very beneficial relationship with math I enjoy today.
Strong levels of parental involvement, a willingness to change curriculum to suit a child’s learning style, community college courses, math clubs or other extracurriculars—these things can provide children with the guidance and motivation they need to not just succeed at math but actually excell. Yes, all of these take more effort than simply handing a child a textbook and telling them to learn it. But then, whoever said homeschooling would be easy?
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by CRHE
The Sandy Hook Advisory Commission Moves to Support Homeschoolers
In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, where twenty elementary school children and six teachers were gunned down in December 2012, the state of Connecticut convened a panel to find ways to reduce the risk of future tragedies. Over the past year and a half, the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, consisting of a team of experts from the areas of education, mental health, emergency response, and law, has been meeting and drafting recommendations for improving Connecticut’s current policies. We at CRHE were pleased to learn that the Commission’s proposals include homeschooled students, who are often left out of efforts to improve children’s wellbeing. If the proposals are implemented, Connecticut homeschooled students with social, emotional, and behavioral problems will have access to the same resources and services as other students.
We at CRHE believe that the Commission’s suggestions are founded in current need and best practices and have the potential to promote the wellbeing of homeschooled children. CRHE supports increased protections for homeschooled children in Connecticut and, contingent on seeing the actual recommendations, is enthusiastic about the Commission’s concern for the safety and health of at-risk homeschooled children.
These concerns are especially resonant in the wake of tragic stories like those of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza and of Joshua Komisarjevsky. Both were homeschoolers who did not have access to the care they needed. The crimes they committed are tragic reminders that homeschoolers are not immune to the issues every community struggles with, including the need for mental health services and for special care for children with behavioral problems. We are fully aware that many homeschooling parents are doing their utmost to meet their children’s social and emotional needs, and that in some cases homeschooling may be the best educational choice for these children. We therefore argue that homeschoolers should have access to the same resources as other children, and that the homeschooling community should not turn a blind eye to the needs of some of its members.
The draft’s proposed guidelines would require all students who have significant social, emotional, or behavioral problems—including homeschooled students—to receive an individualized education plan, or IEP. Just like the parents of public school students, parents of homeschooled students who are diagnosed with these issues would be required to develop IEPs in cooperation with the school district. These plans would include objectives for the child’s short-term and annual progress, procedures for reporting and measuring the child’s progress, and any supplemental services the child would be receiving. Like other students, these students would be assessed annually on their progress towards their goals.
The purpose of the Commission is to improve the safety of educational environments in Connecticut. According to the Commission, this includes ensuring that children can develop healthily whether they are primarily being educated in schools or at home. The Commission is advocating for a more holistic, integrated approach to mental health care throughout the state. Their proposal centers around services provided by schools, so their recommendations for homeschooled students constitute only a small part of their overall plan. We are grateful that homeschooled students were not overlooked by the Commission, and believe homeschooled students should have access to the same resources and services that are available to other children.
Homeschooled students with mental health needs are not well served by current laws—especially in Connecticut, where homeschooling advocates have a history of opposing any and all attempts to protect homeschooled children. Connecticut does not require parents to notify the state that they are homeschooling and has no requirements regarding parent qualifications, instruction time, bookkeeping, or student assessments. Homeschool parents in Connecticut successfully blocked the passage of a 1990 law which would have created reasonable legal protections for homeschooled children in the state. Connecticut’s homeschool parents are also responsible for successfully advocating for a 1994 law that allowed them to opt out of any and all special education services offered by the public school system regardless of a child’s need.
Just as with other demographics, there are homeschooled children who struggle with mental illness. According to 2011 data from the National Center for Education Statistics, 15% of homeschool parents report homeschooling because of their child’s physical or mental health problems. Further, a 2014 survey conducted by Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out found that approximately 25% of the 3,700 homeschool graduates surveyed had been diagnosed with a mental illness by a mental health professional. Claims of homeschoolers’ immunity to such problems are unfounded and are disrespectful to the many homeschool graduates who do report that they suffered from mental illness, lack of socialization, or behavioral or social problems while being homeschooled. We are thankful to the Commission for including homeschooled students in their efforts to provide all Connecticut children with access to mental health resources.
The Commission’s proposals are not unique or unprecedented. Many states allow homeschooled students to access disability services, including IEPs, through their local public schools. In Oregon, each homeschooled child with a disability is required to have either an IEP or a PDP (privately developed plan), coordinated with one or more private services providers. These plans lay out educational goals and specify what services the child will receive.
Implementation of the Commission’s proposal may take some working out. Connecticut is one of eleven states where parents are not required to provide notice of homeschooling—though they are technically required to offer “equivalent instruction in the studies taught in the public schools,” there is no mechanism to ensure that they do so, and parents who opt out of the state’s voluntary guidelines need not have any interaction with the state whatsoever. It’s not surprising, then, that estimates of the number of children being homeschooled in the state vary widely from 2,000 to 18,000—without an annual notification requirement, it is not possible to keep an accurate count of homeschooling families or to identify homeschoolers with behavioral problems. The state’s homeschooling parents have successfully opposed notification requirements in the past, and a bill requiring homeschool parents to file an annual notice of intent died in committee in 2009. Still, the Committee’s recommendations could easily be grounded in current CT homeschooling law, which requires that the parent be “able to show” that the required “equivalent instruction” is being provided.
One potential concern CRHE has is that conversations about mental health—when prompted by an act of violence like the Sandy Hook school shooting—often focus on the individuals who commit violence rather than those who are the victims of violence. This can add to the stigma around mental health conversations by making the mentally ill appear to be threats, when in fact they are more likely to be victims themselves. We hope, therefore, that the commission will continue to approach their solutions in a way that helps, rather than further stigmatizes, individuals with mental illnesses. We also hope that the response to the commission’s suggestions looks at the entire community as opposed to dismissing it as a response to one bad apple.
We at CRHE will continue to watch the progress of the Commission’s report and recommendations. We hope that they will continue to demonstrate the same sort of thoughtfulness and care that they have shown in their other recommendations to the question of how best to serve the homeschooled children of Connecticut.
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by Chelsea McCracken
Choosing the Data that Supports Your Agenda: A Look at Ray 2010
This post summarizes our research review, which provides a critical analysis of Ray (2010). Click HERE to read a more in-depth version of the arguments presented.
In 2008, Dr. Brian Ray conducted a study on homeschoolers’ academic achievement using their scores on standardized tests. The results of the study were written up in two documents: a 2009 summary of the results, which was produced by HSLDA and is available on their website; and a 2010 academic article entitled “Academic achievement and demographic traits of homeschool students: A nationwide study,” which appeared in the online peer-reviewed journal Academic Leadership and may be viewed here.
These two publications are widely cited to support the claim that homeschoolers have higher levels of academic achievement than other children: Ray reports that his participants’ average standardized test score was 86% (as compared with the national average of 50%). Ray also found that his participants’ best subject was reading (where they scored in the 89th percentile) and their worst subjects were language, math, and social studies (where they scored in the 84th percentile). Students who were female; whose parents spent more than $600 per year on their educations; who had higher family incomes; whose parents had both graduated from college; who had fewer siblings; who had more structured educations; who spent more time in structured learning; and who started homeschooling younger all scored higher than other participants. Participants’ scores did not differ based on their curriculum or the amount of state regulation.
Unfortunately, Ray’s study has so many methodological problems that we can draw few conclusions from it. The most glaring methodological problems are:
1) Bias
Ray did not survey a random sample of homeschool graduates. The main method Ray used to collect students’ standardized test scores was to seek out homeschoolers who were already high achievers as participants—he gathered data from testing services where parents who were confident in their children’s ability to do well signed them up for tests; he recruited participants from state homeschool organizations filled with active and activist members for whom their children’s high academic achievement was an important part of their identity. In other words, the participants self-selected for the variable being studied. Ray’s scores are exactly what we would expect from a testing pool where only those parents who knew their children would do well volunteered to participate.
Furthermore, in many cases, the test administrators were the children’s parents. With no oversight to make sure that students were following time limits and not using outside resources, parents could influence children’s scores with impunity, or choose not to have the test graded if they thought their children did poorly. In addition, around one-third of Ray’s participants knew their children’s test scores before agreeing to participate. How many parents whose children scored poorly do you think opted out of the study?
2) Non-representative sample
Ray’s participants were a highly privileged group which excluded major segments of the population. Ray’s participants were overwhelmingly white and Christian, had married parents with college degrees, and came from families with high incomes and stay-at-home mothers. All of these factors have been shown to correlate with higher rates of academic success.
These participants were neither representative of all homeschoolers, nor of all school-aged children in the US. By failing to include less-privileged participants in his study—economically disadvantaged students, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, children with special needs, and those with disrupted families—Ray effectively disguised the fact that much of his participants’ academic success was likely due to background factors rather than to the educational method their parents used.
It is therefore impossible to use the test scores of this select group to claim that all homeschoolers do well academically, or that academic achievement is not a problem in the homeschooling community. We can only state that, in this limited and biased sample, most participants earned high scores on standardized tests.
3) Unanswered questions
Ray’s report of his findings provokes more questions than it answers. Ray lists four major testing services, several smaller testing services, and a number of statewide homeschooling organizations as sources for his data. He does not, however, report what percentage of his data came from each source. As such, it is impossible to tell whether his sample was biased in terms of affinity group or geography.
