By Dr. Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.
Many journalists ask me, “Why do homeschool students do so well academically?” And I have had to answer this same question as an expert witness in court many times. There are some simple answers, one of which I would like to propose in this piece.
The Context
First, about three decades of research by many different scholars has revealed that home-educated students consistently score 15 to 30 percentile points above the public school average on standardized academic achievement tests. That is, they score, on average, better than 65% to 80% of public school students. Further, state-collected data show the same thing as do these studies.[1]
Methods
The researchers who repeatedly tell us about the high average achievement of the homeschooled have used various methods in their studies. Many are cross-sectional descriptive studies that take a snapshot of hundreds or thousands of students’ test scores at one point in time. These students are not followed over time and they are not randomly assigned to treatments (e.g., public school, private school, and homeschool). These studies mostly simply reveal correlations or mathematical patterns between achievement and various variables (e.g., parent’s formal education level, degree of structure in the homeschooling).
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