DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 415 325
UD 032 107
AUTHOR
Lyman, Isabel
TITLE
Homeschooling. Back to the Future? Policy Analysis No. 294.
INSTITUTION
Cato Inst., Washington, DC.
PUB DATE 1998-01-07
NOTE 21p.
AVAILABLE FROM Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington,
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PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141)
EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.
DESCRIPTORS *Civil Liberties; Cost Effectiveness; Court Litigation;
Elementary Secondary Education; Government Role; *Home
Schooling; Instructional Effectiveness; *Nontraditional
Education; Parent Student Relationship; *Parents as
Teachers; *School Attendance Legislation
IDENTIFIERS *Religious Right
ABSTRACT
Dissatisfied with the performance of government-run schools,
more and more American families have begun teaching their children at home.
Estimates of the number of homeschooled children vary widely; the best
estimate is 500,000 to 750,000, but some estimates range up to 1.23 million.
All observers agree that the number has grown rapidly over the past 15 years.
There are two historical strains of homeschooling, a religious-right thread
inspired by author Raymond Moore and a countercultural-left thread inspired
by John Holt. Their differences illustrate the various concerns that cause
people to choose homeschooling: some want religious values in education, some
worry about the crime and lack of discipline in the government schools,
others are concerned with the declining quality of education, and still
others just feel that children are best educated by their parents. A recent
boom in the number of homeschooled students winning admission to selective
colleges demonstrates both the growth and the effectiveness of homeschooling.
The lesson for educational reformers is that homeschooling, with minimal
government interference, has produced literate students at a fraction of the
cost of any government program. Homeschooling has been largely deregulated,
but further deregulation would make parents' task easier. Contains 62
endnotes. (Author/SLD)
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Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
from the original document.
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January 7, 1998
HOMESCHOOLING
Back to the Future?
BY ISABEL LYMAN
Xxecutive Summary
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The victory of homeschooled 13-year-old Rebecca Sealfon
in the 1997 National Spelling Bee brought new attention to
the growing phenomenon of homeschooling.
Dissatisfied with
the performance of government-run schools, more and more
American families have begun teaching their children at home.
Estimates of the number of homeschooled children vary widely;
the best estimate is 500,000 to 750,000, but some estimates
range up to 1.23 million.
All observers agree that the
number has grown rapidly over the past 15 years.
There are two historical strains of homeschooling, a
religious-right thread inspired by author Raymond Moore and a
countercultural-left thread inspired by John Holt.
Their
differences illustrate the various concerns that cause people
to choose homeschooling: some want religious values in educa-
tion, some worry about the crime and lack of discipline in
the government schools, some object to the conformity and
bureaucracy in the schools, others are concerned with the
declining quality of education, and still others just feel
that children are best educated by their parents.
A recent boom in the number of homeschooled students
winning admission to selective colleges demonstrates both the
growth and the effectiveness of homeschooling.
The lesson
for educational reformers is that homeschooling, with minimal
government interference, has produced literate students at a
fraction of the cost of any government program.
Homeschool-
ing has been largely deregulated, but further deregulation
would make parents' task easier.
N
Isabel Lyman is codirector of Harkness Road High. School in
c)
Amherst, Massachusetts, and a long-time homeschooling parent.
c)
c)
2
BEST COPY AVAILABLE
Page 2
Introduction
Thirteen-year-old Rebecca Sealfon of Brooklyn, New
York, brought new attention to the growing phenomenon of
homeschooling when she became the first homeschooled child
to win the National Spelling Bee.
She was one of 17 home-
schooled students among 245 competitors in the 70th annual
bee, held in May 1997.
The rise of homeschooling, of course, reflects broaden-
ing dissatisfaction with formal education in the United
States.
From its modest beginnings in one-room schoolhous-
es, American education has grown into a gargantuan govern-
ment enterprise.
Today, about 50 million students attend
more than 85,000 public schools and more than 26,000 private
schools.2
Education is the largest line item in most state
budgets.
The average per pupil expenditure in America's
public schools is $6,993.3
Ironically, given the amount of money expended on
teaching young people, public dissatisfaction with America's
schools is high.
In a Gallup Poll, "The Public's Attitudes
toward the Public Schools," 45 percent of the respondents
gave America's schools low grades--C, D, or F.'
Dissatisfaction is high for two reasons.
First, Ameri-
can public schools are turning out a poor product--illiter-
ate and unprepared graduates.
For example, American 13-
year -olds have been documented as having math skills that
rank below those of 13-year-olds in 14 other developed
countries.5
One survey noted that only one in three high
school juniors could place the Civil War in the right half
century.6
Not coincidentally, American companies are spend-
ing billions of dollars a year on remedial education for
their employees.'
Equally troubling, public schools have become crime
scenes where drugs are sold, teachers are robbed, and home-
made bombs are found in lockers.
