Homeschoolers and the Public Schools

Nancy Brown at Flying Stars pointed out this article at WorldNetDaily. It seems that the public schools in Mississippi think that homeschooled children are at high risk for abuse, and so out of compassion for the children, obviously the state must put extra regulations on homeschoolers.

It's really not an old story, and anyone who homeschools can tell you that.

However, I think that one of the most interesting parts was this:

As it turns out, in a basic battery of tests that included writing and mathematics, homeschooled children whose mothers hadn't finished high school scored in the 83rd percentile while students whose fathers hadn't finished high school scored in the 79th percentile. Bear in mind, too, that children in Mississippi public schools do not on average come close to doing this well on any legitimate, nationally normed test. Moreover, there are also studies that indicate that regulation does not have any positive impact on the academic achievement levels of homeschooled students.

[emphasis in original]

And they even bring up the socialization thing!

Again, like the other "worries" deployed in scaring the public into supporting expanded homeschool regulation, a little research would have shown this to be a baseless concern. In 2001, Greg Cizek, associate professor of educational research at the University of North Carolina, summarized what researchers know about the "socialization" question: ''It is basically a non-issue. … If anything, research shows that because parents are so sensitive to the charge, they expose them [their children] to so many activities." More recently, a study of 7,000 homeschooled adults found, among other things, much higher levels of civic involvement, participation in higher education, and life satisfaction among them than adults who were not homeschooled.

I can tell you this: my girls are better socialized than I ever was at their ages, and they exhibit far more poise and grace when interacting with a rather wide range of people (from very small children all the way up to adults). They have more friends than I had when I was a kid (or have currently), and our difficulty when it comes time to invite people to birthday parties is not if anyone will come, but how do we have a party and invite everyone they are buddies with?

Be sure to head to WorldNetDaily and read the whole article, though. The concluding paragraph has quite the kicker in it!