I have in the past been reproached for not paying enough attention to research on home education, particularly that from North America. I have decided to remedy this by taking a serious look at the paper on homeschooling published by the Fraser Institute in 2001 and expanded and republished in 2007. This piece is often quoted enthusiastically by the advocates of home education. I have to say, I found a very big problem almost as soon as I skimmed through it. For those interested in seeing for themselves, it may be found here;
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/product_files/Homeschooling2007.pdf
At first sight it appears to be a sober and measured overview of home education, with particular emphasis on the USA and Canada. A glance at page 14 will however at once give the game away. It says;
"For example, a three-year study conducted by
researchers at England’s University of Durham found
that home schooled students noticeably out-performed
their public school peers in both literacy and mathematics
(Livni, 2000). "
"England's University of Durham" tells us at once that they are referring to Paula Rothermel's doctoral thesis, but who on Earth are the "researchers" who "conducted a three year study"? Could the mysterious Livni, whom they cite, be one of these researchers? Well, no. Ephrat Livni is in fact a reporter for the ABC News in America. In other words, the authors of this widely quoted study from the Fraser Institute have not actually read Paula Rothermel's work themselves, but instead rely upon what they heard about it on the TV news! How scholarly is that? The truth is of course, that the the work at Durham to which they refer was actually a small-scale piece of research involving thirty five children carried out by an undergraduate. I suppose that talking about "researchers" made it sound more authoritative. They don't even credit Rothermel herself in their references.
The authors go on to say;
"The United Kingdom,
Germany, Japan, and Switzerland are some of the
developed nations with growing home schooling movements
(Billups, 2000)."
Who is Billups, cited as though she were an academic source? That would be Andrea Billups who is a reporter for the Washington Post. And so it goes on. Among the sources for this paper are The Christian Science Monitor, CNN, Baltimore Sun, Newsweek, Time Magazine, Washington Post and ABC News. The authors of this much quoted piece of work have evidently not bothered to read a lot of the original work upon which they comment, but have instead relied upon what newspaper reporters and the television news channels have chosen to say about it. Need I say more?
Try and imagine for a moment if I criticised Paula Rothermel's research here and then finished by saying, "Of course I haven't actually read it, but I know what was said about it in the Daily Mail!". To say that I would be heavily censured for expressing any sort of an opinion about the research without actuallybothering to read it for myself is perhaps something of an understatement. I have not the time to go through every one of the references in this piece, but I think that I have shown clearly that this is not really a proper study of the subject of home education. One has to bear in mind of course that a founder member of the Fraser Institute was Friederich Hayek, the economist. The whole organisation is very heavily slanted towards free market principles and the main reason that they are in favour of home education is because is not regulated by the government. Finally, I thought that this sentence from Wikipedia was worth quoting;
"Critics of the Institute and other similar agenda-driven think tanks have claimed the Fraser Institute's reports, studies and surveys are usually not subject to standard academic peer review or the scholarly method"
They got that right!
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Quite, but that report doesn't claim to be research. Just a summary.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with you about Rothermel's study.
But try NHERI's stuff.
Mrs Anon
The problem anyway is that most research that is available is based on US home schooling, where the numbers involved and the time period is much greater...but I am not sure how that data is transferable to the UK situation. For example on a US site I sometimes read, one parent when asked to explain why she home educated stated that it was because it gave her child a leadership education that wasn't available in schools; now I am sure that wouldn't come up as a motive here - and if the causes of home education are so different, it is likely that home ed is carried out in different ways and with differing outcomes to the UK situation.
ReplyDeleteOf course you are absolutely right Julie.The National Centre for Education Statistics in America carried out a huge survey a few years ago, looking at the motivation for home education. Almost 50% of parents gave as their main reason; "Can give child a better education at home". Compare this with Paula Rothermel's paper, The Third Way in Education, published in 2000. The main reasons that parents in Britain gave for home education were; "Having a close family relationship and being together" and also "Having the freedom and flexibility to do what we want, when we want". Nothing wrong with that of course, but it is bound to make a difference to the educational outcome.