He also states that his demographic questionnaire was not tested for internal validity, nor did he provide a copy of the questions he posed to participants. We have no way of knowing if he introduced bias into the study by asking questions in a particular way.
Because of these problems, we can only conclude from this study that it is possible for homeschoolers to earn high scores on standardized tests. We cannot conclude that all homeschoolers do well on standardized tests—Ray’s study does not prove that homeschoolers have higher academic achievement than other children. It merely gives a description of the demographics of a particularly privileged subset of homeschoolers (composing approximately 2-3% of all homeschoolers) and an average of their standardized test scores. It cannot be used to make any claims about the relationship between homeschooling and public schooling, nor about homeschoolers as a population.
Instead, the study primarily shows Ray’s skill at manipulating data to serve his own agenda. Though the 2009 publication proudly proclaims that homeschoolers are “achieving well beyond their public school counterparts”, Ray’s peer-reviewed 2010 article acknowledges that his participants’ “test scores seem, in some ways, notably too high” to be plausible. He posits that “perhaps the present study captured a sample of the homeschool population at large that is over-represented by high achievers”, cautioning readers that his study was “not an experiment and readers should be careful about assigning causation to anything”.
What we can tell is that, even in Ray’s extremely homogeneous sample, some demographic variables still made a difference in homeschoolers’ scores, including gender, family income, parental education, and amount of educational structure. Ray’s participants also scored highest in reading and lowest in math. These findings suggest trends that might hold across broader segments of the population, though they have never been studied in a methodologically rigorous way.
Last Updated: 20 October, 2023 by Karen Goltz
Why Self-Policing Is Not Sufficient
As a homeschooling mom beginning my second year of formal homeschool instruction, I rely heavily on blogs as resources. I read blogs written by other individuals who are homeschooling their children, communities of homeschooling parents, and communities of homeschooled alumni. Occasionally some news outlet will publish an article about abuse in a homeschooling family, and I get to see the reactions of those who are advocating for better safety and accountability in homeschooling as well as those who believe there is enough or even too much public oversight of homeschooling already.
Most homeschooling parents and communities I’m familiar with respond to reports of abuse in the media by citing the number of public schooled children who are abused despite greater oversight, or quoting ‘studies’ demonstrating the superiority of homeschooling for academic achievement and social and emotional health. The ones who are willing to even acknowledge that the problem exists (a minority, in my circles) claim that the answer lies in homeschool communities policing themselves, with no further oversight needed.
While I’m all for homeschooling communities policing themselves in order to protect and defend the children among them, I am absolutely certain that this is not sufficient. First of all, this assumes that all homeschooled students are involved in communities. This is not always the case. One of the concerns about the way homeschooling laws are currently written in many states is that it is very easy for parents to completely isolate their homeschooled children. If parents choose not to be part of a community (and some do choose this option), there is no one to see any signs of physical abuse, much less to act on it, and there is no one to observe whether an education is actually being provided.
Second, many homeschooling parents who do get involved with co-ops or other homeschooling communities seek out others whose philosophies and beliefs match their own. This makes sense, as it allows parents to better work together towards a common educational goal for their children. However, it also allows for parents who embrace more extreme child-rearing philosophies or religious convictions to create communities that don’t recognize some behaviors as abusive. When parents make adherence to such philosophies or beliefs a requirement for participation in the group, they exclude or ostracize those who might notice problems and advocate for victims. The parents who remain in these communities are unlikely to provide protection for abused children, because they would see abusive behavior as the parents fulfilling their God-given duty to correct and discipline their rebellious children. They would not ensure that all the children among them were receiving an adequate education, because they might all believe that worldly influences and priorities are to be shunned, and their children are better off learning only the Bible and certain gender-specific skills. Or they might believe that structured learning is disrespectful to children’s autonomy, and not teach basic reading or math skills because the children haven’t expressed an interest in them. If the entire community is founded on those convictions, then there would be no one in the community able to recognize abuse or educational neglect.
Finally, homeschooling parents are used to having to defend their (our) unconventional choices. Despite homeschooling’s growing popularity we are still a minority. We’re used to being judged and second-guessed, and, as a result, we’re reluctant to judge or second-guess members of our own community. I belong to a homeschool co-op whose various members self-identify as eclectic, classical, relaxed, unschooling, unit-study-focused, Waldorf-inspired, Montessori-inspired, Charlotte Mason-inspired, and/or any combination of those philosophies or others. (I myself follow a relaxed/classical approach with some unschooling-like unit studies thrown in—does that make us eclectic?) We consist of some liberal Christians like myself, some who are spiritual-but-not-religious, some atheists, and at least one Muslim family that I’m aware of. I honestly don’t know the religious inclination of most of our members, and it’s not important, because religion is not one of the objectives or priorities of our group. I’m also pretty sure that if a child in our group displayed clear signs of physical abuse, we would probably do something about it. (I say ‘probably’ because we haven’t been tested in that way yet, and I truly hope we never are.)
On the other hand, because of the diversity of our homeschooling philosophies, we probably wouldn’t do anything about an instance of educational neglect in our midst. What one of us might call educational neglect, another might call unschooling. Or the parent might explain that her children have learning disabilities which are slowing them down, even though she has received no training in teaching to those disabilities and isn’t getting any professional help. While some of us might be concerned, we would hesitate to interfere because we know that most of us are acting in the best interests of our own children, informed by the intimate bond between parent and child, and we need to believe that everyone else is, too. We don’t want our homeschooling choices scrutinized and judged, so we’re not about to scrutinize and judge someone else’s. And yes, I am just as guilty as everyone else in this. Physical abuse is one thing, and there are those of us who will stand up and do the right thing. But when it comes to identifying educational neglect in someone else’s child, most of us feel that it’s just not our place. Each parent appreciates the freedom our co-op allows us to make educational choices for our own children, even when those choices are different from everyone else’s. Commitment to that diversity blinds us to educational neglect.
Self-policing is insufficient as a safeguard against child abuse and educational neglect because not all homeschooling families participate in communities or groups, some groups are so strictly homogenous in their beliefs that there is no one involved who might question problematic behaviors, and some groups are so diverse in their educational philosophies that educational neglect is tolerated as simply another parent’s choice. And it’s true that parents have the right to determine how their children are educated, but, more importantly, children have the right to be educated. Self-policing in homeschooling communities should certainly be part of the solution, but it can’t be all of it. I don’t know what the right answer is . . . I don’t think there is a perfect answer. But homeschooling parents can’t continue to ignore the problems inherent in our system, and I’m sure we can find an answer that’s less imperfect than what we’re currently doing.
Some homeschooling parents are doing a stellar job of meeting their children’s academic and social needs. Some are muddling through, doing their best, and their kids are going to be just fine. Some are intentionally or unintentionally harming their children physically, emotionally, spiritually, and/or educationally, and they are homeschooling parents too. As much as we want to deny their existence or distance ourselves from them, the truth is we’re all under the same umbrella, benefitting from the same laws. No, we’re not all “like that” but some are, and that’s a problem.
We need to actively be a part of the solution. We can make sure our own children are involved in groups that include traditionally-schooled children and are organized by adults who are trained to help children succeed and identify areas that may need some attention. We can look at common academic benchmarks to ensure that our children are more or less on track with their learning. (Some school districts publish the goals of each grade level on their website. Another good basic guide is http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/going-to-school/grade-by-grade/.) And we can talk about these issues within our own homeschooling circles, helping to break down the stigma of acknowledging that problems exist. Only by addressing our problems ourselves and with the help of the wider community can we ensure that homeschooling remains a valuable tool for preparing our children to live fulfilling, productive adult lives.
Last Updated: 20 October, 2023 by Arielle G.
How My Parents’ Homeschooling Methods Empowered Me to Follow My Dreams
I recently strolled down homeschool memory lane, googling the titles of fondly-remembered novels, asking my mom for an inventory of her closet stuffed with educational board games, recalling how one co-op teacher tied calculus to cryptography. My amble through the past reminded me that successfully homeschooling children — as my mom did with my sister and me — takes work, skill, creativity, and drive. But it also reminded me of the myriad resources that can facilitate the sort of responsible homeschooling I experienced — and the importance of sharing those methods, mindsets, and materials with current or prospective homeschooling parents, as I hope to do here.
Before describing how my family homeschooled, I want to note that even successful homeschooling looks different for different families. Indeed, one advantage of homeschooling is the ability to tailor education to kids’ individual needs, personalities, interests, and learning styles. This post should not be seen as prescriptive or limiting, though I do hope it will furnish ideas and motivation.
I should also provide my “homeschooling worked for me” bona fides, along with a caveat. After being homeschooled K-12, I attended and thrived at Princeton, graduating from there with highest honors. I am now a Ph.D. candidate in the humanities. However, I hope readers will not interpret what follows as “how to homeschool your child for the Ivy League” or “how to homeschool your child for a career in academia.” There’s no way to ensure selective college admissions or pre-ordain a child’s career path, and more importantly, I don’t think “homeschooling for the Ivy League” is a healthy ethos. I believe that homeschooling responsibly entails pursuing academic excellence, encouraging kids to dream big, and supporting those dreams — and where that leads will be different for every child.
