HOMESCHOOLING AND YOUNG ADULT OUTCOMES: Evidence from Cardus 2011 and 2014

Summary: Cardus Religious Schools Initiative released their first survey in 2011 (review available here). They later released their second study in 2014 (review available here). These studies provide rare randomly sampled data about young adults who had been homeschooled in the United States. In this article David Sikkink and Sara Skiles analyze data from both studies to draw conclusions about the outcomes of homeschoolers in areas like the development of moral and religious values, family relationships, educational outcomes, and civic life.

The Cardus research is built on the premise that the success of homeschooling should be judged based on how well it fulfills the parent’s intended goals rather than traditional measures of success like grades, test scores, or graduation rates. Common motivations for homeschooling that the authors mention include 1. the desire to provide a safe environment away from negative peer influence, 2. the desire to provide religious or moral instruction, 3. the desire for strong family relationships, and 4. the desire to provide improved instructional quality.

Although the 2011 survey found some negative outcomes to homeschooling like low academic achievement, high rates of divorce, low political engagement, and feelings of helplessness in the face of struggles, Sikkink and Skiles (as representatives of Cardus, a pro-homeschooling organization) attempt to justify these results based on the claim that homeschooling is a counter-cultural movement that would naturally lead to a set of outcomes like these. For example, the authors justify the fact that homeschoolers are less likely to go to college by saying, “leaving home for a college experience may seem unnecessary and inconvenient when learning has been experienced in the intimate sphere of the family and outside of formal institutional channels.” (pg. 3).

The total sample that Sikkink and Skiles work with includes over 3,000 US high school graduates who graduated between 1990 and 2008. Homeschoolers are categorized as religious and non-religious based on their mother’s church attendance record. The sample includes 141 religious homeschoolers and 60 nonreligious. For a homeschooling study with a random sample, this is a huge number. These homeschoolers are compared with 1,771 public school students. The researchers are able to control for several measures of family structure like race, gender, age, number of siblings, citizenship, and whether the student was raised by both biological parents.

Now it is time to discuss the results they found:

1. Religious life. Overall, the outcomes of religious life are mixed. In general, homeschoolers participate in and donate to religious institutions less than people who graduated from other forms of schooling. However, homeschoolers are more likely than public schoolers to have experienced a turning point in their life where they made a commitment to God. They also believe that faith should be integrated into social and political debates and that the US is hostile to their moral and religious values. Nevertheless, homeschoolers are not more likely to say that their religion offers a sense of fulfillment or that they have a deep connection with God. Homeschoolers read the Bible, pray, and attend religious services at the same levels as public schoolers. Religious homeschoolers are less likely to believe that the Bible has any sort of errors regarding science and history.
2. Values and beliefs. Religious homeschoolers are more likely to espouse a number of evangelical beliefs such as belief in traditional gender roles and the sinfulness of premarital sex, cohabitation, and gay marriage.
3. Family relationships. Many homeschoolers never get married. When they do, they marry at similar ages and have similar divorce rates to people from other forms of schooling. The authors mention the possibility that homeschoolers’ distaste for institutions may even extend to the institution of marriage.
4. Educational outcomes. Homeschoolers finish fewer years of postsecondary education. When they do go to college they are more likely to attend colleges with small enrollments that are less selective and that are not research intensive. As such, the incomes of homeschoolers tend to be lower. The authors explain that since homeschoolers have experienced education outside of school, they may be more critical about the societal norm of pursuing a degree. There are also several hurdles for homeschoolers pursuing degrees, like limited access to college recruiters.
5. Personal well-being. This category is troubling for homeschooling advocates since homeschoolers are more likely than public schoolers to report a weak sense of direction and purpose in life. They also feel more helpless in dealing with life’s problems. Homeschoolers express lower levels of well-being in general, but the authors say that selection bias cannot be ruled out since children are often homeschooled when they are not thriving in a public school.
6. Civic life. Homeschoolers are not trusting of neighbors, strangers, and people in general. They are also very skeptical of institutions like mass media, the Federal government, public schools, and scientists. Religious school graduates are similar to homeschoolers in these levels of distrust, but homeschoolers are less trusting overall. Interestingly, homeschoolers trust atheists at the same level as public schoolers. Now turning to charitable giving and volunteering, homeschoolers (particularly religious homeschoolers) do not perform well. They are less likely to say that they would volunteer for an issue that is important to them. Their hours of volunteering and amount of charitable donations in the the past 12 months are less than those of people who graduated from other forms of schooling.
7. Political life. Homeschooling appears to foster deep appreciation for the democratic values of individual freedom and freedom of expression. While they feel the same obligation as public schoolers to participate in politics, homeschoolers are less likely to say that their high school classes increased their interest in politics and government. Finally, religious homeschoolers are less likely to read the news.
8. Work life and the public good. Homeschoolers are less likely to say that they want a job where they are helpful to others or society. They look less often for friendships at work, and they are less likely to give work any particular religious meaning. Public schoolers have the same likelihood of saying that God called them to a particular line of work as do homeschoolers.

In conclusion, religious homeschooling seems to teach religious and moral beliefs, but it does not strengthen participation at churches or personal experiences with religion.  In an effort to defend some of homeschooling’s poor results, Sikkink and Skiles take the view that homeschooling’s counter cultural views naturally lead to isolation from and lower trust in institutions like secondary education, churches, and volunteer organizations. They also propose that homeschooling creates people who are more concerned with the family and immediate personal relationships than with society as a whole.

Appraisal: Although these results fail to capture the great diversity of ideologies at play in the homeschool community, Cardus’ data is incredibly significant because of the large and randomly selected sample. Nevertheless, as a pro-homeschooling organization, they constantly try to put a positive spin on some of their very negative findings. Some of their explanations seem reasonable, but others come across as special pleading.

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