Benefits of Homeschooling, Research Paper Example

Homeschooling is an educational practice that involves parents taking charge of their children’s education in a home-based environment. Although homeschooling has been historically considered a fringe movement, statistics from the U.S. Department of Education indicate its growing popularity and the culturally and socially diverse range of families who opt for this educational alternative. Current estimates suggest that over two million school-aged children in the United States are taught by their parents, a number which Brian Ray suggests may be conservative due to a segment of homeschooling parents he terms “underground” (Ray) who opt not to register their children through the state and thus aren’t taken into account in statistical surveys. Although public perceptions of homeschooling families tend to depict them as “left wing unschoolers and right wing religious fundamentalists” (Reich 56), the limitations of the public education system has led to many families choosing this method of education for reasons other than religious freedom or a desire to avoid involvement with government institutions.  This includes the desire of parents to develop a stronger relationship with their children while controlling educational curriculum so as to provide a more comprehensive education than is currently available through public educational institutions which are often overcrowded and underfunded.  Surveys of homeschooled children reveal that they often do better at standardized tests than their publicly-educated counterparts, suggesting that individualized education in a home-setting prepares children to excel academically.  Although homeschooled children do not receive the same social experiences as children educated in traditional schools, there are many ways for parents to ensure that their children’s social development receives the same attention as their academic development, from local networks of homeschooling families to extracurricular involvement in sports and other group activities.  Given the current crisis in the American educational system, homeschooling can provide a viable alternative for parents who are able to commit to taking control of their children’s education in order to ensure that their children receive a solid educational foundation.

The history of homeschooling in the United States has its origins in cultural and social traditions of the 17^th and 18^th Century which deemed that parents were best suited to provide their children with moral, academic, and social skills.  According to David and Kim D’Escoto, “prior to compulsory education, findings show that the literacy rate in America was as high as 90 to 98 percent, a remarkable level that has never been attained since the establishment of our current state-controlled education system” (D’Escoto 3). Although formal schooling has been the most common educational practice in the United States since the mid-19^th Century, homeschooling has remained an option for parents who were dissatisfied with the level of education provided by state-controlled schools.  In his article “The Civic Perils of Homeschooling,” Ray Reich writes that “just ten years ago, educating a child at home was illegal in several states. Today, not only is homeschooling legal everywhere, it’s booming” (Reich 56). Although the legality of homeschooling rarely acted as a deterrent for parents who were determined to educate their children outside of traditional school settings, the gradual acceptance of this teaching method has allowed for an increased level of parental accountability in the educational process.  The use of standardized testing also allows for homeschooled children to gain admission to colleges and universities by demonstrating that they’ve reached the academic level necessary for such educational pursuits.  While there are many reasons why parents may choose to educate their children at home, the freedom to design a curriculum and implement it at a different, often quicker, pace than the traditional school system is primary among these.  As Reich points out, no other education arrangement offers the same freedom to arrange an education designed for an individual student; in homeschools, parents are responsible not only for selecting what their children will learn, but when, how, and with whom they will learn.  In this sense, homeschooling represents the apex of customization in education.  (Reich 56).

The laws and regulations for homeschooling vary widely from state to state.  Some states like California have fairly strict regulations requiring homeschooled students to confer with a tutor or other accredited teaching adviser while others take on a much more limited role.  In Texas, for example, the only requirement for homeschooling is that certain subjects be taught with the intention of providing an education.  Throughout the United States, there is no true limitation on who can teach their children at home, nor is there any sort of testing system for parents who wish to take on the role of teacher.  Indeed only two states–Rhode Island and Massachusetts–must pre-approve a parent’s plan to homeschool.  While there exists the potential for the abuse of this system–or lack of a standardized system–the overall relaxed attitude, nationwide, towards homeschooling exemplifies how homeschooling allows families total involvement, choice, and freedom in educating their children.

The majority of this educational freedom stems from the minimal, some would argue nonexistent, rules concerning the development of curriculum for homeschooled children.  While some parents choose to base their curriculum on those found in more traditional classrooms, in effect teaching school at home, others choose to find more creative ways to educate their children by focusing on the child’s individual learning style in order to address a child’s strengths and weaknesses on an individualized basis.  Roxanne D’Amato’s eldest daughter, Diane, was diagnosed as ADHD while she was attending her neighborhood public school.  After reading extensively about Attention Deficit Disorders and in consultation with her family physician, Mrs. D’Amato chose to intersperse her daughter’s study periods with regular recess breaks.  “I found that she brought more of herself to her written work when she was free to get up and move around,” Mrs. D’Amato stated.  In a regular classroom, Amber got in trouble for not being able to sit still.  I turned that negative into a positive by allowing her to listen to what her brain was telling her body.  When her brain said ‘move’, we would change it up:  switch from practicing her times tables to dancing or going for a walk around the neighborhood” (D’Amato).  Along with the educational basics of reading, writing, mathematics, history, and social studies, Mrs. D’Amato has broadened her curriculum to include life-skills, including sewing lessons and the construction of family budgets, volunteerism, with all three children spending one afternoon a week working at a local food bank, and hands-on lessons in entrepreneurship, which involved the entire family selling produce and baked goods at a nearby farmer’s market.