So how did we homeschool? My mom describes us as “unschooler wannabes” prior to high school. (More on high school in a bit.) We were “looking to be as flexible and freedom-loving as we could be without sacrificing the basics,” she told me. “In fact, ‘cover the basics, pursue their passions’ came to be the operative phrase.” Since we mostly followed a traditional academic year schedule, she used our summer vacation to comb through catalogs — Timberdoodle was a favorite — and research next year’s materials. Mom always tried to place large orders by July 4, which gave her time to make changes if something disappointed her or her kids once it arrived. When considering new options for the upcoming year, she gravitated toward books and curricula that sounded “playful” rather than dry and boring.
All this ordering and experimenting was expensive, but not prohibitively so: our yearly homeschool budget was around $1,500 during the 1990s, not counting the (significant) opportunity cost of my mom giving up her previous career as a film animator.
As part of our daily routine, my mom, sister, and I kicked the morning off with a game — usually involving math, wordplay, or critical thinking. Favorite start-the-day games included Quiddler, Set, Yahtzee, Bethump’d with Words, Upwords, Oh Scrud!, Connections, Triology, Fictionary (no materials required other than a dictionary), educational games from Aristoplay, and educational versions of the game Concentration adapted to our unit study of the moment – e.g., matching presidents and first ladies if we were doing a unit on presidents.
Following our game, we usually had a math period that involved both independent textbook work and puzzles or word problems that we did together. Go-to resources for math included Family Math, Miquon, 30 Wild and Wonderful Math Stories, and word problems drawn from books we were reading or whatever unit study we were doing (more on units in a moment). Beginning around middle school, we also used Saxon for cover-the-basics, which worked well for me personally, though it was less successful for other homeschoolers I knew.
After math came language arts, which also involved both independent work and activities we did together. Much of my language arts education happened as I developed passions for reading and writing on my own — voraciously gobbling novels, scribbling stories, and writing a history column for a local newsletter. (We owned mountains of books, often purchased used at library sales or garage sales, and spent ample time at the library.) But we also followed curricula for writing and grammar. Favorite resources included the Wordsmith series, Learning Language Arts through Literature, and the Editor in Chief series. My mom says she gleaned additional ideas and activities from Any Child Can Write, Books Children Love, and If You’re Trying to Teach Kids How To Write…. One of my favorite writing exercises, though I am not sure where we got the idea, was the “wild write.”
After language arts, we shifted our focus entirely to whatever unit study we were currently doing. (Though my mom did not share Valerie Bendt’s main reason for homeschooling, she says she got the idea and some of the structure for unit studies from her.) Unit studies meant immersing ourselves for approximately six weeks in a topic that my sister or I chose: checking out stacks of library books on that subject, play-acting or building or experimenting, exploring relevant museums and cultural centers, sampling new cuisine where appropriate. Subjects we chose at various stages of homeschooling included baby animals, aviation, the French Revolution (including a memorable role-played Marie Antoinette trial), the Russian Revolution (I was obsessed with the Romanovs), and dinosaurs.
For our final unit of the year, my sister and I always wrote, illustrated, and bound our own books — mine tended to be historical fiction and mysteries — with my mom using Bendt’s Creating Books with Children as a guide. Writing and crafting these books every year remains one of my favorite childhood memories, and I still enjoy pulling the final products off the shelf and rereading them when I visit my parents.
We studied other subjects on certain days of the week rather than every day; these electives included French, Latin, and logic. My mom had studied French and Latin in high school and college, which made things much easier, though we were also able to learn some Spanish from another homeschool mom who was a native speaker. For French, we used Learnables and read French novels once we were able to do so, including translations of books like Harry Potter. Favorite logic books included The First Honest Book about Lies and books from the Critical Thinking Company. I do not recommend the dry and error-riddled Latin curriculum we used (by the Logos School), but I did enjoy this supplementary Latin book.
A quick note on differentiation: though my two-years-younger sister and I did most of the hands-on, interactive activities — games, brainteasers, creative writing exercises — together with our mom, our use of more traditional curricula like Saxon and Wordsmith for the basics of the three Rs allowed us to use different books and therefore be on different levels in these areas, reflecting both our age gap and our varying learning paces. Our approach to foreign languages, logic, and unit studies lent itself to learning together, which we usually did, but we sometimes differentiated in these areas too — e.g., I remember researching quasars at length during an astronomy unit, while my sister did a shorter project about Pluto.
Outside-the-home extracurricular activities were also part of our weekly schedule; these included piano and figure skating lessons, drama classes, choir, summer programs in creative writing, and play groups when we were younger. By high school, I was also doing a lot of self-directed experiential learning, such as giving tours of our state Capitol building to local school groups, interviewing veterans for an oral history project, and serving as a page in our state legislature. Finding these activities was not difficult but took initiative — sometimes simply calling an office or group and asking if there was a role for an interested teenage volunteer.
High school also differed from K-8 in terms of my class schedule. To her great credit, my mom wanted to ensure that we would be able attend quality colleges if we chose that path, so we planned grades 9-12 according to college admissions offices’ expectations for a rigorous high school program. (For instance, based on what seems to be the “rigorous” standard, we added a separate year of geometry, which meant abandoning Saxon for a year and using Harold Jacobs geometry.) We continued some of the same traditions that defined K-8, such as starting the morning off with a game, but otherwise my schedule would shift from day to day depending on my outside-the-home activities and the work I needed to complete for my external classes.
Indeed, external classes dominated my high school academic education. I took correspondence courses in essay-writing through Johns Hopkins CTY, calculus with a local homeschool co-op teacher (who used Saxon as a textbook but added his own creative cryptographic flair), French with the local Alliance Française, chemistry correspondence courses through UNL, and several online AP classes from Pennsylvania Homeschoolers. I highly recommend that last item in particular; in addition to preparing me very well for the AP exams, the PA Homeschoolers classes featured delightfully offbeat learning exercises — we became burger tycoons in AP Economics, for example — and vibrant online discussions, allowing me to connect (albeit virtually) with academically-focused homeschoolers from around the world.
All of this pre-planning streamlined the process of applying to college as a homeschooler, which my mom had rightly recognized would be a major undertaking. As she put it, “Suddenly I was the principal, guidance counselor, and sometimes the teacher.” To ensure that I had solid applications, we used Loretta Heuer’s excellent Homeschoolers Guide to Portfolios and Transcripts as a primary resource, supplemented with Cafi Cohen’s And What About College?. Though not specifically for homeschoolers, we also used Michele Hernández’s A is for Admission in order glean guidelines on essay-writing, activity lists, and competitive admissions. In addition to providing all the standard components of a college application that a high school would normally provide (transcript, guidance counselor’s letter, test scores), my mom wrote a “homeschool profile” explaining how and why we homeschooled. I also included a portfolio of some of my creative writing.
Though my external classes provided grades and letters of recommendation from non-parental teachers — crucial for homeschool college applications — I also needed more outside verification, so I took several SAT IIs and AP tests at a local public high school, in addition to the more widely-taken PSAT and SAT I. To prepare for these tests, I used free guides and practice tests from the College Board, as well as guidebooks from the Princeton Review and Kaplan. I also enjoyed a quirky SAT prep book called Up Your Score.
My homeschool experience was not perfect. Despite some of the fun science units we did in the early years (Bernoulli’s Principle with paper airplanes!), I missed out on the full-scale lab experience in high school, and I ended up with an unscientific biology textbook due to recommendations from some other local homeschoolers. I also wish I had experienced more unstructured peer socialization during my teen years. But as I learn more about the range of homeschool and public/private school experiences, I am more convinced than ever that I was incredibly lucky to receive the K-12 education that I did.
During our recent “interview,” I asked my mom about her mindset and attitude during our homeschool years. She mentioned that it took confidence and enthusiasm, words that stand out as I reflect on what went right. My mom was not arrogant — she acknowledged her limitations and sought help where she needed it — but she felt comfortable cobbling together curricula and methods based on what her kids needed, and on what suited her own personal teaching style. She also read widely within homeschool “theory” — everything from John Holt to the Colfaxes to Susan Wise Bauer — but, precisely because of this eclecticism, avoided dogmatically following any one figure or philosophy. She had her own vision, informed by her kids’ vision.
Homeschooling is not for everyone, but it worked well for us. My family’s way of homeschooling is not for everyone, but I hope this description of what we did sheds some light on what homeschooling responsibly can look like. The effects, after all, are long-lasting: I can still kick butt in a game of SET or Bethump’d With Words — and when you have lots of free time, ask me about the Romanovs.
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by Rachel Coleman
The Homeschool Math Gap: The Data
The question of how homeschooled students fare academically has been raised countless times over the past three-and-a-half decades. Numerous volunteer-based studies have compared homeschooled students’ percentile scores on standardized tests with the national average and other studies have approached the issue from other angles, but few researchers have asked a different question: Does homeschool performance vary from discipline to discipline? Do homeschooled students tend to score better in some academic subjects than others?
In 2013, researchers Robert Kunzman and Milton Gaither reviewed the extant research on homeschooling and found evidence of a “math gap.”
