Homeschooling -- A Research Perspective

My wife Barb and I have been homeschooling/unschooling our son for over four years and have seen positive results on his creativity, focus, and love of learning. I have a science background so I've been interested in what the research has to say in general about homeschooling. Here's what I've found so far:

First, schooling at home can allow the child to follow more of their own interests compared to traditional schooling. This self-direction can result in motivation that is internal instead of external. Researchers Ryan and Deci have found that internal motivation can result in enhanced performance, persistence, and creativity.

Also, Utman found that a focus on the opportunity for learning and the development of competence (typically found in homeschooling) leads to better task performance than does a focus on displaying high levels of ability (typically found in traditional schooling). Tasks include word memorization, reading comprehension, pattern recognition, and creative writing.

This does not mean that homeschooling automatically produces better results. In a review of homeschooling research, Kunzman and Gaither found that compared to traditional schooling, homeschooling generally results in increased verbal skills and decreased math skills. Other studies have found more positive academic benefits of homeschooling, but can suffer from flawed methodology such as non-random samples.

For those concerned about higher education, Kunzman and Gaither also found that homeschooled applicants are accepted at roughly the same rates as their conventionally schooled peers.

This research supports a decision to homeschool, but best evidence for me is my son's own happiness and love of learning.

-Mike Matessa

References

Kunzman, R., & Gaither, M. (2013). Homeschooling: A comprehensive survey of the research. Other Education, 2(1), 4-59. (http://www.othereducation.stir.ac.uk/index.php/OE/article/view/10/55)

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American psychologist, 55(1), 68. (http://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/641/deci_ryan_2000.pdf)

Utman, C. H. (1997). Performance effects of motivational state: A meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1(2), 170-182. (http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/1997_Utman_PSPR.pdf)

Wes Beach: Supporting Alternatives to High School

During his hour long presentation at the DLC, Wes Beach fielded a question from a young man in the audience:  “Do you mean to say, that all you need to be successful in college is the ability to read, write and do basic math?”  

Wes nodded and answered, deliberately,  “Yes”.

“You just blew my mind!”  The teen gushed.  

A small smile formed on Wes’s face.  Although others disagree with him,  Wes exudes unshakable assurance from 53 years as an educator, the last ten years of which he graduated more than 1,400 young people from high school early.  It’s hard to argue with the results he’s seen in that time--he’s accumulated quite a case study that high school is not necessary for success in life.

That’s right.  High school is not necessary for success in life.

High school is not necessary.

Wes taught in public junior high and high school before forming his own private school, Beach High School.  Initially, through Beach High, Wes awarded extra credits to his public high school students--credits for experiences that his students wanted but their high school didn’t offer.  By 1993, Wes left the public system to run Beach High full time.  

Wes writes of Beach High graduates: “Almost all of them have skipped a large part or all of high school, missing the academic preparation that is supposedly necessary for college and life.  They have gone on to succeed in vocations ranging from professional rock climbing to medicine.  The majority of these people choose to go to college, and many of them reach the highest levels of formal education and enter the professions.”

Beach High is not accredited, but it doesn’t seem to matter.  Wes works with students to create a transcript that reflects their experiences and goals.  He’s had students admitted straight to four year universities, including Stanford, UC Berkeley and Harvard.  Most attend a community college first. The military does not recognize a Beach High School diploma,  but that is the only institution that has posed a problem. 

Many of Wes’s students have chosen to forgo college.  Wes shares:  “they’ve been successful in dance, music, acting, photography, sports, crafts, high tech and entrepreneurial endeavors.  Among these people are a principal dancer with a big-city ballet company, a well-known wedding photographer, a successful singer and recording artist, a leading man in movies, and a professional rock climber.”

Wes is quick to point out that families can easily set up their own homeschools.  California law allows families to establish their own private high school, and create their own transcripts for their students.  http://www.hsc.org/establishing-your-own-private-school.html

The California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE) is another option, for those 16 or older. http://www.chspe.net/  The CHSPE is a test of basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills.  It allows students to leave high school early and attend community college full time.  The CHSPE is different from the California High School Exit Eam (CAHSEE), which does NOT allow students to graduate early!  Public high schools--including public charters and independent study programs--are reluctant to inform students of the CHSPE option, because it doesn’t reflect well on the school’s graduation rates.

To take the GED, students must wait until they are 18, and the test has 5 content areas (reading, writing; mathematics; science; and social studies).