A Metropolitan Life study
released in 1993 reported that over 10 percent of teachers
and 25 percent of students had been victims of violence at
or near their public schools.8
To compound the problem, teachers' unions, school offi-
cials, and many politicians adamantly oppose the use of
public monies for innovative solutions, such as vouchers and
charter schools.
Those alternatives, although not a panacea
for all the present problems, are at least promising vehi-
cles that could help poor and middle-income parents to find
Page 3
better schools for their children and break up the monopoly
of a "one-size-fits-all" philosophy of education.
In light of the educational quagmire the United States
finds itself in toward the end of the 20th century, many
parents, impatient for reform, are taking matters into their
own hands. One alternative that is gaining growing public
acceptance is the educational option known as homeschooling.
What Homeschooling Is
Homeschooling is defined simply as the "education of
school-aged children at home rather than at a school."9
Homeschools, according to those who have observed or created
them, are as diverse as the individuals who choose that
educational method.
They [homeschools] range from the highly struc-
tured to the structured to the unstructured, from
those which use the approaches of conventional
schools to those which are repulsed by convention-
al practice, and from the homeschool that follows
homemade materials and plans to the one that con-
sumes hundreds of dollars worth of commercial
curriculum materials per year.'°
Homeschoolers like to say that the world is their
classroom. Or, as John Lyon, writing for the Rockford
Institute, has observed,
Schooling, rather obviously, is what goes on in
schools; education takes place wherever and when-
ever the nature with which we are born is nurtured
so as to draw out of those capacities which con-
duce to true humanity. The home, the church, the
neighborhood, the peer group, the media, the shop-
ping mall . . . are all educational institu-
tions.0
Modern learning theories aside, homeschoolers believe
that the student who receives his instruction simultaneously
from the home and the community at large will be a more
culturally sophisticated child than the one the bulk of
whose learning experiences is confined to a school. The
historical record offers noteworthy examples of the "world
is my teacher" model. Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Edison, Andrew
Wyeth, Pearl Buck, and the Founding Fathers were all taught
at home. Those famous Americans' parents were pioneers.
4
Page 4
The Origins of Homeschooling: Raymond Moore
The seeds of what has grown into the modern-day Ameri-
can homeschooling movement were planted by two unrelated
individuals about 30 years ago. In 1969 Raymond Moore, a
former U.S. Department of Education employee, laid the
groundwork that would legitimatize homeschooling as one of
the great, populist educational movements of the 20th centu-
ry.
Moore, who holds an Ed.D. from the University of South-
ern California, along with his wife, Dorothy, a reading
specialist and former Los Angeles County elementary school
teacher, initiated an inquiry into previously neglected
areas of educational research.
Two of the questions the
Moores and a team of like-minded colleagues set out to
answer were, Is institutionalizing young children a sound,
educational trend, and what is the best timing for school
entrance?12
They sought advice from over 100 family development
specialists and researchers, including Urie Bronfenbrenner
of Cornell University, John Bowlby of the World Health
Organization, and Burton White of Harvard University.
Those
professionals recommended "a cautious approach to subjecting
[the child's] developing nervous system and mind to formal
constraints."13
Psychologist Bronfenbrenner maintained that
subjecting children to the daily routine of elementary
school can result in excessive depndence on peers:4
In the process of analyzing thousands of studies, 20 of
which compared early school entrants with late starters, the
Moores began to conclude that development problems, such as
hyperactivity, nearsightedness, and dyslexia, were often the
result of prematurely taxing a child's nervous system and
mind with continuous academic tasks, like reading and writ-
ing
The bulk of the research, which overwhelmingly support-
ed distancing young children from daily contact with insti-
tutionalized settings, convinced the Moores that formal
schooling should be delayed until at least age 8 or 10, or
even as late as 12.
Raymond Moore explained the upshot of
his research, stating, "These findings sparked our concern
and convinced us to focus our investigation on two primary
areas: formal learning and socializing.
Eventually, this
work led to an unexpected interest in homeschools."15
The Moores went on to write Home Grown Kids and Home-
Spun Schools, which were published in the 1980s. The books,
Page 5
which are written from a Christian perspective but offer a
universal message for all interested parties, have sold
hundreds of thousands of copies and offer practical advice
to parents on how to succeed as home educators.
The Moores
advocate a firm but gentle approach to home education that
balances study, chores, and work outside the home in an
atmosphere geared toward a child's particular developmental
needs.
The Influence of John Holt
During the 1960s and early 1970s, another voice emerged
in the public school debate, a voice for decentralizing
schools and returning greater autonomy to teachers and
parents.
John Holt, an Ivy League graduate and a teacher in
alternative schools, was decrying the lack of humanity
toward schoolchildren, even in the most compassionate school
settings.
Holt was also a critic of the compulsory nature
of schooling.
He wrote,
To return once more to compulsory school in its
barest form, you will surely agree that if the
government told you that on one hundred and eighty
days of the year, for six or more hours a day, you
had to be at a particular place, and there do
whatever people told you to do, you would feel
that this was a gross violation of your civil
liberties .16
Holt, who had long advocated the reform of schools,
became increasingly frustrated that so few parents were
willing to work toward change within the system.