Frost and Morris (1988) found in a study of 74 Illinois homeschoolers that, controlling for family background variables, homeschoolers scored above average in all subjects but math. Wartes, similarly, found that homeschoolers in Washington state scored well above average in reading and vocabulary but slightly below average in math computation (Ray & Wartes, 1991). The HSLDA-sponsored studies also found that homeschoolers do comparatively less well in math than in language-based subjects (Ray, 1997a; Rudner, 1999). Likewise Belfield (2005), in a well-designed study that controlled for family background variables, found that homeschooled seniors taking the SAT scored slightly better than predicted on the SAT verbal and slightly worse on the SAT math. A similar study of ACT mathematics scores likewise found a slight mathematical disadvantage for homeschoolers (Quaqish, 2007). Given this persistent corroboration across two decades we might conclude, tentatively, that there may be at least a modest homeschooling effect on academic achievement—namely that it tends to improve students’ verbal and weaken their math capacities.
The existence of a homeschool math gap is not surprising. It is easier for the average parent to teach children to read and let them loose on the library than it is for them to teach a sequential and increasingly challenging math curriculum. Few parents are qualified to teach higher-level math, and tutors or community college classes can be expensive. In many cases, homeschooled teens are expected to teach themselves algebra or calculus out of a textbook without the aid of any kind of teacher or adult help—something most children likely cannot do successfully.
Indeed, researchers Richard Medlin and Robin Blackmer found in a study conducted in 2000 that:
Homeschooled children were more intrinsically motivated in reading and less intrinsically motivated in math than children attending a conventional school using grades to evaluate students’ performance.
In other words, Medlin and Blackmer found that the homeschooled children they surveyed had less intrinsic motivation to learn math than other children. This is likely related to the relative difficulty homeschool parents have teaching math as compared to other subjects.
Testing data from Arkansas and Alaska, the only states to collect and release homeschool testing data, and studies of homeschool graduates enrolled in various colleges provide further verification of the homeschool math gap. In this article, we will survey the Arkansas and Alaska data, look briefly at the SAT and ACT, and then turn to how this math gap affects homeschool alumni’s college attendance and choice of major.
Arkansas, Alaska, and the Math Gap
All homeschooled students in Arkansas are tested annually, and the scores are released to the public in annual reports. In addition to providing the average homeschool scores by grade, these annual reports break down the scores by subject and compare homeschool scores to public school scores. The chart below includes homeschool percentile scores in reading and in math, listed by grade for the years 1997 to 2004. The reading scores are in blue and the math scores are in red.
We find that homeschooled students regularly score ten or more percentile points better in reading than in math. This is an especially interesting finding when we consider that Arkansas public schooled students tend to score better in math than in reading (you can see this by reading the public school comparisons made in the state’s annual homeschool reports).
Alaska is another state with publicly available data. The majority of Alaska’s homeschooled students are enrolled in the state’s popular correspondence programs, which offer money for educational expenses and allow parents to homeschool just as they normally would, requiring only quarterly progress reports and annual testing. Each correspondence school releases its data to the public. In the chart below, the correspondence schools’ scores are averaged and compared to the public school average.
As the graph above shows, 6% more of the homeschooled students in Alaska’s correspondence programs are proficient in reading than their public school counterparts, but 6% fewer of the homeschoolers are proficient in math. This gap persists for every demographic.
We know that homeschooled students have a harder time with math than with reading, but how do their scores compare to public school students? Are homeschoolers scoring around the same as their public school peers in math and higher in reading? Or, are they scoring lower in math and about the same or above in reading? Do we have data to address this question?
How homeschooled students’ scores compare to their public school peers is a question in demand of more research. Homeschooled students participating in studies conducted by homeschool advocacy groups, such as Rudner (1999) and Ray (2010), have tended to score thirty or forty percentage points above average, but these studies use volunteer samples and do not correct for background samples and are thus not generalizable. Further, this research has been increasingly called into question in light of new findings by other researchers. In a study published in 2011, Sandra Martin-Chang, Odette N. Gould, and Reanne E. Meuse compared a volunteer sample of 37 homeschooled children to 37 demographically matched traditionally schooled children and found that homeschooled students in structured learning environments scored slightly higher on standardized tests, those in less structured learning environments scored slightly lower. That same year, the Cardus Education Survey, which used a random sample and corrected for background factors, found that its homeschooled respondents were behind other students academically. Finally, in early 2014 a study conducted by Sharon Green-Hennessy found that homeschoolers were two or three times more likely to report being behind grade level than their traditionally schooled peers.
But how do homeschooled students’ scores compare in math and reading specifically? Does the Alaska and Arkansas data touch on this question? In Arkansas, preliminary data suggests that homeschooled students’ scores are roughly equivalent to public schoolers’ scores in math and higher in reading. However, this data is not corrected for background factors. In Alaska, preliminary data suggests that homeschooled students scores are lower than public schooled students’ scores in math and higher in reading. However, when we correct for background factors we find that some demographics’ reading scores are also below those of their public school peers. While more research needs to be done to make a determination, this data seems to suggest that homeschooled students score worse in math than their traditionally schooled peers.
But when we talk about the homeschool math gap, for the purpose of this post, we are not interested in how homeschooled students’ math scores compare to those of public school students. We are primarily interested in how homeschooled students’ math scores compare to their own reading scores—or, namely, that there is a gap between the two.
The SAT/ACT and the Math Gap
Homeschool advocates frequently point out that homeschoolers have higher SAT and ACT scores than other students in both the verbal and math sections. These claims ignore background factors—and also the oddly low numbers of homeschoolers taking the SAT and ACT. They also miss the discrepancy between verbal and math. You can see this illustrated below:
In other words, homeschooled students’ SAT scores suggest a higher discrepancy between verbal and math ability than is seen among students who attend public or private schools. In fact, while homeschooled SAT-takers’ scores are higher on the verbal section than the math section, the opposite is true for public school students.
What happens to homeschooled SAT-takers’ scores when we correct for background factors—things like parental education, gender, ethnicity, and county-level poverty rate, etc.? Belfield analyzed the 2001 SAT data by dividing students based on educational method and factoring in background factors. He used these factors to predict how students in each demographic, with their background factors, should score on each section. He found that while homeschooled students scored better than predicted on the verbal section, they actually scored slightly worse than predicted on the math section.
The predicted math score is higher for homeschooled students than for public schooled students because homeschool SAT-takers have background factors that typically correlate with higher SAT scores. In other words, homeschool SAT-takers’ parents were more highly educated than public school SAT-takers’ parents, so we would expect homeschoolers’ math scores to be higher than public schoolers’ math scores (based not on educational method but simply on parental education). While homeschool SAT-takers only slightly underscored their predicted math score, that they underscored it at all suggests that homeschooling does not enhance homeschool SAT-takers’ math ability.
All this said, comparatively few homeschoolers take the SAT or ACT. While 2% of all students were homeschooled in 2001, only 0.5% of students who took the SAT were homeschooled. The same is true of the ACT. In 2011, when 3.4% of all students were homeschooled, only 0.8% of those taking the ACT were homeschooled. This is relevant to the homeschool math gap in several ways.
Because taking the SAT or ACT is voluntary for homeschooled students, those homeschooled students who do take these exams are likely to be those most prepared—those who are college-bound. The same is less true for public school students, because some states and some school districts require students to take the SAT or ACT, either as another assessment or to encourage college attendance. This difference may serve to elevate homeschooled students’ scores relative to public school students.
The number of students taking the SAT or ACT can also inform us about homeschooled students’ college attendance—something that can’t help but be affected by their math ability. The College Board maintains its own school code for homeschooled students, as does the ACT. A few states allow students to be homeschooled through enrollment in private “umbrella schools,” but while some of these schools may have their own SAT and ACT codes others simply have students use the existing homeschool code. By looking at the number of students using the homeschool code when taking the SAT and ACT, then, we gain a rough idea of how many homeschooled students take these college entrance exams—and thus how many homeschooled students are college-bound.
If we assume that no homeschooled student takes the SAT or ACT more than once and that no homeschooled students take both tests, we find that at most 20% of homeschooled students take one of these exams. If some of these students take one of these exams twice, or take both of them, that percentage goes down. Nationally, 40% of high school graduates enroll in four-year colleges (another 20% enroll in two-year colleges). Virtually all four-year colleges require SAT or ACT scores. The rate at which homeschooled students take the SAT and ACT suggests that homeschooled students are underrepresented at four-year colleges. It is likely that, for at least some students, a deficiency in mathematics plays a role in the decision not to attend college.
Major Choice and the Math Gap
Studies conducted to date have tended to find that homeschool alumni have higher college GPAs than other students. This is likely at least in part a result of homeschooled students’ lower college attendance rates—the ones who do attend college are likely the most prepared, the best of the best. However, most of studies of homeschool alumni’s college performance fail break down students’ GPAs by subject area or to report on students’ choices of major. Only two studies, conducted at Austin College in Texas and Grove City College in Pennsylvania, have touched on these subjects. These studies offer an opportunity to examine possible long-term effects of the homeschool math gap.
Austin College is a four-year liberal arts college in Texas with a larger-than-average homeschool population (5% of incoming freshmen were homeschooled in 2008). In 2010, the school’s Institutional Research department carried out a study of homeschool graduates attending the school. The study found that homeschool graduates took fewer total math and science courses (0.8 and 1.9) than their traditionally schooled counterparts (1.9 and 3.2), and that while they achieved a slightly higher average GPA overall they had lower GPAs in math and science courses (2.58 and 2.62) than their conventionally schooled peers (2.72 and 2.65).
