by J. Michael Smith
HSLDA President
The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) estimates there are more than 1.5 million children being taught at home. Furthermore, the DOE estimates that homeschooling has been growing at 7 percent a year for the last 10 years.
Two related questions many people ask are, “Why has homeschooling become so popular?” and “What is motivating parents to take on this daunting responsibility?” In the most recent report by the DOE, parents gave three basic reasons for choosing home education: to provide religious or moral instruction, concerns about the school environment, and dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools.
Regarding the third reason, there is new research showing that the average homeschooler who takes standardized achievement tests is doing very well. The study, commissioned by the Home School Legal Defense Association and conducted by Brian Ray, an internationally recognized scholar and president of the nonprofit National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), is called “Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics.”
The study included almost 12,000 homeschool students from all 50 states who took three well-known standardized achievements tests—the California Achievement Test, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Stanford Achievement Test—for the 2007–08 academic year. The students were drawn from 15 independent testing services, making it the most comprehensive homeschool academic study to date.
The results reinforced previous homeschool studies conducted over a period of 25 years.