Conse-
quently, after his own years as a classroom teacher, he
observed that well-meaning but overworked teachers, who
program children to recite right answers and discourage
self-directed learning, often retard children's natural
curiosity.
He chronicled his litany of complaints in How
ChildranEail."
Holt came to view schools as places that produce obedi-
ent, but bland, citizens.
He saw the child's daily grind of
attending school as preparation for the future adult grind
of paying confiscatory taxes and subservience to authority
figures.
Holt even compared the dreariness of the school
day to the experience of having a "full-time painful job."16
Ultimately, Holt concluded that the most humane way to
educate a child was to homeschool him.
6
Page 7
Buttressed by their national media appearances, legis-
lative and courtroom testimony, and speeches to sympathetic
communities, Holt and Moore worked tirelessly to deliver to
an often-skeptical public the message that homeschooling is
a good, if not a superior, way to educate American children;
that it is, in a sense, a homecoming, a return to a prein-
dustrial era, when American families worked and learned
together instead of apart.
Bomeschooling Becomes Mainstream
Today, the growing popularity of homeschooling is
evidence that the work of Moore, Holt, and other similar-
minded reformers snowballed into a grassroots revolution.
Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute
posits that homeschooling is growing at the rate of 15
percent to 40 percent per year."
Conservative estimates
were that the number of homeschooled children in 1985 was
50,000.21
Patricia Lines, a researcher with the U.S. De-
partment of Education (whose data, used for estimating the
homeschooling population from the fall of 1990, were updated
for the fall of 1995) estimates that the number of home-
schooled children is between 500,000 and 750,000.22
In a working paper on home education, Lines explains
how she gathered those data:
The 1990 data came from three independent
sources--state education agencies that collect
data; distribution of complete, year-long graded
curricular packages for homeschoolers from large
suppliers; and home school associations' member-
ships. As each represented the tip of an iceberg,
each was adjusted based on data from other sourc-
es, including surveys of homeschoolers indicating
the extent to which families filed papers with the
state, used particular curricular packages, or
joined associations."
The Home School Market, published in April 1995, esti-
mated that the number of homeschooled children had doubled
since 1990 to 800,000 and would double again in the next
five years.24 The Home School Legal Defense Association
maintains that the number is already much higher--1.23
million. The estimate is based on HSLDA's analysis of the
numbers provided by major curriculum distributors (such as
Calvert, A Beka, and Konos), which supply complete, year-
long packages to homeschoolers.
HSLDA's estimate is larger
than the federal government's because they have calculated
Page 8
high numbers of homeschoolers for populous states, like
Texas, that do not monitor or regulate homeschoolers and
figured in "underground" homeschoolers who have no contact
with schooling authorities or homeschool groups.25
A more exact count of homeschoolers is expected when
the results of federal government household surveys are
published.
The Census Bureau, working with the National
Center on Education Statistics, has begun to include ques-
tions on homeschooling.
Homeschooling families support a growing industry.
For
instance, Mary Pride, publisher of Practical Homeschooling
magazine, distributes 100,000 copies of the publication.
Pride's much-lauded The Big Book of Home Learning has sold
close to a quarter million copies.26
The HSLDA, which has
45 employees, has 53,000 families as dues-paying members.27
Homeschooling Today, one of the newer homeschooling jour-
nals, has a circulation of about 20,000.28
Pat Farenga of
Holt Associates, the homeschooling clearinghouse named after
John Holt, receives 40,000 inquiries a year.29 Amazon.com,
the online bookseller, lists 217 books about homeschooling.
Frequently Asked Ouestions
It will probably not come as a surprise to learn that
homeschooling elicits much criticism and misunderstanding.
Sometimes the critics are family members or neighbors.
Large lobbying groups, such as the National School Boards
Association and the National Education Association, have
also made statements that suggest that homeschoolers are
poorly supervised.
In the summer of 1997, at the annual
National Education Association convention, an anti-home-
schooling resolution was adopted by the representative
assembly.
Resolution B-63 stated that homeschooling pro-
grams "cannot provide the student with a comprehensive
education experience."
Further, the resolution noted that,
if homeschooling is chosen, "instruction should be by per-
sons who are licensed by the appropriate state education
licensure agency."38
The choice of a household to create a homeschool, even
in a nation that lauds innovation, raises many uncomfort-
able, but important, questions about family life, community
mores, children's well-being, and government regulation of
private choices.
What follows are the 10 most frequently
asked questions about home education and home educators,
questions that reveal much about the American public's
assumptions about conventional methods of education.
Page 9
Why Do Families Choose to Homeschool?
An analysis of 300 newspaper and magazine articles
about homeschoolers revealed that the top four reasons to
homeschool were dissatisfaction with the public schools, the
desire to freely impart religious values, academic excel-
lence, and the building of stronger family bonds.31
Those
reasons coincide with the findings of polls of home-
schoolers.