Unfortunately, while the Austin College study does state the majors chosen by homeschool alumni attending Austin College (45.7% majored in social sciences, 43.5% in humanities, 7.6% in sciences, and 3.3% in interdisciplinary studies), it does not offer a similar breakdown for traditionally schooled students. However, the fact that homeschool graduates at Austin College took fewer math and science courses than traditionally schooled students clearly indicates that they were less likely to major in these fields than were other students.
To our knowledge, only one study of homeschool alumni at a college or university has ever looked specifically at homeschool alumni’s choice of college major in comparison with the major choices of other students. This study was conducted at Grove City College, a four-year Christian college in Pennsylvania. The study, which found that homeschool students were much less likely to major in math and science than other students, was published in Sociological Viewpoints in 2010.
The Grove City College study found that homeschool graduates majored in the natural sciences (7.7%) and math/engineering (5.1%) at far lower rates than either public school graduates (17.8% and 15.6%) or private school graduates (17.0% and 14.3%).
There is little extant research on homeschooled students’ college major choice beyond what we can glean from these two studies. This is unfortunate, because each study looks only at one college and it is therefore possible that they are outliers and that homeschoolers at other colleges make different major choices. A recent informal study of young adults who were “unschooled,” a form of homeschooling that focuses on experiential learning in place of formal textbooks and curricula, found that an especially large portion of the participants went into the creative arts.The question of homeschool alumni’s major and career choice demands further research.
Further research on students’ GPAs by subject area is also needed. Do homeschool graduates who attend college have lower GPAs in math and science than in other subjects, or is the difference found in the Austin College study simply a result of major choice? A study of York Technical College, a community college in South Carolina, found that homeschoolers had a slightly higher math GPA than other students. However, in the qualitative component of the York Technical College study, homeschooled students verbally reported feeling unprepared for college math courses. It may be that homeschooled students can perform as well as other students in college math and science courses (perhaps because their prior math deficit was related to access rather than ability), but that a limited math education prior to high school graduation influences their career interests and thus their choice of college major.
Conclusion
There is a preponderance of evidence pointing to a homeschool math gap. There is also preliminary data pointing to some of the ways this math gap may affect homeschooled students as they graduate and begin their adult lives. In an era when STEM fields have taken on increasing importance, the homeschool math gap should be taken seriously by both homeschool parents and policymakers.
It should be noted that individual homeschooled students may excel at math. The existence of a math gap does not mean every homeschooled student has deficiencies in math. What it means is that homeschooled students on average have substantial lower math scores as compared to reading scores, a discrepancy that may follow many out of childhood into their adult lives.
Last Updated: 25 April, 2022 by CRHE
Why Homeschooling Needs Oversight: Responding to HSLDA and WORLD
Today WORLD Magazine posted an article listing our policy recommendations alongside a response by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). The article’s author, Daniel Devine, did not offer us space to respond, so we will do so below, after a few introductory points.
WORLD Magazine has not been upfront about the fact that its editor-in-chief, Marvin Olasky, holds the Distinguished Chair of Journalism and Public Policy at Patrick Henry College. Michael Farris is both the Chancellor of Patrick Henry College and the Chairman of HSLDA. This conflict of interest on the part of WORLD Magazine is not mentioned here.
That aside, we are happy to read HSLDA’s response to our policy recommendations and hope for the chance to engage with them further on this topic. HSLDA and CRHE’s positions on homeschooling policy differ because they serve two different audiences: HSLDA’s mission is “to defend and advance the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children” (emphasis added), while CRHE’s goal is “advocating for homeschooled children.” In theory, though, policy recommendations should be able to benefit both homeschool parents and homeschooled children.
However, HSLDA’s response to our policy recommendations makes it clear that they are advocating for the interests of their members—homeschooling parents—at the expense of the interests of homeschooled children. We do not believe that this is a positive framing for homeschooled children, who may not have chosen homeschooling as their educational method and who may not have a voice of their own.
As we mentioned in our first statement to WORLD, we have been working with HSLDA on their child abuse pages, and we hope to find more common ground in the future. Unfortunately, we remain troubled by HSLDA’s insistence on minimizing the problem of abuse and neglect in homeschooling circles and prioritizing homeschool parents’ convenience over homeschooled children’s safety.
State notification
Coalition for Responsible Home Education: “We recommend requiring parents to provide annual notification of their intent to homeschool. This notice should include at a minimum children’s names, ages, and grade levels, as well as the names of the parents and family’s address.”
Home School Legal Defense Association: “HSLDA is pro-homeschool freedom; we believe that parents as the natural God-given teachers should be allowed to homeschool their children. Most states already require notification, but many don’t, and HSLDA advocates to keep it that way.”
Response:
We believe that homeschooling is a legitimate way to educate children, and that therefore parents—as legitimate educators—should take steps to ensure the welfare of the children they are teaching. Notifying local or state officials when a child is being homeschooled is in no way an imposition on homeschool freedom. Instead, notification provides a safeguard for homeschooled children who might otherwise fall through the cracks, as well as protecting children’s freedom to receive an education—be that through public schools, private schools, or homeschooling.
Finally, it’s worth noting that HSLDA does not merely advocate for those states that do not require notification “to keep it that way,” it has also been active in ongoing efforts to repeal notification requirements in those states that do have them. One such example is Iowa, which repealed its notification requirement last year with a bill shepherded through the legislature by HSLDA.
Parental education
CRHE: “We recommend that the parent providing primary instruction be required to have at least a high school diploma or GED.”
HSLDA: “Most parents in the United States have a high school diploma (85 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau). HSLDA has yet to see research indicating that children of homeschool parents who do not have a high school diploma or its equivalent score lower on standardized tests than children of graduates. In fact, the only research of which we are aware shows that they score similarly.”
Response:
HSLDA correctly points out that the number of parents who do not have a high school diploma or equivalent is comparatively small. NCES data shows that 11% of homeschooled children had no parents with a high school diploma or its equivalent in 2011. However, we do not believe that this segment of the homeschool population is unimportant simply because the percentage is relatively small: roughly 195,000 children are being homeschooled by parents who have less than a high school education.
In the late 1990s, HSLDA hired researcher Lawrence Rudner to conduct a massive study of homeschooled students’ academic performance. That study, the results of which were released in 1999, found that children homeschooled by parents without college degrees scored twenty percentile points lower than those homeschooled by parents with college degrees. More recently, an HSLDA-promoted study by Brian Ray published in 2010 also found that children homeschooled by parents with college degrees perform better academically than those homeschooled by parents without college degrees. In other words, we know conclusively that parental education plays a significant role in homeschooled children’s academic achievement. This holds true even among more privileged and involved homeschoolers, who composed the majority of Rudner’s and Ray’s samples.
Even outside of homeschooling circles, parental educational achievement is highly correlated with higher levels of income and standardized test scores. Dr. Janet Currie, Chair of the Economics Department at Princeton University, has written on the impact of maternal education on children’s test scores in multiple papers. In a 1995 paper on children’s cognitive achievement, she and co-author Duncan Thomas wrote, “the evidence is clear: maternal income and education do affect children’s test scores, even after controlling for [background factors].” In the homeschooling world, mothers are usually their children’s most important academic influence: it would follow that their educational success depends upon their mothers’ ability to instruct them.
But for all the demonstrated importance of parental education, WORLD magazine actually incompletely quoted our policy recommendations: we think that homeschool parents who do not yet have their GED should be allowed to homeschool—provided that they do so under the supervision of a certified teacher or other similarly qualified individual, either indefinitely or until a GED is obtained. This provision is similar to models in Ohio, Washington, and North Dakota.
Subject matter
CRHE: “We recommend requiring parents to provide instruction (or facilitate learning) in the same range of subjects (e.g. English, math, science, history, etc.) taught in public schools in the state in which they live. Parents should not be required to use the same textbooks or methods as public schools. Because homeschooling allows for positive flexibility and child-led learning, we oppose requiring students to be at grade level in each subject.”
HSLDA: “[We recommend the] same ‘range’ of subjects, yes, but not exactly what is taught in public school. HSLDA has consistently opposed the state setting what must be taught in each subject. But CRHE’s proposal is already the case is almost every state—even in states like New Jersey or Texas that don’t require notification, there’s almost always a list of subjects that must be taught, or a requirement that ‘equivalent’ instruction has to be given.”
Response:
We are pleased that HSLDA supports our recommendation that homeschool parents be required to provide instruction in the same range of subjects taught in public school, but are disappointed that HSLDA has minimized the number of states that currently do not require this. Thirteen states allow parents to homeschool without requiring them to provide instruction in any specific subject. These parents are not held to any sort of “equivalent instruction” requirements, and are not required to have their children’s academic progress assessed. In these states homeschool parents can legally neglect to educate their children in science, or math, or history, or all of these.
We believe that homeschooled children in every state should have access to a well-rounded education, and we hope HSLDA will work with us to change the law in those states with inadequate or nonexistent subject requirements.
Record-keeping
CRHE: “Parents should be required to maintain academic records for each child they homeschool. Parents should be required to submit copies of each child’s birth certificate, immunization records, and annual assessment to be kept on file by either the local school district or state department of education or, when applicable, an umbrella school.”
