Maybe you have heard this one: On average, homeschool students score well above average on academic achievement tests.[1] Those already familiar with homeschool research might begin to yawn at this point.

                 (People like you keep NHERI going - donate here.)

The negative critic or "disinterested objective researcher" then claims: But that's just the cream of the crop, the best students. Researchers do not get representative samples. There is no way to know whether homeschooling has a positive effect.[2]

Rodger Williams' new research report changes a lot in this discussion.[3] He gets his data from "... state-mandated, nationally-normed tests administered to Oregon homeschool students. Home educating parents are required to have their students tested by qualified neutral testers. It is the legally-required test score results that we analyze here."

The researcher points out that he is studying those who are "... privately home educated. The family budget supplies the money for that education. Parents control the education process and the curriculum. These parents have willingly chosen to homeschool and are prepared to pay the personal price to do so."

Williams begins with a technical foundation.  He explains that on a standardized test, developed with largely public school students, "...ten ... percentiles grouped together should have 10% of the students." Then he gets into the meat of his findings. Referring to a bar graph, he writes:

      The distribution of [homeschool] scores is skewed markedly towards the higher end of scores. There are fewer low scores than expected and more high scores than expected, compared with the normed national averages (labeled Public School in the chart). In fact the average score in this example for homeschool students -- the median -- is the 79th percentile rank, that is, 29 percentiles higher than the national average of 50 for all students.

The researcher then adds some metaphorical language to present the quantitative data.

      Looking at the data, one gets the impression that some force is steadily moving the homeschooled students from lower-score buckets into higher-score buckets -- much like a brisk wind blows leaves up against a fence.

Williams finds that only 2% of homeschooled students score in the lowest decile, where 10% of them should be. At the same time, 32% score in the highest decile, where only 10% should be. That is, the home educated are highly overrepresented in the highest decile. Intriguingly, the homeschool scores are normally distributed, despite the fact that they are disproportionately high compared to public school scores.

Researcher Williams' special contribution comes next. He argues that demographic features of the homeschool families (e.g., parents' income level, parents' education level, marital status) are not adequate for explaining the high scores. That is, some have contended that the home educated score high because they have relatively wealthy and well-educated parents compared to public school students. Williams adjusts the homeschool scores downward for the demographic advantage some homeschool students have over others.

The conceptual presentation of quantitative data that Williams offers is one of the most careful and powerful ever given regarding why homeschooling might actually cause higher achievement, not only be correlated with higher achievement.

After careful presentation and several engaging graphs, Williams concludes the following:

     We have subtracted homeschoolers' demographic advantages out of the 2011-2013 median-79 curve to arrive at this median-73 curve from 1999. The remaining achievement boosts -- fewer low scores than expected, more high scores than expected -- must be due to homeschool-specific factors, as illustrated in our conceptual model of student achievement factors.

It appears that students, whether low-scoring or high-scoring, "... receive the same benefit from homeschooling (or factors uniquely associated with homeschooling [e.g., parents and children spend more time together; parents learn to focus more on their children's learning activities; parents spend more time explaining things to their children; parents feel the complete responsibility of educating their children and rise to the challenge]) regardless of their academic ability. We label this consistent academic boost The Homeschool Effect."

Williams points out one more important thing, especially considering those who have been skeptical about the representativeness of data in research on homeschool academic achievement: "The reported high homeschool academic performances are not the result of parents withholding low scores. There is no telltale distortion at the low end of the curve to indicate such withholding." 

The researcher has not presented a standard, highly sophisticated multivariate statistical analysis but his overarching meta-perspective and reasoning is compelling. Williams has posited that homeschooling itself is causal and predictive of higher academic achievement.[4]

It will be up to future reviewers and talented quantitative analysts to provide more reviews of Williams work. Until then, one might say about this report, What an effect homeschooling seems to have!

--Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.

National Home Education Research Institute

P.S. NHERI receives no tax dollars like state university professors do to conduct their research and articles promoting State/public schooling. People like you keep NHERI talking with the media, courts, and legislators. Every $10, $25, or $100 is important.

Two ways to help:
1. Send a check to: NHERI, PO Box 13939, Salem OR 97309 (using a check puts the largest percent of your gift to work at NHERI)
2. Donate online.

NHERI, PO Box 13939, Salem OR 97309, USA

Endnotes:

[1] Ray, Brian D. (2013). Homeschooling associated with beneficial learner and societal outcomes but educators do not promote it. Peabody Journal of Education, 88(3), 324-341.

[2] See, e.g.: Reich, Rob. (2008). On regulating homeschooling: A reply to Glanzer. Educational Theory, 58(1), 17-23.

[3] Williams, Rodger. (2014). The homeschool effect. Retrieved July 10, 2014 from http://thehomeschooleffect.com/the-homeschool-effect.html.

[4] Regarding predictive power, see, e.g.: Phillips, D. C. (2014). Research in the hard sciences, and in very hard ''softer'' domains. Educational Researcher, 43(1), 9 -11. Wieman, Carl E. (2014). The similarities between research in education and research in the hard sciences. Educational Researcher, 43(1), 12-14.