For example, the Florida Department of Education
surveyed 2,245 homeschoolers in 1996.
By the end of-August
1996, 31 percent of that number had returned the survey.
Of
that group, 42 percent said that dissatisfaction with the
public school environment (safety, drugs, adverse peer
pressure) was their reason for establishing a home education
program.32
What Types of Families Choose Homeschooling7.
Americans of different races, socioeconomic back-
grounds, and religions homeschool. Holt Associates de-
scribes its clientele as individuals who "live in the coun-
try, city, suburbs, small towns.
Some are single parents,
combining working outside the home with homeschooling."33
Given many Americans' penchant for associations, there are
national homeschooling support groups for Mormons, Catho-
lics, Jews, Muslims, the handicapped, and homeschoolers of
color.
A recent study of 5,402 homeschooled children from
1,657 families, conducted by Brian Ray and the HSLDA, noted
that the top three occupational groups of homeschooling
fathers were accountant or engineer (17.3 percent); profes-
sor, doctor, or lawyer (16.9 percent); and small-business
owner (10.7 percent).
According to the same survey, 87.7
percent of mothers who have chosen to stay at home and teach
their children list "homemaker" as their occupation.34
Educational researchers Jane Van Galen and Mary Ann
Pittman have categorized the two primary types of families
who choose homeschooling as ideologues and pedagogues.
Ideologues are typically the religious conservatives whom
homeschooling attracts.
Van Galen notes that ideologues
want "their children to learn fundamentalist religious
doctrine and a conservative political and social perspec-
tive" and establish homeschools to communicate to their
offspring "that the family is the most important institution
in society."35
10
Page 10
Van Galen defines the pedagogues as those who teach
their children themselves primarily because they dislike the
professionalization and bureaucratization of modern educa-
tion.
They are parents who "come to their decision to home
school with a broader interest in learning--they have pro-
fessional training in education, they have close friends or
relatives who are educators, they have read about education
or child development, or they are involved with organiza-
tions that speak to the issue of childrearing."36
Both types of families share a common characteristic:
they have enormous confidence in their ability to do a
competent job of educating their children with minimal
institutional support.
Are There Different Methods of Homeschooling?
Families may choose to purchase a preplanned, prepack-
aged curriculum from publishers that specifically target
homeschoolers, such as A Beka Home School, Konos Curriculum,
and Saxon Publishers.
Other families may choose to enroll
their children in correspondence programs, like the Calvert
School of Maryland, the Christian Liberty Academy Satellite
Schools of Illinois, or the Clonlara School of Michigan.
As families gain confidence in their homeschooling
abilities, they may opt for a less structured approach and
rely on homemade materials or borrow heavily from local
libraries.
Tutors may be sought to teach particular skills,
such as a foreign language or a musical instrument, and
older children are sometimes recruited to teach younger
siblings a particular academic discipline or task.
Home-
schooled children also participate in field trips and learn-
ing co-ops with other homeschooled students or even take
courses at a day school or community college.
In Ray's
study of 1,657 families, 71.1 percent of the respondents
said they custom design their curriculum to suit their
child's needs, and 83.7 percent said that their children use
a computer in their home.
The average cost is $546 per
homeschooled student per year.37
No matter the method employed, studies indicate that
one-on-one involvement with homeschooled children, especial-
ly during their primary years, is high.
Theodore Wagenaar
of Miami University notes that homeschooled children "are
considerably more likely to experience someone in the family
doing the following activities with them three or more times
a week: tell a story, teach letters, teach songs, do arts
and crafts, play with toys and games indoors, play games and
11
Page 11
sports outdoors, take child on errands, and involve child in
household chores.""
What about Socialization?
How Do Homeschooled Children Meet Others?
Those are the questions homeschoolers report they are
usually asked first when they are asked to explain their
lifestyle.
Typically, homeschooled children engage in a
variety of activities outside the home--sports teams, scout-
ing programs, church, community service, or part-time em-
ployment.
Richard G. Medlin of Stetson University notes
that homeschoolers rely heavily on support groups as a
resource for planning field trips and maintaining personal
contact with like-minded families."
In 1992 Larry Shyers of the University of Florida wrote
a doctoral dissertation in which he challenged the notion
that youngsters at home "lag" in social development.
In his
study, 8- to 10-year-old children were videotaped at play.
Their behavior was observed by trained counselors who did
not know which children went to regular schools and which
were homeschooled.
The study found no big difference between the two
groups of children in self-concept or assertiveness, which
was measured by social development tests.
But the video-
tapes showed that youngsters who were taught at home by
their parents had consistently fewer behavior problems."
Is Homeschooling Legal?
The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights do not
mention education..
In spite of the creation of a federal
Department of Education, education is an issue of states'
rights.