HSLDA: “We have always recommended to our members that they keep good academic records for their own legal protection, no matter what state they live in. We would strongly oppose requiring parents to submit sensitive information such as birth certificates and immunization records to the government.”
Response:
We believe parents should keep good academic records not merely for their own legal protection but to ensure their children’s academic success. Homeschool parents are responsible for writing their children’s high school transcripts, a task that is difficult when good records have not been kept. Furthermore, the records homeschooling parents keep are often the only evidence homeschooled children have that they have received an education.
Keeping basic academic records should not be optional for homeschool parents, as these records are not optional for their children’s success in adulthood. We would like to see these records submitted to the local school district annually and kept on file, subject to the same privacy requirements as other children’s academic records, in order to ensure that homeschool parents are keeping the required records and to ensure that homeschool graduates, including those whose parents might withhold these documents in an effort to control them, have access to them.
We recommend requiring parents to submit their children’s birth certificates to the local school district or the state department of education in order to verify the child’s age and ensure that the child has not been kidnapped or trafficked. Sadly, there are numerous cases where kidnapped or trafficked children have been homeschooled in order to keep them from detection. If homeschool parents are required to provide notice and submit the children’s birth certificates, this could be avoided. As for immunization records, we believe homeschooling parents should be held to the same vaccination requirements as all other parents, which includes submitting immunization records or exemptions.
Finally, we find it odd that HSLDA objects to requiring parents to submit their children’s birth certificate “to the government” when these documents are issued by the government.
Assessment
CRHE: “Students’ academic progress should be evaluated and reported annually. Parents should be allowed to choose between a number of different assessment mechanisms, including standardized tests and portfolio reviews. Failure to make adequate academic progress should result in intervention.”
HSLDA: “We oppose submission of annual evaluations for homeschool students, as do a majority of states in the United States. However, for states that do require assessments, we agree with CRHE that the assessments should ‘take into account the flexible and innovative nature of homeschooling,’ and we agree that parents should have a choice of options.”
Response:
At issue here is accountability. While many homeschool parents provide their children with an excellent education, others fail to provide instruction in even basic subjects. In states without an assessment requirement, there is nothing to protect these children’s interest in receiving an education. Half of all states (25) require some form of assessments for homeschooled children, but 7 of these states do not require that the assessments be submitted or have no minimum score and 11 of these states offer additional homeschool options with no assessment requirement. We believe that every homeschooled child should have access to an education, and that basic accountability is an important part of ensuring that access.
Stories from homeschool alumni testify to the importance of accountability. One homeschool graduate writes of being homeschooled in Pennsylvania, where yearly assessments kept her and her mother motivated and on track, and then moving to New Jersey, where “things fell apart” due to the lack of assessments or accountability of any sort. HSLDA may urge parents to see accountability as a violation of parents’ freedom to homeschool, but not all homeschooling parents see it that way. “Opposition to oversight and accountability within education seems foolish,” explained one such parent.
Protections for at-risk children
CRHE: “We recommend barring from homeschooling parents convicted of child abuse, sexual offenses, or other crimes that would disqualify them from employment as a school teacher. We also recommend creating a process for flagging at-risk children, such as those in families with a troubling history of child protective services involvement, for intervention or additional monitoring. Finally, we recommend that the annual assessment requirement be conducted by mandatory reporters such as certified teachers; these individuals should be trained in how to recognize signs of abuse and how to report suspicions of maltreatment.”
HSLDA: “We oppose this blanket sledgehammer approach in favor of a more individualized response. As an example, I worked with a family a few years ago where the mother had been convicted of child abuse. The juvenile court had the child attend public school for a year, then allowed the mother to begin homeschooling under court supervision for two more years. When it was obvious that the previous issues had been dealt with, the court closed the case.”
Rebuttal:
There is no way to institute an individualized response without a system in place to identify families at additional risk of abuse or neglect. HSLDA has in the past opposed efforts to create such a system by flagging families with prior child abuse convictions or investigations for additional monitoring. Indeed, HSLDA is on record above supporting the status quo in states with no notification requirements for homeschooling. If parents need not notify anyone when they begin homeschooling, how are those with prior child abuse convictions or other risk factors to be identified for extra monitoring? As we know and as HSLDA surely knows as well, homeschooled children whose parents are convicted sex offenders or child abusers, or whose families have a troubling history of social services involvement, are at higher risk of child abuse. Only two states currently offer any protections for these at-risk homeschooled children.
We have spent over a year researching and analyzing cases of abuse and neglect in homeschooling settings in an effort to identify common themes and create policies that will most effectively protect at-risk homeschooled children. In many cases, children have beenabused or neglected by parents who homeschool specifically to conceal their maltreatment. These families often begin homeschooling after an unsubstantiated child abuse investigation following a report by a teacher. In some cases these childrenhave died. Homeschooled children have also been abused by parents who were convicted sex offenders or by parents who had previously had a child removed due to abuse. Homeschooled children’s interest in a safe and non-abusive upbringing must be protected.
Public school services
CRHE: “We recommend allowing homeschooled students to enroll part time in their local public schools and to participate in extracurriculars, including sports. Public schools should have cooperative policies for awarding credit and assisting with the transition for homeschooled students who want to transfer in.”
HSLDA: “Traditionally, HSLDA has been neutral on this issue. We have members who are passionately in favor of more access and members who are completely opposed. However, if a state does allow access, we will advocate on behalf of our members if they are discriminated against.”
Response:
There is no reason why HSLDA members who oppose access to public school services should block access for homeschool students who do wish to be involved. Those not interested in public school extracurriculars need not participate. Making educational decisions for your own children is one thing, but making educational decisions for other people’s children is something HSLDA claims to oppose. We believe that homeschooled children benefit from access to public school extracurriculars and classes and see working toward public school access in every state as part of advocating on behalf of homeschooled children.
Public funding
CRHE: “Public school districts should receive funds for services provided to homeschooled students. State funding should be made available to fund oversight of homeschooling.”
HSLDA: “We would be in favor of public school districts receiving funds for services provided to homeschool students. We would be opposed to school districts getting extra funding just to further regulate homeschooling.”
Response:
We are pleased that HSLDA is in favor of public school districts receiving funds for services provided to homeschooled students, a system which expands homeschooled students’ options and is already in place in states like Idaho and New Mexico. However, we are concerned about their unwillingness to fund oversight of homeschooling. One of HSLDA’s regular criticisms of school districts providing oversight for homeschooling has been that districts do not have the resources to effectively monitor homeschooling families. It is inconsistent to oppose adequately funding school districts and then turn around and oppose oversight on the basis of inadequate funding.
Conclusion
Most of HSLDA’s rejections of our proposed recommendations seem to be based on the principle of maintaining the status quo. The insistence on this principle belies the fact that HSLDA has been working to roll back homeschool oversight for decades now, and it obscures the reality that HSLDA has created that status quo—they are the ones who prevented oversight provisions from being enacted in those states that do not have them. Further, HSLDA is actively lobbying for less oversight in states that already have it, such as in Pennsylvania, and describing mere calls for research on the efficacy of current laws, such as HJ-92 in Virginia, as a “faith-based attack”.
In both this and last week’s WORLD magazine article on this topic, HSLDA has pushed back against calls for oversight by arguing that the majority of homeschoolers are fine under the current laws. This may be true for many homeschoolers, but it is not true for all homeschoolers. We are contacted regularly about abusive or neglectful homeschooling situations and are in contact with large numbers of homeschool alumni who grew up in bad homeschooling environments. There are homeschooled children today, as we write and as you read, who are being denied access to an education, or abused without access to mandatory reporters. These children need protections. We find it very strange indeed that a resolutely Christian organization like HSLDA is spending so much time caring for its current flock and so little time considering the stray lamb.
Last Updated: 25 April, 2022 by CRHE
CRHE to World Magazine: Don’t Downplay Abuse and Neglect
Today WORLD Magazine—an evangelical Christian news magazine established in 1986—published an article titled “Homeschool debate: How to keep a few bad apples from spoiling the bushel,” written by Daniel Devine. CRHE corresponded extensively with Devine prior to this article’s publication as he conducted multiple interviews with CRHE co-founder Heather Doney and other members of CRHE.
We are grateful to Devine for bringing attention to the problem of child abuse in homeschooling families, and for the time he took to interview Doney and speak with executive director Rachel Coleman and HARO executive director (and CRHE board member) Ryan Stollar. However, we are disappointed by what seems to be biased and irresponsible reporting by Devine or by his editors at WORLD. The failure to fact-check the statistics quoted and cited in the article, the implicit endorsement of community self-policing, and the use of decontextualized quotes from the websites of CRHE and HARO result in an article presenting only one side of the story and communicating, intentionally or not, a lack of respect for the experiences of abuse survivors among the homeschooling alumni community.
Abuse and the Homeschooling Community
The WORLD Magazine article downplays child abuse and neglect in homeschooling communities in several ways. Devine cites data from published studies purporting to show that the national rates of child abuse are between 4% and 7%, arguing that, by contrast, “only 1.2 percent of Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) members called for help in dealing with child protective services investigations” in 2004. However, these numbers do not actually tell us anything about the rate of child abuse and neglect in homeschooling families, and what few statistics we do have suggest that abuse and neglect are not less common in homeschooling families. Devine admits that the figure he cited “isn’t scientific,” but he nonetheless draws conclusions from it. There are several problems with this.
