{"id":4128,"date":"2019-02-01T16:34:30","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T16:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=4128"},"modified":"2019-02-01T16:34:30","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T16:34:30","slug":"making-the-transition-cardus-authors-on-homeschooling-and-adult-outcomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=4128","title":{"rendered":"MAKING THE TRANSITION: Cardus Authors on Homeschooling and Adult Outcomes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:<\/strong> David Sikkink and Sara Skiles, “Making the Transition: The Effect of School Sector on Extended Adolescence,”\u00a0 Hamilton, Ontario,\u00a0Cardus\u00a0<\/em>(April 17, 2018). Available Here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong> Readers of these reviews will be very familiar with the Cardus Education Survey (CES).\u00a0 It is one of the two most complete datasets available to researchers interested in studying the adult outcomes of homeschooling (the other being the National Survey of Youth and Religion [NSYR]).\u00a0 Cardus has conducted two U.S. surveys to date, and the data has been used to good effect both by Cardus itself and by other researchers<\/a>.\u00a0 This present report draws on no new survey data.\u00a0 Rather, it simply reiterates and synthesizes findings previously divulged and combines CES results with similar results from both the NSYR and another, older survey called the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY).<\/p>\n

While the bulk of the report is concerned with private Catholic, Protestant, and non-religious private schooling, homeschooling is mentioned in several places.\u00a0 This review will only highlight the homeschooling findings.<\/p>\n

The authors frame their discussion within the context of claims that modern young adults, often called “Millennials,” are frequently “lost in transition,” never quite making it to conventional adulthood and its associations with a terminal degree, steady employment, and marriage and childbearing.\u00a0 Are private school graduates and graduates of homeschooling “lost in transition,” or are they somehow different?<\/p>\n

The data suggests that homeschoolers at least are very hard to distinguish from public schooled graduates on most variables associated with adulthood.\u00a0 Homeschooled young adults, despite popular stereotypes, do not consistently “follow a traditional marriage and large family track.” (p. 7) Marriage rates between religious homeschoolers and public schoolers are about the same, and non-religious homeschoolers are\u00a0less<\/em> likely to be married (though, oddly, those who do marry do so very early).<\/p>\n

The one variable where homeschoolers stand out, at least as reported here, is college completion rates.\u00a0 Homeschoolers are FAR less likely to finish a four-year degree by age 24 or even by age 29 than are all other young adults.\u00a0 The difference is striking.\u00a0 Sikkink and Skiles, however, do not want to see this as evidence that homeschoolers are “lost in transition.”\u00a0 Rather, they suggest that “many homeschool graduates simply take a much more practical approach to post-secondary education–they will get as much as they need for their job or career, and only when they need it.” (p. 8)<\/p>\n

Appraisal:<\/strong>\u00a0 I have to say that I was disappointed in this piece.\u00a0 Like a similar report<\/a> Sikkink and Skiles released in 2015, and consistent with the entire history of Cardus reportage going back to their first round of data<\/a> in 2011, the authors try very hard to avoid the obvious conclusions of their own data.\u00a0 Now, I have no idea if the Cardus and NYSR and NLSY data are correct.\u00a0 I do know that they are by far the best available data we have.\u00a0 Anecdotal and qualitative data on young adult homeschoolers released by advocacy organizations have tried to make homeschooling look great.\u00a0 Cardus data when it first came out caused a bit of a scandal because homeschoolers captured by the data did not look great.\u00a0 They got divorced more, went to less prestigious colleges, were more politically disengaged, and expressed more aimlessness in life than graduates from institutional schools.\u00a0 The second round<\/a> of Cardus data, published in 2014, found the same thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since that time Cardus has produced no new data, though they have produced spin.\u00a0 This publication is part of that spin.\u00a0 There is no evidence that the reasons homeschoolers aren’t attending college at the same rate as other people have anything to do with their pragmatic approach to employment.\u00a0 Sikkink and Skiles just made that up.\u00a0 Why? Because they have one foot in the research world of legitimate methodology and the other in the advocacy world where the data must end up making home and private schooling look good no matter what.<\/p>\n

I myself have two hunches for why the homeschool college completion rate is low.\u00a0 First, as Cardus data itself has found, a lot of homeschoolers attend local community colleges.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 They’re cheap, and you can live at home while doing so.\u00a0 This likely means that a lot of homeschoolers are making do with careers that require only two-year certification rather than a full four-year baccalaureate degree.\u00a0 Second, and this one reinforces the first, a lot of homeschoolers are a little lower on the socioeconomic spectrum than are students who attend brick and mortar private schools.\u00a0 Private schools cost a lot of money.\u00a0 The “homeschooling” effect thus might be at least in part a class effect.\u00a0 Cardus data did not control for socioeconomic status, only parent education level.<\/p>\n

What is most troubling to me in this particular piece, however, is not the spin resorted to to try to explain away the college completion finding.\u00a0 It is that the authors completely ignore the very clear finding from both of their own surveys that homeschooled graduates report feeling more helpless in dealing with life’s problems than any other group.\u00a0 \u00a0If anything sounds like being “lost in transition,” it’s that.\u00a0 They are also less civically engaged, which also seems consistent with a “lost in transition” profile.\u00a0 Let me repeat that these are Cardus’ OWN FINDINGS.\u00a0 Yet in this report they are not mentioned.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because they are inconvenient.\u00a0 Cardus’ authors don’t want to admit that their own data really makes it look like homeschoolers are the most lost of all groups.\u00a0 By no means am I saying that that is the case.\u00a0 But it\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>what Cardus’ own data has found despite the obfuscations the Cardus authors keep offering.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record: David Sikkink and Sara Skiles, “Making the Transition: The Effect of School Sector on Extended Adolescence,”\u00a0 Hamilton, Ontario,\u00a0Cardus\u00a0(April 17, 2018). Available Here. Summary: Readers of these reviews will be very familiar with the Cardus Education Survey (CES).\u00a0 It is … 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":[4,5],"tags":[1827,860,1440,1828,67,1439],"class_list":["post-4128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civics","category-collegepostsecondary","tag-car","tag-cardus","tag-david-sikkink","tag-national-longitudinal-survey-of-youth","tag-national-survey-of-youth-and-religion","tag-sara-skiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128","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=4128"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4132,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128\/revisions\/4132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}