Record: Coalition for Responsible Home Education, “A Complex Picture: Results of the 2014 Survey of Adult Alumni of the Modern Christian Homeschool Movement, Installment Three” Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (1 April 2015). [Available Here]
Summary: This post reviews the third installment of HARO’s survey of homeschool alumni. For the other installments in the series please click on the following links:
- Installment 1: Background and Summary
- Installment 2: Demographics
- Installment 3: Academics and Non-Academics
- Installment 4: Food and Health
- Installment 5: Religion
- Installment 6: Present and Future
- Installment 7: Sexuality
- Installment 8: Mental Health
- Installment 9: Abuse
Installment three covers the findings about academic achievement, extracurricular activities, and socialization.
The authors begin with academic achievement. Except for sex education, respondents rated their instruction in all subjects as average or better. In both elementary and secondary subjects the sample rated their instruction higher in language arts and social studies than they did in STEM. When stratified by level of education, respondents felt they received better instruction in elementary subjects than high school subjects.
Here is a list of the most common homeschool curriculum according to HARO’s sample:
- Saxon (used at some point by 74% of respondents)
- A Beka (69%)
- Bob Jones (50%)
- Apologia (32%)
- AWANA (27%)
- Genesis (24%)
- McGuffey Readers (22%)
- Alpha Omega (22%)
- Other (20%)
Next the authors discuss the results for “non-academic subjects.” From most highly to lowly ranked, this includes driver’s education, home economics, college prep, socialization, job training, physical education, diversity in religious studies, and diversity in political studies. Additionally, 61% of respondents were employed for money, 96% had household chores, and 20% were the primary provider of childcare or education for a younger sibling.
In terms of modern culture, homeschool alumni were reasonably engaged. 88% of the sample was allowed to initiate hobbies that were different than those of their parents; 74% had televisions for the majority of their childhoods; 58% could use the internet unsupervised, and 54% could listen to secular music.
73% of the respondents rated their socialization during homeschooling as average, good, or very good. To the remaining 26%, socialization was poor, very poor, or not offered. The level of socialization was highly correlated with whether the respondent believed that homeschooling prepared them for the future.
96% of the respondents had non-sibling friends. However, 49% reported that parents had a hand in vetting or monitoring their friends. Some of these friends came from homeschool co-ops in which 75% of the respondents participated for at least some of the time they spent homeschooling. Students who participated in co-ops experienced higher levels of socialization. Furthermore, the 62% of the respondents who participated in sports in some way also generally experienced superior levels of socialization.
Appraisal: Readers are reminded, as discussed in the review of Installment 1, that HARO’s sample is not representative of the homeschool community as a whole. Their convenience sample from homeschool support groups like Homeschoolers Anonymous only gives us insight into the experiences of this particular group. However, this installment does support several trends that appear in other literature. For example, Belfield (2005), Qaqish (2007), and older studies studies like Frost and Morris (1988) and Ray and Wartes (1991) all support the idea that homeschooled children perform better than expected on verbal and worse than expected on math measures. For more on this so-called “math gap” see this review from the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.
The curriculum findings are interesting in that they illustrate that, at least for this sample, the standard fundmentalist curriculum standbys continue to exert the most influence. Much discussed curriculum trends like classical education or Charlotte Mason, or less fundamentalistic Christian curriculum like Sonlight or Biologos, are not popular enough with this sample to break the 20% threshold. This finding suggests a sample that is more fundamentalist than the more general homeschooling population.
But at the same time the socialization and cultural exposure data suggests a more worldly population than one would have guessed based on the curriculum list. According to this data, there is a substantial group of conservative Christian homeschooling families who take pains to use curriculum stressing biblical inerrancy and young earth creationism but who still allow their children to listen to secular music and surf the web unmonitored. I’m not sure what to make of that, but it is intriguing.
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