There is good reason to believe that abuse and neglect in homeschooling families is severely under-reported. Homeschooled children are not seen regularly by mandatory reporters in the way children who attend public school are, which alone would decrease abuse and neglect reports. Further, HSLDA excludes from membership families with prior contact with social services, automatically eliminating those families most at risk for abuse or neglect from its statistics. In addition, the rhetoric of many homeschool organizations, including HSLDA, is anti-social services, which discourages homeschool parents from reporting concerns about other families in their homeschool communities. HSLDA’s own pages on child abuse continue to discourage members from reporting suspected abuse and neglect and run contrary to best practices. Too often, abuse in the homeschooling community only comes to the public’s attention when a homeschooled child dies.
Homeschooling’s Invisible Children (HIC), a CRHE-affiliated site, exists to document these deaths, along with other abuses that occur in homeschooling communities. HIC, which Devine mentions in passing but does not expand on, has assembled a database of hundreds of criminal cases of neglect and abuse, including 92 cases of homeschooled children who have died from abuse and neglect from 2000 to the present. This number is comparable to the number of children who die of abuse and neglect in the general population, when taking the children’s ages and the number of students being homeschooled into account—and the HIC database is still very incomplete, drawing only on publicly available news articles and court cases. Our findings suggest that death from child abuse and neglect is at least as common among homeschooling families as in the general population, and is very likely more common.
Of course, not all abuse is captured by the high fatality rate. Physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse are all major issues in homeschooling communities. We know that HSLDA’s staff is aware of these problems, as they have been consulting with us at CRHE for months on ways to improve their child abuse resource pages. For HSLDA staffers to dismiss abusive or neglectful homeschooling families as “fake homeschoolers” is extraordinarily callous—and it is also false. Abusive and neglectful homeschooling parents tend to follow their states’ woefully inadequate homeschooling laws and are often involved in their local homeschooling communities. They are not “fake,” they are very real.
Finally, we are disappointed that Devine chose to quote homeschooling leaders with vested interests in HSLDA without providing the perspective of social workers, employees of the educational system, or experts on child abuse such as Boz Tchividjian of GRACE. These individuals could have provided a more balanced view of the often closed and insular world of Christian homeschooling, allowing the article to escape its ‘he-said-she-said’ narrative.
Educational Neglect in Homeschooling Families
Devine cites Dr. Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute as claiming that most studies “show the average homeschooler scoring in the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized tests.” Devine uses Ray’s statement to argue that educational neglect is not a problem in homeschooling circles. But this explanation fails on several levels.
Devine neglects to mention that most of the studies Ray cites were conducted by Ray himself. Ray has consistently demonstrated a lack of understanding of statistical survey methods—his samples are drawn from the most successful and activist homeschooling families and he makes no effort to correct for background factors. In other words, these studies do not include those homeschooled families who are most at-risk of educational neglect, meaning that they cannot be used to speak to the prevalence of educational neglect in homeschooling circles. The results of one of the few studies not conducted by Ray were published in 1999 by Lawrence Rudner. “This study does not demonstrate that home schooling is superior to public or private schools,” Rudner wrote. “It does not indicate that children will perform better academically if they are homeschooled.” CRHE provides more detailed critiques of Ray’s research studies on our Research Analysis page.
Our own original research on non-biased samples from Alaska and Arkansas suggests that there is very little difference between the average academic performance of homeschoolers and that of traditionally-educated students. Further, a growing body of evidence suggests that homeschoolers tend to underperform other students in math. Data from Alaska suggests that homeschooled students are 6 percentage points less likely to be proficient or above in math, a discrepancy that increases when looking at female students alone, and there is some data to suggest that homeschool graduates may be underrepresented in college attendance. Further research needs to be conducted, but no extant research suggests that homeschooled children perform better than their traditionally-schooled peers or that educational neglect is not a problem in homeschooling circles.
It’s important to remember that the problem is not so much “the average student” as it is those children who fall through the cracks. While many homeschooled children do quite well, those raised in neglectful families lack the resources provided to other neglected children who are educated in schools. Many states have no protections for homeschooled children whose parents fail to provide them with the educational resources necessary to learn, which means that children in families that badly need accountability may not only perform poorly but in fact fail catastrophically. Further, the process for reporting a homeschooling family for suspected educational neglect is often complicated and lacks transparency, suggesting that educational neglect in homeschooling communities is severely underreported. We at CRHE are contacted regularly by concerned aunts, uncles, and grandparents of children who are being educationally neglected under the guise of “homeschooling”—including families that are represented by HSLDA.
Problems with Self-Policing
Devine also spoke affirmatively of self-policing within homeschooling communities. While we are absolutely in favor of self-policing, we become concerned any time self-policing replaces outside accountability and genuine legal protections. Not every homeschooling family is involved in a homeschooling community, and many homeschooling communities have a culture that works against effective self-policing. Most homeschooling families are inclined to ignore warning signs based on the idea that parents know what’s best for their children and the perception that homeschooling families are immune from abuse, or even simply at less risk. This is a major problem.
Devine wrote about ICHE’s efforts at self-policing in homeschooling communities in Idaho, but those very efforts suggest that self-policing is an inadequate response to this problem. Under an agreement with the Idaho Coalition of Home Educators (ICHE), the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare forwarded reports of educational neglect in homeschool settings to ICHE, which then investigated the complaint. Yet Devine reports that ICHE found every single one of the 15 tips they received between 2000 and 2004 to be unsubstantiated, and writes that the system was discontinued in 2006 due to lack of reports. We would like to know what criteria ICHE used to determine the legitimacy of the reports, given homeschooling organizations’ general pattern of downplaying educational neglect. Our own conversations with officials in Idaho, as in other states, suggest that state officials are often at a loss to address educational neglect in homeschooling settings—their hands are tied by lax homeschooling laws and by the lack of clear reporting systems.
As Devine notes, in 2008 ICHE helped the Department of Health & Welfare draft guidelines for social services workers to use when dealing with homeschooling families. Those guidelines contain a section titled “Additional Perspectives from Home Educators” that correctly informs social services workers of the flexibility and innovation practiced by many homeschooling’ families. Though the guidelines repeatedly mention what is not a sign of educational neglect, they neglect to identify what is a sign of educational neglect. Our own guidelines provide such a list, but we have yet to find a single homeschooling organization that advises social services organizations or concerned relatives on how to recognize educational neglect in homeschooling settings rather than simply how not to recognize it.
Further, Devine’s article fails to mention the problems that did occur in Idaho’s homeschooling families during these years. In 2005, police following up on a report found Thomas and Jessica Halbesleben’s seven children alone in an unsanitary home, several suffering from medical neglect. The children, who ranged in age from 1 to 13, had experienced years of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. Halbesleben claimed to be homeschooling, but the children were ignorant of basic math and spelling. The court found that Jessica Halbesleben had removed her children from school to prevent teachers from reporting the abuse that was occurring in the home, and that the extra time at home had exacerbated the sexual abuse, including incest between the siblings. The Halbeslebens were convicted of several counts of felony injury to a child. Thomas Halbesleben had previously been convicted of felony child endangerment in 1998, but Idaho law does not prevent convicted child abusers from homeschooling. And this is not the only case we have collected of abuse and neglect in an Idaho homeschooling family during these years.
Though we encourage homeschooling communities to create official abuse prevention policies and to educate their members on non-corporal discipline, these methods are no substitute for reporting suspected child abuse and neglect to social services—only the government has the legal authority to take judicial action to protect children. As we see in this very article, communities have an incentive to dismiss the systemic issues as merely some “bad apples.” Homeschooled children—all of them—deserve better than that.
CRHE’s Position and Moving Forward
Given all of the aforementioned problems, it seems almost trivial to complain about specific mischaracterizations of CRHE. However, WORLD did discuss our policy recommendations inaccurately: we advocate flexible yearly assessments, which may include standardized testing but could also include portfolio assessments and a variety of other methods, some of which are already being used in many states. We are not calling for the strict regimen of testing implied in the article. We also believe that parents who do not have a GED or a high school diploma should be able to homeschool—as long as they are under the supervision of a certified teacher or other similarly qualified individual. While we understand that some nuance must necessarily be lost to the space constraints of print journalism, we do not believe these constraints necessitate the misrepresentation of our positions.
We are glad that WORLD magazine is broaching the subject of abuse in the homeschooling community, but are disappointed with their treatment of CRHE and HARO in this article. We hope that further articles on homeschooling alumni’s outreach will be handled with more attention to the experiences of the homeschooled alumni and less space for the talking points of the homeschooling leadership.
To end on a positive note, we are very excited about HARO’s survey on Christian homeschooling, which has received over 2100 responses as of noon on Aug. 22. It is our hope that these survey results will give us more insight into homeschool graduates’ experiences. We believe that gaining an accurate view of what homeschooling really looks like involves talking to homeschooled students and alumni, not simply the homeschooling leaders. After all, none of the homeschool leaders cited in WORLD were homeschooled students themselves.
