Homeschool SAT Scores for 2014 Higher Than National Average
Hello, , from NHERI and Dr. Ray.
The
Context
Just over 1.6 million college-bound seniors took the SAT test in 2014. Many observers of the homeschool movement wonder, “Does anyone know how homeschool students perform on this test?” For the first time in several years, College Board, the publisher of the SAT, released homeschool students’ test scores, and they did so to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI). The results were released by NHERI on
June 7, 2016. [note 1]
Methods
“The SAT (formerly known as the SAT I: Reasoning Test) assesses student reasoning based on knowledge and skills developed by the students in their course work. The SAT Subject Tests (formerly known as SAT II: Subject Tests) are a series of one-hour, mostly multiple-choice tests that measure how much students know
about a particular academic subject and how well they can apply that knowledge.” [note 2] References to the mean are to the arithmetic mean. Finally, the SAT program refers to the scaled score and this score ranges from 200 to 800 points for each subtest.
Findings
The SAT 2014 test scores of college-bound homeschool students were higher than
the national average of all college-bound seniors that same year. [note 3] Some 13,549 homeschool seniors had the following mean scores: 567 in critical reading, 521 in mathematics, and 535 in writing (College Board, 2014a). The mean SAT scores for all college-bound seniors in 2014 were 497 in critical reading, 513 in mathematics, and 487 in writing (College Board, 2014b). The homeschool students’ SAT scores were 0.61 standard deviation higher in reading, 0.26 standard deviation higher in
mathematics, and 0.42 standard deviation higher in writing than those of all college-bound seniors taking the SAT, and these are notably large differences.
There were some demographic differences between homeschool students and all students taken together. First, the family incomes of the homeschool students were similar to those of all students. Regarding ethnicity, for example, 72 percent of the homeschool students were White, 5
percent were Asian, Asian American, or Pacific Islander, and 4 percent were Black or African American, while of all college-bound seniors, the corresponding percentages were 49, 12, and 13. The average highest level of parental education was notably higher for the homeschool students than for all students.
Conclusions
This point-in-time
description of SAT scores simply shows that the test scores of homeschool students are higher than the national average for all students. No careful analysis has been done of these scores to determine whether certain background variables might statistically explain the differences in scores. These relatively high SAT scores of home-educated students are, however, consistent with homeschool students’ high SAT scores in preceding research and with research findings on the overall success of
college students who were home educated. [note 4]
--Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.
National Home Education Research Institute
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Endnotes:
3. College Board. (2014a). SAT 2014 college-bound seniors state profile report, U.S. home school students. New York, NY: Author.
4. Gloeckner, Gene W., & Jones, Paul. (2013). Reflections on a decade of changes in homeschooling and homeschooled into higher education. Peabody Journal of Education, 88(3), 309-323.
Murphy, Joseph. (2012). Homeschooling in America: Capturing and assessing the movement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, a Sage Company.
