How effective is home schooling?
Very effective because I have homeschooled my 3 kids since Nursery to Grade 3. They learned how to read, write and add from me. My kids are at par or even above the level of performance of students in regular schools.
As cited in http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp, here are proofs of academic excellence of homeschooled kids in the U.S.A.
“…study by Dr. Lawrence Rudner of 20,760 homeschooled students … found the homeschoolers who have homeschooled all their school aged years had the highest academic achievement. This was especially apparent in the higher grades. This is a good encouragement to families catch the long-range vision and homeschool through high school.”
From the study called Strengths of Their Own “…show that when parents, regardless of race, commit themselves to make the necessary sacrifices and tutor their children at home, almost all obstacles present in other school systems disappear.”
A study in 1990 by the National Home Education Research Institute in USA entitled “A Nationwide Study of Home Education: Family Characteristics, Legal Matters, and Student Achievement” surveyed 2,163 homeschooling families.
The study “demonstrated that only 13.9 percent of the mothers (who are the primary teachers) had ever been certified teachers. The study found that there was no difference in the students’ total reading, total math and total language scores based on the teacher certification status of their parents.” (That means a parent is very qualified to teach his/her child.)
“The findings of this study do not support the idea that parents need to be trained and certified teachers to assure successful academic achievement of their children.”
“Dr. Brian Ray, president of the Home Education Research Institute, reviewed over 65 studies concerning home education. He found that homeschoolers were performing at average or above average on test levels. ”
“In 1986, researcher Lauri Scogin surveyed 591 homeschooled children and discovered that 72.61% of the homeschooled children scored one year or more above their grade level in reading. 49.79% scored one year or more above their grade level in math.”
“Similarly, in 1986, the State Department of Education in Alaska which had surveyed homeschooled children’s test results every other year since 1981, found homeschooled children to be scoring approximately 16 percentage points higher, on the average, than the children of the same grades in conventional schools.”
“In Arkansas, for the 1987-88 school term, homeschool children, on the average, scored in 75% on the Metropolitan Achievement Test 6. They out-scored public school children in every subject (Reading, Math, Language, Science, and Social Studies) and at every grade level. ”
“Conclusion
These statistics point to one conclusion: homeschooling works. Even many of the State Departments of Education, which are generally biased toward the public school system, cannot argue with these facts. Not only does homeschooling work, but it works without the myriad of state controls and accreditation standards imposed on the public schools.”