The CRHE Board
Kathryn Brightbill
Rachel Coleman
Kierstyn King
Ryan Stollar
Last Updated: 20 October, 2023 by CRHE
How My Parents’ Homeschooling Choices Gave Me An Excellent Education
Here are some facts about me that I don’t often share: in middle school, I was a finalist in the National Spelling Bee and competed in the State Geography Bee. In high school, I won piano competitions, placed third in a national consumer education contest, took classes at the local university and community college, and achieved a near-perfect score on the SAT. After being waitlisted at Stanford, I graduated with honors from a selective public liberal arts college on the East Coast, and have since earned a Ph.D. in U.S. History. Oh, and one final fact: my parents homeschooled me K-12.
None of this makes me a poster child for home education – far from it; academics aren’t the only part of a child’s upbringing, after all. But though I tend to keep many of these achievements quiet – several of them I haven’t mentioned publicly in years until this article – I’d be hard-pressed to deny that my background represents a record of achievement. My own drive and interest in academic excellence are partially responsible for my success, as is my family’s middle-class socioeconomic status and high level of education – they had three masters’ degrees between them before they began homeschooling me. Yet in my experience, none of these things was the deciding factor that made me a homeschooling academic success story. Instead, my mother and father made a series of choices that determined how well our home school would function. These choices are available to every homeschooling parent, no matter their circumstances or educational background. I’ve listed them below.
1. Extending the Definition of Education Beyond the Classroom
My parents viewed virtually every experience as a potential educational opportunity. A museum visit, a book of historical fiction, a conversation with my father about aerodynamics, an impromptu physics experiment involving raisins in a glass of soda – all were as much a part of my education as were workbooks and textbooks. Don’t get me wrong – I had hours of “traditional,” sit-down instruction every day, to ensure I learned the basics and to prepare me for college. Nevertheless, my parents worked hard at finding educational value in even the most mundane or purely entertaining activities. They’d encourage me to perform literary analysis on a movie in order to better understand its meaning, or to explain the physics principles demonstrated by a fort I was building. There was no such thing as being “in class” or “out of class” in our family; our classroom was everywhere, and everything was part of my education. This facet of my parents’ teaching style made my whole life rich with educational content and taught me how to analyze ordinary occurrences for their deeper meaning, a key skill in higher-level humanities work.
2. Drawing Connections Between Activities
In addition to turning non-academic activities into learning experiences, my parents created informal educational “units,” without really saying they were doing so, to connect different types of learning with one another. A conversation with an astronomer at a science festival might lead to a visit to an observatory, a night-sky observation through my dad’s telescopes, a book on astronomy, and finally an episode of NOVA about astrophysics. My mom programmed our nightly movie-watching to correspond with things I had recently learned; she also planned outside activities such as museum trips to match things we were reading or learning at home. This ability to integrate outside learning content into a cohesive educational agenda helped me learn deeply in individual subjects, contributed to a multifaceted learning experience, and taught me to see connections between events and activities – another key humanities skill.
3) Creating Innovative Learning Opportunities
One of the great benefits of homeschooling is the ability to integrate innovative teaching techniques into the learning process. Unlike many of my friends growing up, my family didn’t use a formal curriculum; instead, my mom created one by picking up educational materials at homeschool conventions, educational supply stores, and libraries. (Today, she would have used the internet to achieve much the same goal.) Sometimes this meant I had a dated, substandard text instead of an up-to-date book, but usually it meant she had picked the best parts of the various curricula and combined them into a learning system all her own. Picking and choosing in this way also enabled her to tailor my curriculum to my strengths and weaknesses, rather than pursuing a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
In addition to the materials my mom purchased, many of the most rewarding educational activities we did were ideas she either made up or gathered from reading homeschooling magazines or alternative education books. She created a “Math Olympics” where we competed in a variety of math-based activities (I chose half of them) to learn math and win prizes; we followed that up with a more extensive “Social Studies Olympics” the following year. She put the names of historical figures in an envelope and had us pull a name at random and write a poem about that figure; when the envelope was empty, we created a book of our poems. We then did the same thing with creative non-fiction topics and finally with fiction, though we ran out of time to finish the last group before I graduated.
The key here is that my parents were not satisfied with simply purchasing educational materials and administering them to me. Instead, they worked hard to craft an individualized educational experience for me, inserting themselves into the teaching and learning process. It was that dedication to innovation, as much as any specific activities or materials, that enriched my education.
4) Following My Interests and Encouraging My Love of Learning
While much of my education was directed by my parents, they never failed to support my interests when I became excited by a subject or wanted to expand on something we were learning. When I became fascinated by clouds in elementary school, my parents took me to the library and helped me pick out a series of books which resulted in my learning about weather patterns and memorizing the names of the different cloud types. In sixth grade, they supported me as I kept working for weeks on what was supposed to be a five-page report on Ancient Rome that eventually topped thirty-five handwritten pages. The next year, after I read a fiction book set in Denmark, they encouraged me as I wrote a 20+ page report on that country entirely on my own initiative. This support for self-initiated learning waned somewhat as I reached my high school years – there just wasn’t enough time to both prepare me for college and follow up on my learning interests. Nevertheless, by encouraging self-directed learning, my parents helped me take ownership of my education and taught me that learning is something you can do for yourself, as well as for others – an idea that sustained me through college and graduate school.
5) Not Limiting My Potential
My parents did a good job of not telling me when something I wanted to do was really hard. When I wanted to win the state spelling bee, my mom didn’t tell me it was an extremely difficult thing to do, that I’d have to be a better speller than tens of thousands of kids who were studying too. Instead, we just started memorizing words. Because I didn’t know it was hard, I wasn’t intimidated by the work and was able to reach my goal. Similarly, when I unwittingly chose a difficult Bach prelude and fugue to play for my college piano auditions, neither my piano teacher nor my mother (a former piano teacher herself) bothered to tell me how hard it was. It was only after one of my auditions that the piano professor mentioned it was the hardest piece in the set! Had I known how difficult the piece was, I never would have attempted it, but because I simply worked to achieve my potential without knowing how I compared with others, I wasn’t afraid to accomplish big tasks.
6) Keeping Good Records
As soon as my mom decided to begin homeschooling me, she began keeping records of my academic work. What she called my “school folder” eventually came to encompass three full-size file boxes that contained everything from worksheets to reports to drawings to lecture and concert programs. Anything I had created, and anything that provided evidence for the activities I had done, was included. At the end of each year, my mom wrote a summary of what I’d accomplished during that year and included it in my file. Later, when it came time to create a high school transcript for me, she had only to go back through my school folder to remember everything I’d done. After I graduated from homeschool high school, my mother gave me the entire contents of the school folder – a physical record of my education for me to keep, and an invaluable collection of evidence that proved I had accomplished things as a homeschooler. Incidentally, we lived in states (California and Arizona) that didn’t require any sort of educational standards for homeschoolers, but had the state required an annual portfolio check, it would have been no problem – my mom was already keeping those records for my benefit.
7) Knowing When To Bring In Outside Help
Between the two of them, my parents were pretty well-versed in the major school subjects – my father, an engineer and psychotherapist, was trained in the sciences, while my mother, a writer and teacher, was trained in the humanities. Nevertheless, they took every opportunity to supplement my homeschooling with outside instruction, particularly when I reached the limits of their expertise. As a young child, I spent many happy hours at the local children’s library, attending storytimes and talking with friendly librarians. At the age of nine, I participated in a program called Science-By-Mail which provided me with a scientist pen-pal to oversee a series of educational units in science; I continued to correspond with this scientist until well into my college years. I also participated in a community swim team and had a private piano teacher.
My parents also realized they couldn’t provide me with an at-home experience truly equivalent to a lab science course, and sought to rectify this gap. As soon as the local community college let me begin taking classes there, I signed up to take lab courses in biology, chemistry, and physics. Later, I took additional courses at the local university.
By recognizing that they couldn’t do everything themselves, that I needed access to other teachers and educational professionals, my parents expanded the range of perspectives I was exposed to and ensured that I received a well-rounded education.
8) Preparing Me for College
College isn’t for everyone, but it clearly was for me and was something I wanted to do. Accordingly, my parents worked throughout my high school years to prepare me for college admissions. My mom drafted a high school transcript, creating credits roughly equivalent to the learning I was accomplishing, and then worked methodically to fill the gaps required for college admission; we remedied educational deficiencies through in-home learning when we could, and through college classes when we couldn’t. To prepare me for more selective colleges, my parents had me do a variety of volunteer activities (they look great on a college application!), prepped me for the SATs, made sure I took SAT II subject tests, scheduled and accompanied me on college visits, and even put me in touch with a professional college admissions counselor. Since as a homeschooler I didn’t have grades, it was especially important that my parents did all they could to make sure I’d have a chance at getting to a really good school.
* * * * *
Though I’ve divided my educational experience into helpful bullet points, taken together they paint a fairly comprehensive picture of why my education was successful. I had an excellent homeschool education because my parents invested their time, energy, and effort into creating one – and because they applied creative, innovative, and responsible solutions to the problems inherent in any educational process. They made sure I learned the basics, met critical benchmarks, prepared well for college, and documented my progress – but they did so while fostering creativity and love of learning. Creating a successful home education doesn’t require specialized training, but it does require a lot of hard work and a commitment to making good choices about your child’s future. I’m grateful to my parents for their involvement and for their good judgment, which helped make my homeschooling experience an academic success.