In summary, young adults--14, 15 or 16 years old--who do not want to pursue traditional high school coursework have several options.  Wes shares the stories of nine such people in his inspiring book Forging Paths:  Beyond Traditional Schooling. http://www.amazon.com/Forging-Paths-Beyond-Traditional-Schooling/dp/0615577849

Some final words from Wes: “I’ve spent time attempting to understand why people succeed who are “academically unprepared”.  The obvious answer is that academic preparation is not what’s fundamentally necessary.  It appears to me that personal strengths are what’s foundational in success, strengths such as confidence, curiosity, passion, realistic self-knowledge, a capacity for wholehearted engagement, an ability to persevere, and a sense of autonomy.”

Pam Sorooshian: Trust the Children

“First, do no harm,”  was Pam Sorooshian’s goal for herself as a homeschooling parent, over 20 years ago.  

“It sounds like I set the bar pretty low,” she joked to her audience at the Discovery Learning Center.  Surely, one would hope, she could accomplish more than not harming her three precious daughters!  

As it turned out, “do no harm” wasn’t an easy goal to achieve, and a motto Pam returned to again and again as she evaluated her parenting choices.

Extremely unhappy with the public schools, she pulled her daughters out when her oldest was a third grader.  As a new homeschooler, Pam thought she’d start with unit studies.  

And she looked for the light in her children’s eyes.  Were they shining with interest and enthusiasm, or dimming in boredom or resentment?  

Quickly, it became obvious to Pam that attempting to teach her daughters when they weren’t ready to learn resulted in apathy or struggle.  Teaching was harming her children’s curiosity, harming their parent-child relationship--and she had resolved to “do no harm”!   

She took a step back.

Pam found unschooling soon after, and the rest is history.  She’s been an advocate for peaceful parenting and unschooling ever since.  Pam answers parents’ questions on several online homeschooling groups, including Unschooling California on Facebook.

She doesn't mince words, and her words are powerful.  She challenged homeschooling parents using a charter school to throw their children’s high-stakes test scores in the trash, without even opening them first.  And to tell their children: “Mom thinks so little of this test that it’s not even worth looking at!”

As independent homeschoolers with a private school affidavit, Pam’s daughters didn’t take the standardized tests.  “But I don’t know if I could have done that (not looked at the scores),” she laughed, “That would be hard,”

One of Pam’s biggest influences is John Holt, former school teacher turned homeschooling advocate.  She quoted Holt on the topic of trust:  “To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves...and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted,”

“Trust the Children” is the Homeschooling Association of California’s motto (Pam serves on the board), and the theme of her talk to the DLC.    To begin to trust ourselves, Pam advised, we need to reflect on our own childhoods and school history, and recognize the ways in which we were harmed.  When did we first lose faith in our own competence in math, for example ?  We didn’t start out insecure.  All two and three year olds are extremely confident in their abilities, Pam pointed out.  Somewhere in our growing up, the light went out.    “Go back to the root,” Pam advised.  Rediscover that joyful, undamaged child we once were, and our children once were.

Recognize as completely arbitrary the public schools’ timeline for skills and competencies, she said.  Just as it doesn’t matter if a child learns long division as an eight year old, it doesn’t matter if she learns to read at five or six, or even thirteen.  Pam’s children learned to read when they were ready.  One was three, one was five, and one was seven.  Research done on homsechoolers suggests that the natural age for learning to read varies from five years old to nine years old, with some children reading much younger and much later.  

Letting our children read when they are ready is an incredible gift, Pam said.  It’s the gift of confidence in their own ability to master a skill that our society deems incredibly valuable.  

Alternately, forcing our children to read before they are ready is incredibly damaging.

Forcing any learning is harmful, Pam emphasized.  The desired knowledge may in fact be learned, but is it remembered?  How well, and at what cost?  Pam has seen the result of coercive learning in the hundreds of students who take her college level economics classes.  Young adults who know formulas but don’t know how to apply them.  Disturbingly, they don’t know that they don’t know! Pam has too many students who don’t care to know, or do the bare minimum to get by.  

In contrast, Pam has interacted with hundreds of unschooled young adults who recognize when they don’t know something, have not lost the desire to learn, and have the confidence in their ability to learn it.  They have not been harmed; their natural learning ability remains intact.  Pam recommends Peter Gray’s book Free to Learn for an overview of how humans have evolved to learn, naturally and without coercion.

Unschooling paved the way for Pam’s three daughters to attend and graduate from college, but Pam insists that college is not “the be all and end all”.  It’s not for everyone.

If you’d like to read more, Sandra Dodd maintains a collection of Pam’s writing on her website:  http://sandradodd.com/pamsorooshian