ReplyDeleteWhat research did you base you decision to home educate on? Or did you just do it because it suited your family? Would you have home educated if research in the UK had shown that it had slightly poorer outcomes than school?
ReplyDeletePersonally, we chose home education because it suited our children and allowed us to attempt non-coercion (obviously a lifestyle choice and not just a choice about education). I didn't really pay much attention to the 'success rate' studies because I largely disagree with their definitions of success. For us, success is that my children are happy and given the time and space to find and explore their interests fully, gain a good idea of how they want to spend, and solid grounding for, their adult lives and also be flexible enough and have the skills necessary to change course if necessary. Autonomous education seemed the most likely approach to allow them to do this (and the only non-coercive option, of course).
Julie said,
ReplyDeleteand if the causes of home education are so different, it is likely that home ed is carried out in different ways and with differing outcomes to the UK situation.
I agree that you cannot just transfer the results without thought, much the same applies to any research. However, it's very rare that a piece of research needs to be discounted completely, the limitations just have to be born in mind when considering the results.
Take unschooling and autonomous education. From descriptions on the web they sound very much the same approach. They stem from the same original writers and the descriptions of daily life sound much the same. I can't say identical because the nature of the styles means that no day can be identical! The HLSDA study published this year covered 11+ thousand children, some of whom will have been unschooled. This is what they say about the effect the style of education had on academic results:
"The study considered the many approaches that homeschoolers take to education—and found hardly any difference, less than .5% of variance, in achievement based on the following variables:
• Degree of structure (ranging from very unstructured approaches such as delight-directed learning or eclectic teaching approaches to very structured, preplanned, and prescribed approaches),
• Amount of time spent per day in parent-directed learning activities, and
• Enrollment in a full-service curriculum (one that furnishes a year’s worth of textbooks, lesson plans, evaluations, counseling, and record-keeping in all core subjects)."
http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/ray2009/2009_Ray_StudyFINAL.pdf
Very interesting study here on NHERI website:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.academicleadership.org/emprical_research/State_Regulation_of_Homeschooling_and_Homeschoolers_SAT_Scores.shtml
Need for the Study
The debate over what the state’s role should be in regulating or controlling private education in a free society will likely continue for a long time. A wide variety of stakeholders in the education of children and youth in the United States will continue promoting their points of view. Those who make worldview-based theoretical arguments will continue to do so and will hopefully make clear that they are doing so. Those who want to include findings from empirical research in their arguments for or against (more or less) regulation of home-based education need evidence over which to deliberate. This study was planned to provide some such evidence for them.
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a relationship between the college-admissions (or college-aptitude) SAT scores of students who were homeschooled and the degree of state regulation of homeschooling. Since (a) research to date shows the home educated to outperform, on average, public-school students in terms of academic achievement and to perform as well as institutional-school students in terms of college-admissions tests, (b) most people do not consider it an easy task to homeschool one’s children and those parents who so choose typically expend significant time, energy, and resources to educate their children, (c) there is no evidence that homeschool families significantly alter their learning attitudes and efforts based on their states’ homeschool laws, and (d) there is no evidence that homeschool parents and youth change their interest in postsecondary education based on their states’ homeschool laws, then it is hypothesized that there will be found no relationship between the degree of state regulation of homeschooling and students’ performance on a college aptitude test.
The “degree of state regulation of homeschooling” was defined according to three categories, as follow:
Low regulation – defined as no state requirement on the part of the homeschool parents to initiate any contact with the state.
Moderate regulation – defined as the state requiring homeschool parents to send to the state notification of homeschooling or achievement test scores and/or evaluation of the student’s learning by a professional.
High regulation – defined as the state requiring homeschool parents to send to the state notification of homeschooling or achievement test scores and/or evaluation by a professional and, in addition, having other requirements (e.g., curriculum approval by the state, teacher qualifications of parents, or home visits by state officials).
