Homeschoolers are Heros and they save Taxpayers Billions to Boot

The following piece appeared on Foundation for Economic Education.org and speaks for itself.


Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.



Home School Heroes

By Lawrence W. Reed
President, Foundation for Economic Education--www.fee.org

(The following essay first appeared in FEE’s journal, “The Freeman,” in February 1997. In the years since, the author’s estimation of the importance of the homeschool option has only increased. Though the numbers cited in the essay are now dated, the principles expressed herein are as valid as ever.)

Of all the ingredients in the recipe for education, which one has the greatest potential to improve student performance?

No doubt the teachers unions would put higher salaries for their members at the top of the list, to which almost every reformer might reply, “Been there, done that.” Teacher compensation has soared in recent decades at the same time every indicator of student performance has plummeted.

Other answers include smaller class size, a longer school year, more money for computers, or simply more money for fill-in-the- blank. The consensus of hundreds of studies over the past several years is that these factors exhibit either no positive correlation with better student performance or show only a weak connection. On this important question, the verdict is in and it is definitive: The one ingredient that makes the most difference in how well and how much children learn is parental involvement.



When parents take a personal interest in the education of their children, several things happen. The child gets a strong message that education is important to success in life; it isn’t something that parents dump in someone else’s lap. Caring, involved parents usually instill a love of learning in their children—a love that translates into a sense of pride and achievement as knowledge is accumulated and put to good use. Time spent with books goes up and time wasted in the streets goes down.

American parents were once responsible for educating their children. Until the late nineteenth century, the home, the church, and a small nearby school were the primary centers of learning for the great majority of Americans.

In more recent times, many American parents have largely abdicated this responsibility, in favor of the experts in the compulsory public school system. According to a 1996 report from Temple University in Pennsylvania, nearly one in three parents is seriously disengaged from their children’s education. The Temple researchers found that about one-sixth of all students believe their parents don’t care whether they earn good grades and nearly one-third say their parents have no idea how they are doing in school.

Amid the sorry state of American education today are heroes who are rescuing children in a profoundly personal way. They are the home schoolers—parents who sacrifice time and income to teach their children themselves. Home schooling is the ultimate in parental involvement.

Teaching children at home isn’t for everyone and no one advocates that every parent try it. There are plenty of good schools—many private and some public—that are doing a better job than some parents could do for their own children. But the fact is that home schooling is working—and working surprisingly well—for the growing number of parents and children who choose it. That fact is all the more remarkable when one considers that these dedicated parents must juggle teaching with all the other demands and chores of modern life. Also, they get little or nothing back from what they pay in taxes for an appallingly expensive public system they don’t patronize.

While about 46 million children attend public schools and more than 5 million attend private schools, estimates of the number of children in home schools nationwide range from 900,000 to 1.2 million. That’s a comparatively small number, but it’s up from a mere 15,000 in the early 1980s. In fact, home school enrollment has been growing by an astounding 25 percent annually for several years.

Parents who home school do so for a variety of reasons. Some want a strong moral or religious emphasis in their children’s education. Others are fleeing unsafe public schools or schools where discipline and academics have taken a backseat to fuzzy feel-good or politically correct dogma. Many home school parents complain about the pervasiveness in public schools of trendy instructional methods that border on pedagogical malpractice.

Home school parents are fiercely protective of their constitutional right to educate their children. In early 1994, the House of Representatives voted to mandate that all teachers—including parents in the home—acquire state certification in the subjects they teach. A massive campaign of letters, phone calls, and faxes from home schoolers produced one of the most stunning turnabouts in legislative history: By a vote of 424 to 1, the House reversed itself and then approved an amendment that affirmed the rights and independence of home school parents.

Critics have long harbored a jaundiced view of parents who educate children at home. They argue that children need the guidance of professionals and the social interaction that come from being with a class of others. Home schooled children, these critics say, will be socially and academically stunted by the confines of the home. But the facts suggest otherwise.

A 1990 report by the National Home Education Research Institute showed that home schooled children score in the 80th percentile or higher, meaning that they scored better than 80 percent of other students in math, reading, science, language, and social studies. Reports from state after state show home schoolers scoring significantly better than the norm on college entrance examinations. Prestigious universities, including Harvard and Yale, accept home-schooled children eagerly and often. And there’s simply no evidence that home-schooled children (with a rare exception) make anything but fine, solid citizens who respect others and work hard as adults.

Home school parents approach their task in a variety of ways. While some discover texts and methods as they go, others plan their work well before they start, often assisted by other home schoolers or associations that have sprung up to aid those who choose this option. Common to every home school parent is the belief that the education of their children is too important to hand over to someone else. (My personal belief is that many inner-city government schools are so rotten to the core, so riddled with corruption, incompetence, waste, indoctrination, union goonism and nonsense curriculum that trusting a child to such an environment is nothing less than child abuse. My heart goes out to the many parents and children who have no option but to be captives.)

Writing in the July 1996 issue of Reason magazine, Britton Manasco argues that the growth of CD-ROMs, Internet services, and computerized educational networks is likely to make homeschooling even more attractive to parents. For a tiny fraction of what a printed version might cost, one software publisher is offering a classic books program that incorporates more than 3,500 unabridged literary works, complete with hundreds of video clips and illustrations. A support group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, provides inexpensive on-line help, resources, and evaluations for thousands of home school children worldwide. Another organization links first-rate instructors and home school students from all over the country via computer in a college preparatory program that includes a core curriculum for about $250 per course.

In every other walk of life, Americans traditionally regard as heroes the men and women who meet challenges head-on, who go against the grain and persevere to bring a dream to fruition. At a time when more troubles and shortcomings plague education and educational heroes are too few in number, recognizing the home school heroes in our midst may be both long overdue and highly instructive.