According to the National Homeschool Association,
"Homeschooling is legally permitted in all fifty states, but
laws and regulations are much more favorable in some states
than, in others. 41
For example, states such as Idaho,
Oklahoma, and Texas are considered user friendly to home-
schoolers in that there is no requirement for parents to
initiate contact with the state to begin to homeschool.
On
the other hand, states such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, and
New York are heavily regulated (curriculum approval by the
state, home visits, submission of achievement test scores,
and so on) .
42
Page 12
In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, as the
homeschooling movement gained more converts, the compulsory
attendance laws of various states were challenged in court.
One landmark case, for example, occurred in- Massachusetts.
In Perchemlides v. Frizzle (1978), a Massachusetts court
upheld the right of the nonreligious Perchemlides family to
homeschool their young son.
The court concluded that "the
Massachusetts compulsory attendance statue might well be
constitutionally infirm if it did not exempt students whose
parents prefer alternative forms of education.""
In response to homeschoolers' court victories at the
state level, 33 states had enacted homeschooling legislation
by 1995.
The more favorable legal and political climate did
not mean that controversies with school officials ceased."
Christopher Klicka, an attorney for the HSLDA, notes that,
during the 1990-91 school year, nearly 2,000 homeschoolers
with problems sought assistance from his organization.
Those problems "involved various degrees of harassment,
ranging from actual or threatened prosecution to the at-
tempted imposition of restrictions in excess of the law.""
How Does a Family Begin Homeschooling?
Susan Nelson, a homeschooling consultant and curriculum
developer, suggests that new homeschooling parents will find
their task simpler if they decide whether their primary goal
in becoming home educators is "to provide their child with
useful and interesting educational experiences; or to pre-
pare him for [formal] schooling.""
Other advocates of
homeschooling are more practical and suggest reading home-
schooling literature, becoming familiar with the homeschool-
ing laws of one's state, attending a how-to seminar, joining
a regional support group, or spending time with a seasoned
homeschooling family before taking the leap.
Popular home-
schooling advice books include Now to Tutor by Samuel L.
Blumenfeld, Homeschooling: Your Ouestions Answered! by
Deborah McIntire and Robert Windham, and The Original Home
Schooling Series by Charlotte Mason.47
After a period of trial and error, most families fall
into a satisfactory routine with their homeschools.
Nancy
Wallace, a homeschooling mother, said about her beginning
days of teaching her children: "Every morning we practice
our French, play the piano, and do some writing.
Every
evening we read aloud to Vita and Ishmael for about 1%
hours.
And in between?
Ishmael takes two drama classes, a
French class and a piano lesson for 1-hour periods once a
13
Page 13
week, we go to the library, explore the woods, observe
nature and read. "48
Do Homeschooled Students Get Admitted to College?
A growing number of colleges and universities around
the United States, including Harvard and Yale, are admitting
homeschooled students to their freshman classes. One unusu-
al family, the Colfaxes of Boonville, California, have had
three of their four homeschooled sons accepted by Harvard.
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported a boom
in homeschooled students' winning admission to selective
colleges.° In the absence of a transcript or high school
diploma, applicants can submit samples or a portfolio of
their work, letters of recommendation, and CLEP and Stanford
Achievement Test scores.
The HSLDA's study of 1,657 home-
schooling families notes that homeschooled students want to
attend college: 69 percent of respondents pursued a more
formal postsecondary education."
How Does the Education a Homeschooled Child Receives
Compare with That of Conventionally Schooled Children?
Lines notes that "virtually all the available data show
that the group of homeschooled children who are tested is
above average.
The pattern for children for whom data are
available resembles that of children in private schools."51
Ray notes that, regardless of income, race, gender, or
parents' level of education, homeschooled children consis-
tently score between the 82nd and 92nd percentiles on
achievement tests."
The data from the Washington Home-
school Research Project, which has analyzed the SAT scores
of homeschooled children in Washington State since 1985,
demonstrated that the scores of those children were above
average. Jon Wartes, writing on behalf of the project,
notes that "fears that homeschooled children in Washington
are at an academic disadvantage are not confirmed."" One
significant piece of evidence of the educational progress
homeschooled children are making: the National Merit Schol-
arship Corporation chose more than 70 homeschooled high
school seniors as semifinalists in its 1998 competition.54
14
Page 14
What Type of Young Adults Does Homeschooling Produce?
The homeschooling movement has produced its share of
talented young adults.
Barnaby Marsh, who was homeschooled
in the Alaskan wilderness, went on to graduate from Cornell
University and was one of 32 Rhodes Scholars selected in
1996. Fifteen-year-old country singer LeAnn Rimes skipped
two grades as a result of homeschooling.
Army specialist
Michael New, a decorated medic who was court-martialed for
refusing to don a United Nations uniform, was homeschooled.
Jason Taylor, a Miami Dolphins football player, was a home-
school graduate.
The movement is even old enough to have begun to estab-
lish a second generation of homeschoolers--homeschooled
children who choose to homeschool their, own children.