The recent resurgence in interest in homeschooling children has made finding resources increasingly simpler.  This can range from a wide variety of books on the subject, including those that are tailored towards parents who wish to integrate religious or civic elements into their educational plan, websites that educate parents on the various state-by-state rules regarding homeschooling, and homeschooling networks that provide both educational and social events for homeschooling families.   Such a diversity of information can often be daunting to families who are new to homeschooling.  As well, because parents bring their own educational backgrounds and moral ideals to the education of their children, critics of homeschooling fear that this may result in certain subjects and areas being overlooked or given short shrift.  However, according to Dr. Brian Ray, founder of the National Home Education Research Institute and a leading expert on homeschooling in the United States, the majority of parents who choose to homeschool their children do not possess a teaching degree.  Although he acknowledges that “88% of homeschooling parents have attained at least some education beyond high school, approximately one third of all homeschooling parents have acquired less than a bachelor’s degree” (Ray), statistics which suggest that the educational background of parents is not of primary importance to the educational success of their children.

According to Ray, children who are homeschooled “typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized achievement tests” (Ray).  These statistics remain consistent regardless of the level of state involvement in the homeschool process, the education levels of the homeschooling parents, or the family’s household income.  Ray’s suggestion that homeschooled children do better academically than their public school counterparts is echoed by Roxanne D’Amato, who has been homeschooling her three children–aged 11, 14, and 17–for the last five years.  Mrs. D’Amato notes that it is easiest to gauge the difference between the two educational systems with her eldest daughter, Diane, who attended a public school until she was in middle school.  In fact, it was Diane’s inability to read and diagnosis of ADHD that motivated Mrs. D’Amato to embark upon a homeschooling program with her children.  “After just a few weeks of working one-on-one with her, I saw a noticeable improvement in her reading comprehension,” Mrs. D’Amato stated in an email correspondence.  “Once she began to gain confidence, we never looked back” (D’Amato).  Diane recently completed her high school education through a combination of homeschooling and online distance learning, an option which allowed her to study advanced level chemistry and calculus, subjects which Mrs. D’Amato admits are “not [her] strong suit” (D’Amato), and has been accepted at several universities, including Cornell and Columbia.  Clearly, for motivated parents, homeschooling can provide one route to accommodating and combating difficulties that children encounter in the traditional school system, where teachers can be overburdened with large class sizes, budgetary constraints, and multiple high-needs students who require individualized attention.  As Dr. Ray points out, “for learning disabled students, there are higher rates of academic engaged time in homeschooling and greater academic gains made by the home educated” (Ray).  The customizable nature of homeschooling allows for the educational curriculum to be greatly compressed, making for shorter school days, more flexibility within the daily schedule, and increased time for family activities outside of the regular school day.