Findings
The SAT scores of homeschool students from low-, moderate-, and high-regulation states were first compared for states whose degree of regulation had not changed for the 10 years preceding and including the year of SAT testing. Tables 1, 2, and 3 present the descriptive information and ANOVA source tables for these analyses. There were no significant differences between students’ SAT scores in the three groups (of state regulation of homeschooling) for any of the three test scores (verbal, F(2, 40) = 0.58, p = .57; math, F(2,40) = 1.527, p = .23; total, F(2,40) = 1.070, p = .35). In all cases, the states with the highest degree of state regulation had the lowest average SAT scores. As previously explained, the unit of analysis was the state.
*In all cases, the states with the highest degree of state regulation had the lowest average SAT scores.*
ReplyDeleteThanks for that link Anony Mouse, very interesting article.
ReplyDeleteInteresting article Anony Mouse, but not at all surprising. The target group and of course the only home educated children looked at were;
ReplyDelete"The target and sample populations for this study were the same, all college-bound homeschool students from the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia who took the college-admission SAT test during one year."
This makes it a self-selected group. Without knowing what proportion of home educated children in each state go on to study at college, this tells us nothing at all about the efficacy of home education, let alone whether increasing regulation makes for a better outcome. What it tells us is that college students tend to be well educated in their earlier years and that home educated teenagers applying fo college are at least as well educated as those who attended school. As I said, interesting, but not at all surprising.
It would be more interesting to see what percentage of teenagers who went to school, then went on to college. Then comparing this against the percentage of home educated teenagers who also went to college. Suppose, just for the sake of argument that 20% of schooled teenagers went to college , but only 5% of home educated teenagers. This would not be a ringing endorsement of the practice. Suppose also that the percentage of home educated children applying to college varied from ttate to state? Would that tell us anything about the value of regulating home education? More research needed!
More research that appears to support this theory. Don't know of any home education research anywhere that isn't self selected though. Even research in schools is usually selective as it's often based on state schools only, for instance.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp
"The research [1990, 2,163 families] revealed that there was no positive correlation between state regulation of homeschools and the home-schooled students' performance. The study compared homeschoolers in three groups of states representing various levels of regulation."
"The last significant statistic from the Strengths of Their Own study [1997, 5,402 children from 1,657 families] regards the affect of government regulation on homeschooling. Dr. Brian Ray compared the impact of government regulation on the academic performance of homeschool students and he found no positive correlation. In other words, whether a state had a high degree of regulation (i.e., curriculum approval, teacher qualifications, testing, home visits) or a state had no regulation of homeschoolers, the homeschooled students in both categories of states performed the same. The students all scored on the average in the 86th percentile regardless of state regulation."
http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/ray2009/2009_Ray_StudyFINAL.pdf
"[2009, 11, 739 children] Critics also insist that the government should regulate homeschooling in order to ensure the quality of education that students receive. However, in this study, the degree to which homeschooling was regulated by state governments had no bearing on student test scores. "
I think you should go back and look at Paula's research again. Some of it involves over 1000 children Simon.
ReplyDeleteI think not, GoodWife. It is true that Paula Rothermel sent out many questionnaires and analysed several hundred responses, but the actual research, the PIPS baselines assessments, and the literacy tests were restricted to a group of thirty five. Since these were the only properly administered tests, these are the data to which I refer. In the case of the literacy tests, the situation was even more limited. Although she sent out a number for parents to carry out themselves, in fact only five tests were conducted by her in person. That is what you call a very small sample indeed!
ReplyDelete"Interesting article Anony Mouse, but not at all surprising. The target group and of course the only home educated children looked at were;
ReplyDelete"The target and sample populations for this study were the same, all college-bound homeschool students from the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia who took the college-admission SAT test during one year.""
Yes, agreed. And not a problem, because the whole point of this research was to compare the results of different degrees of state regulation of HE on the SATS results of *college-bound homeschool students*. And it proves very effectively that there is *no statistically significant difference*, and more, that what small difference there is shows that less regulation correlates to higher SATs results.
You seem to think that this is not surprising. Odd, given your opinion of the Badman report.
You also dismiss this research as uninteresting because it is not about something completely different.
"Without knowing what proportion of home educated children in each state go on to study at college, this tells us nothing at all about the efficacy of home education..."
It's not about the efficacy of home education.
"...let alone whether increasing regulation makes for a better outcome."
How does it not do that?