Assessing the outcome of that choice remains a future task
for researchers, but some information about first-generation
homeschooled adults is available. J. Gary Knowles of the
University of Michigan studied 53 adults to see the long-
term effects of being educated at home.
He summarized his
findings as follows:
I have found no evidence that these adults were
even moderately disadvantaged.
. . . Two thirds of
them were married, the norm for adults their age,
and none were unemployed or any on any form of
welfare assistance.
More than three quarters felt
that being taught at home had actually helped them
to interact with people from different levels of
society,:
Conclusion
The modern-day homeschooling story is fundamentally one
of a grassroots movement of parent educators, from Miami to
Des Moines to Fairbanks, who have taught their children how
to read and write at kitchen tables and in home offices.
Joyce Swann of Anthony, New Mexico, is one such dedicated
mother.
Armed with only a high school diploma, Swann decid-
ed to homeschool her five-year-old daughter, Alexandra, by
using the Calvert School's elementary school correspondence
program.
Ten years after that leap into the unknown,
Alexandra was on the fast track to academic success.
By age
16, she had earned a master's degree from California State
University, and at 18 she was teaching U.S. history at El
Paso Community College.
Today, seven of Alexandra's nine
homeschooled siblings also hold master's degrees.56
15
Page 15
Stuart and Cynthia Sealfon of Brooklyn, New York,
established a homeschool to allow their three children the
freedom to devote as much time as they wanted to the sub-
jects that interested them.
Rebecca, the Sealfons' 13-year-
old daughter, was especially interested in spelling and
spent up to three hours a day studying word lists.
Her
dedication paid off when she became the first homeschooled
child to win the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee.
Parents like Swann and the Sealfons have succeeded in
making a countercultural idea acceptable.
They have
achieved their goals without much applause and without a
dime of government funding.
This is not to imply that homeschoolers are powerless.
Two years ago, homeschoolers came of age, politically, when
they overwhelmed Capitol Hill switchboards in their effort
to get Congress to drop a drive to force parents to get
,
teaching certificates before they could homeschool.
The
House voted with home educators, 424 to 1, on that issue.
Homeschoolers have also received a great deal of posi-
tive media coverage over the past 10 years.
Favorable
stories about homeschoolers have been featured in the New
York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today; the
Washington Times features homeschool columnists in its
Family Times section.57
"Home-Schooled Christian Teenagers
Tout Advantage of Their Lifestyle" was a Washington Post
article about 900 homeschooled teenagers who attended
a
homeschooling youth conference in a Fairfax County, Virgin-
ia, church."
In 1994 the Wall Street Journal ran a series
of articles about the backlash against public schools.
The
first article focused on homeschoolers and featured a day in
the life of the Cardiffs of San Jose, California, a home-
schooling family."
"The Dawn of Online Home Schooling" was
a
Newsweek article about the marriage of homeschooling and
technology.
60
The American homeschooling story has even
grabbed the interest of the international media.
"US mother
says it's not such a great sacrifice" was a sidebar in an
Irish Times story about Ireland's homeschoolers.61
In short, homeschooling is here to stay and is giving
new meaning to the old maxim "there's no place like home."
It is likely that the number of homeschoolers will grow if
the current public school system continues to be viewed by
parents as an irrelevant institution that can hinder a
child's ability to learn.
The lesson for reformers bent on
promoting statist educational models, such as Goals 2000 or
School-to-Work, is this: homeschooling has produced literate
Page 16
students with minimal government interference at a fraction
of the cost of any government program.
Homeschooling families believe they are using their
liberties well and wisely.
The American can-do spirit is
evident in the homeschools and households parents manage
simultaneously.
Those families, however, could use some
further deregulation, be it through homeschool tax credits
or a loosening of compulsory attendance school laws, to make
their task easier.
Indeed, policymakers of all political
stripes who are anxious for some good news from the educa-
tional front lines should ponder the words of Martin Luther
King III.
At a homeschooling convention, King observed,
"The kind of things homeschoolers are doing may be the
saving grace of our nation.
62
Notes
1.
Julie Makinen, "New York Home-Schooler Is Queen of the
National Spelling Bee in D.C.," Washington Post, May 30,
1997, p. A9; and Deb Riechmann, "Nerve-Wracked: Home-
schooled Teen Top Speller," Daily Hampshire Gazette, May 30,
1997, p. 5.
2.
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educa-
tion Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics. 1996,
Table 5.
3.
Ibid., Table 166.
4.
Alec M. Gallup and Stanley M. Elam, "The 20th Annual
Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes toward the Public
Schools," Phi Delta Kappan, September 1988, p. 36.
5.
Elizabeth Gleick, "The Costly Crisis in Our Schools,"
Time, January 30, 1995, p. 67.
6.
Edward B. Fiske, Smart Schools, Smart Kids (New York,
Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 13.
7.
Franklin P. Schargel, "Total Quality in Education,"
Quality Progress, October 1993, p. 67.
8.
