Where Do Homeschool Families Get Curriculum, and Are Homeschooled Children Well Educated?

Homeschool curriculum is varied, to suit each homeschooling family's needs, budget and style. Home schoolers are committed to excellence and companies have found that homeschool curriculum is big business, so the materials available are mind-boggling. Some parents prefer to school through correspondence school, or video school, where they are not the primary teacher. Others purchase a full set of books and basically take over the traditional teacher role. Many, if not most, customize their curriculum and materials to their children's ages, interests and abilities.

The library is probably the single biggest resource for homeschool curriculum, but there are endless catalogs selling everything imaginable. Not only the 3 R's, but everything from A to Z is available for purchase, for every age and learning style. Many families pass their resources down from child to child. In addition, many homeschoolers pool their resources, or sell gently used materials for a substantial discount to other families. There are vast resources available on the Internet as well. Although some homeschooling families do use t.v. as a tool occasionally, it is combined with a great deal of reading.

An article in Mother Earth News (Lee, 2001, June, 22), cites a North Carolina State University study finding that 12 of the most popular science textbooks used in U. S. middle schools contain a high degree of error. John Hubisz, author of the school's research, states that "many middle school science teachers have little physics training and may not recognize errors." There have been other studies noting breathtaking errors in history books, as well as unqualified teachers who don't catch the mistakes. Home school parents, however, are vigilant guards of their children's influences, and because they buy the curriculum themselves, carefully check it in the first place, and quickly pitch it if they discover later that they made a purchasing error.

But how does home schooling curriculum work academically? Well, let's look at some statistics. The U. S. Department of Education, in its 1999 survey of parents, found that the home school average reading score for white and minority students was at the 87th percentile while public school students achieved the 61st percentile for whites and only the 49th percentile for minorities. Math came out at the 82nd percentile for white home schooled students and the 77th percentile for minorities, while public school math scores were at the 60th percentile for whites and the 50th percentile for minorities. (Home School Statistics, 2001) Here, as well as in statistician Dr. Brian Ray's research (Ray, 1990), homeschoolers were found to score at or above the 80th percentile on all standardized achievement tests in all areas tested, while the national average is the 50th percentile.

In a recent study of more than 20,000 home school students, commissioned by Home School Legal Defense Association, carried out by Dr. Lawrence M. Rudner, director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation at the University of Maryland and published in the Educational Policy Analysis Archives March journal, home schooled students were found to score much higher than public and private school children on every subject and at every grade level of the ITBS and TAP. The study found that the longer the children had been home schooled, the higher the scores, especially noticeable during the higher grades (Study: Home, 1999).

The interesting thing is that a parent's teaching certification had no bearing on the children's scores. This was also found to be true in the U.S. Dept. of Education's 1999 survey (Home School Statistics, 2001). My own children had college level scores across the board on high school achievement tests, and my youngest scored at college level in 3rd grade on social studies and science. It is clear, says Mary Shaw in "A Brief Look at Comparisons of Standardized Test Results for Home Educated Students and Public School Students" (1998), that "restrictions or objections to home schooling cannot be made on the basis of academic achievements" (Shaw, 1998).

Home schooling is legal in all 50 states (Lyman, 1998), but the regulations vary from state to state. There are many avenues available, such as signing up with the public school for their home school program, joining or chartering a private school for the express purpose of home schooling, or even exercising parental rights and just doing it. And based on the statistics, homeschool curriculum is working quite well.

References

Personal experience

Facts on homeschooling. (2002). Retrieved February 6, 2003 from the National Home Education Research Institute's Web site: http://www.nheri.org/

Lee, A. (2001, June). Not by the book. Mother Earth News, 22. Retrieved February 9, 2003, from Proquest, Lirn database.

Lyman, I. (1998, Sept. 1). What's behind the growth in homeschooling? USA Today Magazine. Retrieved February 12, 2003, from eLibrary, Lirn database.

Quick tables and figures. (1999). Retrieved February 12, 2003, from the National Center for Education Statistics Web site:http://nces.ed.gov/quicktables/Detail.asp?key=579

Shaw, M. (1998). A brief look at comparisons of standardized test results for home educated students and public school students. Retrieved February 7, 2003, from http://www.ontariohomechool.org/comparison.html

Study: Home schooled students excel. (1999, March 25). Maranatha Christian Journal. Retrieved February 15, 2003, from http://www.mcjonline.com/news/news3059.html

U.S. Department of Education. (2001). Home school statistics. Retrieved February 12, 2003, from http://www.uhea.org/stats.html