{"id":3984,"date":"2018-03-13T14:39:39","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T14:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=3984"},"modified":"2018-03-13T14:39:39","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T14:39:39","slug":"a-review-of-research-what-educators-might-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=3984","title":{"rendered":"A REVIEW OF RESEARCH: What Educators Might Learn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:\u00a0<\/strong>Brian Ray, “A review of research on homeschooling and what might educators learn?” in Pro-Posi\u00e7\u00f5es\u00a0<\/em>28, no. 2 (May-August 2017): 85-103.[Available Here<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ray is unquestionably the most well-known researcher in the field of home education, having made this his career since the late 1980s.\u00a0 In 1990 he founded the National Institute for Home Education Research<\/a> (NHERI), which has been his platform ever since.\u00a0 Some years ago I blogged about Ray’s research methodology here<\/a> and his close ties to HSLDA, the nation’s leading advocacy organization, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In this piece Ray continues his longstanding practice of summarizing the most flattering research on homeschoolers (most of it conducted by himself).\u00a0 He offers nothing new here.\u00a0 My summary will thus be brief.<\/p>\n

First, Ray recapitulates his summary of the scholarship on academic achievement, concluding that in every study homeschoolers consistently score “well above the public school national average,” and that demographic variables explain “very little variance” in these remarkable scores.\u00a0 Even parent education level, which does account for a little variance, has less of an impact than it does in studies of public school achievement (p. 89).<\/p>\n

Second, Ray addresses socialization.\u00a0 This section is brief, concluding that the home educated “are developing at least as well as, and often better than, those who attend institutional schools.” (p. 90)<\/p>\n

Third, Ray summarizes the literature on adult outcomes.\u00a0 Here as well he concludes that adults who were home educated, “are faring as well as or better than the general adult population on all constructs considered.” (p. 92)<\/p>\n

Fourth, Ray considers limitations of this data.\u00a0 He stresses here the possible\u00a0disadvantage<\/em> homeschoolers face in these studies given that their parents are often not teaching to the tests being administered as are public school teachers.<\/p>\n

Fifth, Ray considers the special case of African American homeschoolers.\u00a0 Here he describes in some detail a study he conducted in 2015 of this population.\u00a0 You can read my summary and appraisal of that study here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, Ray reprises an argument he made in a 2013\u00a0Peabody Journal of Education<\/em> article (review here<\/a>) that given decades of research showing that homeschoolers outperform public schooled children on every measure, public school advocates should stop criticizing home education and start supporting it on a larger scale as a better option than tax-based, compulsory, Statist institutional schooling.<\/p>\n

Appraisal:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Briefly, since we have discussed this so often before, Ray’s summaries of the research are selective, leaving out many studies that do not end up with the conclusions Ray likes.\u00a0 For a more impartial view of the research on academic achievement, socialization, adult outcomes, and African American homeschooling, see here<\/a>.\u00a0 As the majority of studies Ray cites here are his own, it is appropriate to call attention to some of the many critiques of his approach, for example here <\/a>and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So that this review is not all redundancy, let me offer one fresh example of how Ray distorts the data by offering selective and misleading summaries of it.\u00a0 On p. 88 he says “Alaskan students in a state-run school-at home-program consistently scored above average (e.g. about the 78th percentile one of the years reported; Alaska Department of Education 1993).”\u00a0 Note that Ray, writing in 2017, makes a claim based on data from 1993.\u00a0 Why did he not choose more recent data?\u00a0 Well, probably because, as this analysis of the 2011-12 numbers reveals<\/a>, homeschoolers in Alaska are actually performing only slightly above average in reading and a little below average in math (or at least that was the case in 2012).<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that this article is one more example of Ray citing Ray to argue for something that Ray’s original studies do not actually prove (that homeschooling is better than public schooling).\u00a0 As long as Ray continues to make false claims like this we will unfortunately have to keep refuting them in these reviews.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither<\/p>\n

Messiah College<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record:\u00a0Brian Ray, “A review of research on homeschooling and what might educators learn?” in Pro-Posi\u00e7\u00f5es\u00a028, no. 2 (May-August 2017): 85-103.[Available Here] Summary: Ray is unquestionably the most well-known researcher in the field of home education, having made this his career … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,14,891,16],"tags":[61,46,1739],"class_list":["post-3984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-achievement","category-raceethnicity","category-research-methodology","category-socialization","tag-brian-d-ray","tag-brian-ray","tag-proposicoes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3984"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3988,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions\/3988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}