Cited in Sheldon Richman, Separating State and School
(Fairfax, Va.: Future of Freedom Foundation, 1994), p. 111.
9.
Patricia M. Lines, "Homeschooling: Private Choices and
Public Obligations," U.S. Department of Education, Office of
Research, 1993, p. 1.
17
Page 17
10. Brian D. Ray, "A Profile of Home Education Research,"
Home School Legal Defense Association, Purcellville, Va.,
1992, p. 6.
11. John Lyon,
Education,"
12. Raymond
Summer 1990,
"Reclaiming the Schools: Reconciling Home and
The Family in America 8, no. 6
(June 1994): 3.
Moore,
"Homegrown and Homeschooled," Mothering,
p. 79.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., p.
80.
15. Ibid.
16. John Holt,
Teach Your Own (New York, Delacorte, 1981),
p. 21.
17. John Holt,
How Children Fail (New York, Pitman, 1964).
18. Holt, Teach Your Own, p. 5.
19. Ibid.,
p. 346.
20. Brian D.
Ray, National Home Education Research Insti-
tute, 1996, at http://www.nheri.org.
21. Patricia M. Lines, "Homeschooling: An Overview for
Educational Policymakers," U.S. Department of Education
Working Paper, January 1997, p. 4.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. The Home School Market (Boulder, Colo.: Hal Clarke,
1995), cited in "Home Schoolers Aided by Technology," Educa-
tional Technology Markets, April 1996, p. 1.
25. Interview with Rich Shipe, Home School Legal Defense
Association, May 22, 1997.
26. Interview with Mary Pride, publisher of Practical Home-
schooling, February 1996.
27. Interview with Rich Shipe.
28. Interview with Christine Jensen, editorial assistant at
Homeschooling Today, August 8, 1997.
£8
Page 18
29. Interview with Pat Farenga, Holt Associates, February
1996.
30. National Education Association, "B-63, Homeschooling,"
August 1, 1996, at http://www.nea.org/96resolu/96-toc.html.
31. Isabel Lyman, "An Analysis of Print Media Coverage of
Homeschooling: 1985-1996" (Ph.D. diss., Universidad de San
Jose, Costa Rica, 1996).
32. Office of Nonpublic Schools and Program Support, Florida
Department of Education, statistical brief, 1996.
33. Quoted in "Questions and Answers about Homeschooling,"
John Holt's Book and Music Store Catalogue (Cambridge,
Mass.: Growing without Schooling Publications, 1996), p. 34.
34. Brian D. Ray, "Home Education across the United States,"
Home School Legal Defense Association research study, March
1997, p. 12.
35. Jane A. Van Galen, "Ideologues and Pedagogues: Parents
Who Teach Their Children at Home," in Home Schooling: Polit-
ical, Historical, and Pedagogical Perspectives, ed. Jane Van
Galen and Mary Anne Pittman (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1991),
p. 67.
36. Ibid., p. 71.
37. Ray, "Home Education across the United States," p. 8.
38. Theodore C. Wagenaar, "What Characterizes Home School
ers? A National Study," Education 117, no. 3
(1996): 442.
39. Richard G. Medlin, "Home Schooling: What's Hard? What
Helps?" Home School Researcher 11, no. 4
(1995): 1.
40. Larry Shyers, "Comparison'of Social Adjustment between
Home and Traditionally Schooled Students" (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Florida, 1992).
41. "Questions and Answers about Homeschooling," National
Homeschool Association, Cincinnati, fact sheet, 1996.
42. Ray, "Home Education across the United States," p. 8.
43. Perchemlides v. Frizzle, no. 16641 (Massachusetts Su-
preme Court, November 13, 1978), p.
9.
19
Page 19
44. See, for instance, Elsa Walsh, "Home Teaching Is Harder
in Md. under New Rules," Washington Post, May 31, 1984,
p. Dl; William Celis, "Schooling at Home Draws Lawsuits to
Doorsteps," New York Times, May 6, 1992; "Mom Will Contest
Arrest for Teaching Children at Home," Grand Rapids (Michi-
ga )
Press, March 12, 1993; Deirdre M. Childress, "Who
Controls Emily's Education?" Washington Post, November 25,
1995, p. Fl; and Dana Hawkins, "Homeschool Battles," U.S.
News & World Report, February 12, 1996.
45. Christopher J. Klicka, The Right to Home School: A Guide
to the Law on Parents' Rights in Education (Durham, N.C.:
Carolina Academic Press, 1995), pp. 26-27.
46. Quoted in Mark Hegener and Helen Hegener, Alternatives
in Education (Tonasket, Wash.: Home Education Press, 1992),
p. 146.
47. Samuel L. Blumenfeld, How to Tutor (Boise: Paradigm,
1973); Deborah McIntire and Robert Windham, Homeschooling:
Your Questions Answered! (Cypress, Calif.: Creative Teaching
Press, 1996); and Charlotte Mason, The Original Home School-
ing Series (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1993).
