STATE REGULATION OF HOMESCHOOLING AND SAT SCORES: Is There a Relationship?

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Milton Gaither

Record:  Brian D. Ray and Bruce K. Eagleson, “State Regulation of Homeschooling and Homeschoolers’ SAT Scores” in Academic Leadership: The Online Journal 6, no. 3 (14 August 2008).  [Available fulltext here]

Summary:  Ray, founder and president of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), and Eagleson, Chief of Emergency Medicine at a hospital in Lebanon, PA, here present the results of a study of over 6,000 homeschooled students’ SAT scores nationwide to argue that homeschoolers’ academic achievement is not affected by the degree to which homeschooling is regulated by the states. Continue reading →

Posted in Academic Achievement, College/Postsecondary, Policy/Regulation | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

RETHINKING THE BOUNDARIES: Perry Glanzer Defends Homeschooling against Rob Reich’s Critique

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Milton Gaither

Record:  Perry L. Glanzer, “Rethinking the Boundaries and Burdens of Parental Authority over Education: A Response to Rob Reich’s Case Study of Homeschooling” in Educational Theory 58, no. 1 (2008): 1-16

Summary:  Glanzer, an education professor at Baylor University best known for his work on moral education in U.S. colleges and in Russia, here offers a rebuttal to Rob Reich’s argument for increased government regulation of homeschooling.  Continue reading →

Posted in Policy/Regulation | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on RETHINKING THE BOUNDARIES: Perry Glanzer Defends Homeschooling against Rob Reich’s Critique

HOMESCHOOLING AND RACISM

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Milton Gaither

Record:  Tal Levy, “Homeschooling and Racism” in Journal of Black Studies (November 2007): 1-19. (Available fulltext here).

Summary:  Levy calls his approach “Diffusion Research,” a methodology that looks at how a reform spreads and tries to ascertain why certain locations adopt the reform early and others late.  Here are Levy’s 13 hypothetical reasons why states might have passed homeschool-enabling legislation: Continue reading →

Posted in History, Legal, Race/Ethnicity | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on HOMESCHOOLING AND RACISM

STUDENT PERSPECTIVES ON HOME EDUCATION TRANSITIONS WITH FORMAL SCHOOLING

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Milton Gaither

Record:  Glenda Jackson, “Home Education Transitions with Formal Schooling: Student Perspectives” in Issues in Educational Research 17 (2007) (Available fulltext here)

Summary:  Jackson, director of the Australian Home Education Advisory Service, here conducts three case studies of homeschooled students transitioning to and from formal schools.

Jackson begins her study with a thorough review of the available literature both on homeschooling in Australia and on studies conducted in the United States and Europe on the transition of homeschoolers into other schools.  One element lacking in most of these studies is the perspectives of the students doing the transitioning, and that is Jackson’s focus in this piece. Continue reading →

Posted in International, Public Schools, Socialization | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on STUDENT PERSPECTIVES ON HOME EDUCATION TRANSITIONS WITH FORMAL SCHOOLING

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING?

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Milton Gaither

Record:  Eric J. Isenberg, “What Have We Learned About Homeschooling?” in Peabody Journal of Education 82 (2007): 387-409.

 Summary:  Isenberg, affiliated with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., here tries to synthesize all of the best research on several topics related to homeschooling.  After a brief historical orientation he begins by bemoaning the paucity of available data to do rigorous quantitative study of homeschooling.  The best available sources are the data collected by some state education departments and the massive cross-sectional National Household Education Survey (NHES).  Isenberg uses them and some other less reliable data to summarize what can be known about “how many, why, and how parents homeschool their children.” Continue reading →

Posted in Academic Achievement, Parental Motivation, Pedagogy | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED ABOUT HOMESCHOOLING?

EDUCATION OFF THE GRID: A Law Professor Advocates for Increasing Homeschooling Regulations

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Milton Gaither

Record:

Kimberly A. Yuracko, “Education off the Grid: Constitutional Constraints on Homeschooling” in California Law Review 96, no. 1 (Feb. 2008): 123-184.

Summary:

Yuracko, a law professor at Northwestern University here makes the case that state statutes and the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution require that states have a responsibility to regulate homeschooling in certain respects. Continue reading →

Posted in Legal, Policy/Regulation | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

EQUAL ACCESS: a Lawyer argues for Full Homeschooler Access to Public Education Resources

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Milton Gaither

Record:

John T. Plecnik, “Equal Access to Public Education: An Examination of the State Constitutional and Statutory Rights of Nonpublic Students to Participate in Public School Programs on a Part-Time Basis in North Carolina and Across the Nation,” published in the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, Fall 2007 (13: no. 1), pp. 1-30.

Summary:

Plecnik, who was homeschooled “from cradle to college,” here uses North Carolina as model and constructs a hypothetical argument that would allow homeschooled and private schooled children to take advantage of some public school offerings without having to enroll full-time in the public school.   Continue reading →

Posted in Legal, Public Schools | Tagged , | Comments Off on EQUAL ACCESS: a Lawyer argues for Full Homeschooler Access to Public Education Resources

FAMILY TIES: Inside Homeschooling with a Sociologist

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Milton Gaither

Record

Gary Wyatt, Family Ties: Relationships, Socialization, and Homeschooling (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007).

Summary

Wyatt offers here a short book summarizing the results of twelve years as a participant observer in the homeschooling world.  He makes several generalizations from extensive “field notes” he took while participating in the movement. Continue reading →

Posted in Parental Motivation, Socialization | Tagged , | 1 Comment