Home School Versus Public or Private Education: Which is Better?

Parents usually ask themselves if home schooling actually works, or if public schools are such a problem, maybe working to afford private schools may be a better option for their children's education. Parents are reasonably cautious when considering something as important as their progeny's learning environment.

Parents can be assured that many, high quality studies and research that shows home schooling tends to produce superior students to those in public or private schools. However, part of the results of such research can be explained that concerned parents involved in their children's education will always produce better results regardless of the method they take.

Enough cases exist, however, to account for even genuinely interested parents; and the final answer remains that home schooling is the best choice a parent can make.

The U.S. Dept of Education sponsored a study that showed home schooled children's test scores were exceptionally high. Even the median scores for all grades were much bigger than those students of public, Catholic or private schools. For grades one through four, average home schooled students were generally one grade higher than their counterparts in public school. By the equivalent of eighth grade, those home schooled students were generally considered four years ahead of those in public school.

A big part of those results were a consequence of public schools doing very poorly, not just that home schooling performs better. Even then, home schooled students generally surpassed students even from private schools.

The cost of home schooling is generally lower, as well. On average, public schools spend about $6,500 per student per calendar year, and private schools about $3,500 per student while home schoolers spend about $550 per student per calendar year. This doesn't factor the time a parent spends without pay that a teacher would normally be paid for.

State after state ruled that public school attendance must be mandatory as the public school system grew in the latter half of the nineteenth century. There is a question of how a school can offer a true value in education when parents are forced to enroll their children in a state run public school.

One argument was that rural parents didn't see any real value in a formal education. Yet the statistics show that illiteracy rates in 1840 Massachusetts were two percent of adults, whereas in 1995 the illiteracy rate for adults rose to nineteen percent despite the ready availability of books and libraries.

Millions of children are home schooled in the United States every year. Thousands of those children went on to colleges and universities, even some of the most challenging and prestigious institutions in the country. There is an absence of peer pressure in a home schooling environment that allows children to display eagerness to learn without reprisals from other students or puts them in a position where they are mocked for wanting to learn. Interested parents and tutors are there to encourage students to do their best.

The results cannot be denied; home schooling works outstandingly.