48. Quoted in Holt, Teach Your Own, p. 133.
49. Christopher Shea, "From Home to College," Chronicle of
Higher Education, February 2, 1996, p. A31.
50. Ray, "Home Education across the United States," p. 14.
51. Patricia M. Lines, "Home Schooling," ERIC Digest, no.
95, April 1995, EDO-EA-95-3.
52. Ray, "Home Education across the United States," p. 6.
53. Quoted in Van Galen and Pitman, p. 45.
54. "Semifinalists in the 1998 Merit Scholarship Competi-
tion," National Merit Scholarship Corp., Evanston, Ill.,
1997, pp. 14-92.
55. J. Gary Knowles, "Now We Are Adults: Attitudes, Beliefs,
and Status of Adults Who Were Home-educated as Children,"
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educa-
tional Research Association, Chicago, April 3-7, 1991.
56. Interview with Alexandra Swann, homeschool graduate,
June 1997.
20
Page 20
57. See, for instance, Nancy Wallace, "Escape! Breaking Out
of the School System," Inquiry, March 29, 1982; Selwyn
Feinstein, "Domestic Lessons/Shunning the Schools, More
Parents Teach Their Kids at Home," Wall Street Journal,
October 6, 1986, p. 1; Casey Banas,,"More Parents Teaching
Children Themselves," Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1989, p. 8;
"Home Sweet School," Time, October 31, 1994, p. 62; John
Strausbaugh, "Home's Cool," Jew York Press, June 7, 1995;
Mary Maushard, "Parent Discontent Fuels Home Schooling,"
Baltimore Sun, April 25, 1996, p. 1A; and Victoria Benning,
"Home-Schooling's Mass Appeal," Washington Post, January 20,
1997, p. Bl.
58. Peter Y. Hong, "Home-Schooled Christian Teenagers Tout
Advantage of Their Lifestyle," Washington Post, October 16,
1994, p. Bl.
59. Steve Stecklow, "Live and Learn/Fed Up with Schools,
More Parents Turn to Teaching at Home," Wall Street Journal,
May 10, 1994, p. 1.
60. LynNell Hancock. and Rob French, "The Dawn of Online Home
Schooling," Newsweek, October, 10, 1994, p. 67.
61. Yvonne Healy, "At Home at School," Irish Times, April 4,
1995, p. 2.
62. Quoted in Isabel Lyman, "Martin Luther King III Encour-
ages Homeschoolers," Moore Report International, January-
February 1994, p. 5.
BEST COPY AVAILABLE
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Published by the Cato Institute, Policy Analysis is a regular
series evaluating government policies and offering proposals
for reform. Nothing in Policy Analysis should be construed as
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January 7, 1998
Homeschooling produces well-educated students at low cost
Tax credits and deregulation would ease the burden on homeschooling families
"The lesson for reformers bent on promoting statist educational models, such as Goals 2000 or School-to-
Work, is this: homeschooling has produced literate students with minimal government interference at a
fraction of the cost of any government program," writes Isabel Lyman in a new Cato Institute Policy
Analysis.
In "Homeschooling: Back to the Future?" Lyman argues that homeschoolingdefined simply as the
education of school-aged children at home rather than at a schoolis expanding substantially for two major
reasons. "First, American public schools are turning out a poor productilliterate and unprepared
graduates," Lyman notes. "Equally troubling, public schools have become crime scenes where drugs are
sold, teachers are robbed, and homemade bombs are found in lockers.
. . .
Many parents, impatient for
reform, are taking matters into their own hands."
Lyman is codirector of the Harkness Road High School in Amherst, Massachusetts, and a long-time
homeschooling parent. She traces two historical strains of homeschooling: one inspired by Raymond Moore
on the religious right and the other begun by John Holt on the countercultural left. About 30 years ago,
those two men launched unrelated efforts to lay the framework for a revolution in education.
Lyman provides responses to 10 frequently asked questions about homeschooling, including questions about
the socialization of homeschooled children, legal issues and the quality of education at home compared with
conventional schooling. Two significant pieces of evidence are the National Merit Scholarship Corporation's
choice of more than 70 homeschooled high school seniors as semifinalists in its 1998 competition and the
boom in the admission of homeschooled students to selective colleges reported recently in the Chronicle of
Higher Education.
Estimates of the number of homeschooled children in the United States vary. Patricia Lines, a researcher
with the U.S. Department of Education, estimates that the number is between 500,000 and 750,000. The
Home School Legal Defense Association maintains that the number is much higher-1.23 million. In any
case, according to Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute, homeschooling is growing
at a rate of at least 15 percent and perhaps as much as 40 percent per year.
Lyman concludes that governments should make homeschooling easier by instituting tax credits for
homeschooling and loosening compulsory school attendance laws.
Policy Analysis no. 294 (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-294es.html)
Contact: Isabel Lyman, Harkness Road High School, 413-253-9535, [email protected]
Dan Greenberg, director of communications, 202-789-5225, [email protected]
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