Homeschooling Versus Public Education - Fair Comparison?

After surveying dozens of Homeschooling websites, the majority from a list of the top Homeschooling sites were presented by people who appeared to be notably lacking in credentials pertaining to the field of education. Websites presented by groups seemed biased in their presentation, and rarely offered differing viewpoints to the reader. They were usually trying to boost the image of homeschooling.

Articles in Homeschooling Ezines featured many comments from the Homeschooling community and the majority of these showed that parents had taken their children out of the public school mainstream for religious reasons rather than for learning disability or health reasons. Some of the comments from the Homeschooling community seemed fanatical and some expressed a spirit of rebellion against the public school system and all its faults. One article questioned why homeschoolers should be judged by state and conventional school standards like the standardized testing put in place by the government. The reason students should be judged by these conventional standards, however imperfect, is because that is how the majority of colleges make their judgments.

While the up-front costs of homeschooling appear minimal (joining a program, buying books and materials) it appears that there are many hidden costs. Outside the umbrella of public school programs, the homeschooling family often has to arrange for each and every test, obtain certain forms from many varied sources, deal with legal issues, and purchase special supplies required for subjects such as science. Not all homeschooling programs offer a high-school diploma. Not all homeschooling programs take care of the testing and forms, and instead leave a huge workload for the parents.

There are reams of statistics and promotional pages showing the benefits of homeschooling compared to the lacks in public education. To try to make sense of all the statistics, searches were performed to locate the sources, the majority of which turned out to be presented by Homeschool associations. On the other hand, test grade comparisons appeared to be fairly acquired, as in the SAT test comparisons. There is no doubt that homeschooled students scored generally as well or better than public schoolchildren. But pay attention: when searching the websites presented by state, government, local public schools or the Department of Education, those had no information at all comparing the benefits of public versus Homeschool education. In fact they are not allowed to. If the public school system openly published negative facts or opinions about homeschooling, it would be accused of discrimination. So here is a situation that allows one group to speak but not another. The minority have all the rights to express their views and findings, but the other group can not make such comparisons or express such opinions. It is distressing to discover that there are so few reliable sources for fair comparison between the quality of the public education system and homeschooling.