There is the potential within the homeschool environment for the social growth of children, namely their relationships with their peers, to get overlooked. This can occur, primarily, because the educational environment tends to be comprised of the parent/teacher and child/student with social interactions being limited to siblings. This has led to the public perception that homeschooled children as socially awkward and maladjusted, a stereotype that Mrs. D’Amato took great pains to correct within her own educational environment.  “I made a point of connecting with other families who homeschool, right from the start,” she states.  “We organized group trips, sporting events, parties, library days–basically it was all about combining fun and learning while making sure that our kids got to spend time with other kids” (D’Amato).  Research conducted by NHERI suggests that children who have been homeschooled have fewer social difficulties than their publicly-educated peers, perhaps because of the high level of parental involvement and motivation in ensuring that this aspect of their child’s education does not get overlooked.  The NHERI website states that “the home-educated are doing well, typically above average, on measures of social, emotional, and psychological development [and are] regularly engaged in social and educational activities outside their homes and with people other than their nuclear-family members” (NHERI).  Beyond socialization issues, which can be combated through extracurricular activities, the most worrisome aspect of homeschooling is the potential division it creates between homeschooled and publicly-schooled children.  This division, in which parents can customize their child’s education to a high degree, creates an educational disparity which allows some parents to avoid problems within the traditional school system rather than working with educators, local and state government, and other parents to make improvements within the traditional school system.  Rob Reich writes that while “customizing education may permit schooling to be tailored for each individual student, […] total customization also threatens to insulate students from exposure to diverse ideas and people and thereby to shield them from the vibrancy of a pluralistic democracy” (Reich 57).  In his essay “Why Homeschooling Should be Regulated,” Reich makes the case for government involvement in the homeschooling process to ensure that academic benchmarks by children who spend the majority of time away from the state’s watchful eye.  He suggests that much of the positive data supporting the homeschooling of children cannot be fully trusted as the respondents to surveys about the educational progress of homeschooled children tend to be self-selecting, with those parents who are not adequately educating their children failing to report their negative results.  Consequently, he argues, “we know almost nothing about how the average home-schooled child fares academically” (Reich 117).  There is the potential for a type of child abuse within this unregulated system, one in which “children whose parents fail to teach them to read and to write, to be capable of minimum basic skills, are suffering educational harm [from which] they have no opportunity to protest or seek academic assistance elsewhere” (Reich 118).  His solution to this gap in information is a three-part regulatory framework that would legislate homeschooling across the United States.  His proposal would make it mandatory for parents to register their children through the state and would require them to follow a state-mandated curriculum guideline.  As well, the state would be given license to regularly test homeschooled children to monitor their academic progress. Reich believes that “strictly enforced regulations [would] ensure that parents do not wield total and unchecked authority over the education of their children” (Reich 119), thus protecting the civic and educational rights of all homeschooled children.

Beyond arguments about the regulation or lack thereof within the homeschooling movement, perhaps one of the greatest difficulties with this system is that it is effectively limited to those families who have reached a particular level of financial security. Not only do parents need to be motivated to take control of their children’s education, but they also must have the economic resources that would allow for at least one parent or family member to remove themselves from the traditional workforce in order to act as their child’s teacher. While Dr. Ray reports that homeschooling families are drawn from a demographically wide group of people, his study does not address the financial backgrounds of such families, nor detail what economic measures they may take to make such an educational choice possible for their children. According to Roxanne D’Amato, the decision to homeschool her children involved a certain level of financial sacrifice, as it entailed her giving up a well-paid position as a bank manager.  Her husband, Paul, is a self-employed accountant with a large customer base that provides a steady source of income which they supplement by selling produce grown on their small farm. Mrs. D’Amato admits that her family was in a better position than some to opt for homeschooling:  “Maybe we don’t go on as many vacations anymore or buy big ticket items,” she says, “but it was definitely worth it. Not only do I get to help my children learn, but I get to see them a lot more than I did when I was working sixty hours a week [at the bank]” (D’Amato). While the homeschooling population may be limited to parents with both the means and motivation to embark on this commitment, there is the possibility that by removing their children from the traditional school system, parents like Roxanne and Paul D’Amato are freeing up valuable resources for children whose parents are unable or unwilling to provide their children with a similar education.

As with any educational system, there is no shortage of controversies within the homeschooling movement. However, the research undertaken by Ray and Reich seems to suggest that the majority of homeschooling parents choose this option because of a desire to provide their children with the full range of educational opportunities, some of which aren’t offered by the traditional school system. Their wish to give their children a creative environment in which to learn need not work in opposition to state-run school systems.  Although the regulatory issues are concerning to some, the risks associated with homeschooling children appears to be minimal when compared to the educational deficits that the average child may encounter within overcrowded classrooms where their unique educational needs may be overlooked.  Clearly, this is not an option for many families, but as Roxanne D’Amato states, for those who choose to make the commitment to homeschool their children, the potential benefits are “limitless and unending” (D’Amato).

Works Cited

D’Amato, Roxanne. “Re:  Homeschooling Questions.” Message to the author. 28 June 2011. E-mail.

D’Escoto, David and Kim. The Little Book of Big Reasons to Homeschool. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2007. Print.

NHERI: National Home Education Research Institute. 2011. Web. 9 July 2011.

Ray, Brian D. “2.04 Million Homeschool Students in the United States in 2010.” National Home Education Research Institute. NHERI, 3 Jan 2011. Web. 9 July 2011.

Reich, Rob. “The Civic Perils of Homeschooling.” Educational Leadership 59.7 (Apr. 2002): 56-59. Web. 9 July 2011.

Reich, Rob.  “Why Homeschooling Should be Regulated.” Homeschooling: A Reader. Ed. Bruce S. Cooper. Charlotte, NC:  IAP, 2005. 109-120. Print.