This post briefly reviews Susie Heumier Aasen, “New Followers of an Old Path-Homeschoolers” in Educator’s World 32, no. 4 (January 2010): 12-14. [Available Here]
Aasen, veteran homeschooling mother of five in Washington State, here summarizes the basics of homeschooling research. She leads off with the 2007 NCES data that estimated there to be around 1.5 million homeschoolers in the U.S. She describes the diversity of motives, pedagogies, and types of people who homeschool. She cites Brian Ray’s NHERI research to show that
the average homeschooler consistently scores higher on standardized achievement tests compared to average public school students, with median scores from 15-30 percentile points higher than the public school norm. (p.12)
Longtime readers of this blog will recall that I’ve dealt at length about the hazards of making such sweeping generalizations from Ray’s data. If you missed it you can find my review of Ray’s oeuvre here (part 1) and here (part 2).
Aasen next addresses socialization, citing the work of Thomas Smedley and Larry Shyers to argue that homeschoolers are well socialized. The same goes for their self-concept. And finally, homeschoolers do very well as adults, as Brian Ray has shown (again, see my reviews linked above).
All in all this is a very celebratory summary. It is significant that of her eleven sources, 6 are either by Ray or were published in the Home School Researcher, Ray’s journal. As a summary of the research this article is fine. The problem is the research base itself. Brief articles like this often leave the impression that homeschooling is like magic, transforming ordinary mortals into geniuses who go on to change the world through their entrepreneurial acumen and political savvy. And, unfortunately, that is what the self-selecting surveys and advocacy agenda that has been the bedrock of homeschooling research for three decades does lead one to believe (though if you read them carefully, Ray’s original studies do acknowledge that one cannot generalize from them or compare his results to public schooled children).
The truth, however, is that we just don’t know basic things like what the “average” homeschooler scores on tests or how well socialized homeschoolers are or whether they go on to make more money or have more influence than their conventionally-schooleld peers. To know stuff like that we’d need representative samples (not surveys of volunteers) that control for variables like family income, parent education level, marital stability, race, and so on. These kinds of studies are difficult and expensive, however. Nevertheless, until we get them all of what we know about homeschooling will continue to be anecdotal, be it celebratory anecdotes like those underlying this piece or desultory anecdotes like those reported recently in this blog from criminal prosecutions and custody battles.
A second, fully revised edition of my 2008 book Homeschool: An American History, was published in March of 2017. 
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Homeschooling Research Notes 
As a homeschooling mother I agree with you that it’s wrong to mislead people with these studies. When your own children aren’t reading “War and Peace” at the age of 6 or fascinated with advanced calculus at the age of 12 ;-), then you think that there’s something wrong with you or the way you’re homeschooling.
I think it places way too high expectations and stress on both parents and children. Then, if you’re unschooling, as we are, you have to come to terms with the fact that your children might not be ready for academics at the age of 15 or 16 or whenever (if ever) and that unschooling is not something that magically transforms into college attendance at the usual age of 18. When parents depart from the school paradigm (either by homeschooling or even further by unschooling), they have to accept that this is not necessarily going to turn their children into little achievers (by “schooled” society’s standards, anyway). I think that by citing studies such as this, which are biased anyway, to show that homeschooling is “better”, home educators are buying into the same paradigm that they think they have left behind. I think that it’s okay to use such studies to counter claims that only school attendance can guarantee a good education (as has been done in Germany), but people still have to tread very carefully.
Here’s a blog post I read recently that gave me a lot of of food for thought in this regard:
http://eligerzon.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/unschooler-peter-kowalke-interview-ab-college/
Numerous lines of evidence support the following two generalizations:
1. As institutions take from individual parents the power to select curricula and instructional methods, overall system performance falls.
2. Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically adept parents.
It would be near impossible to devise a random-assignment, double-blind study of homeschooling effects. One highly suggestive piece of evidence is the distribution of Alaska’s NAEP 8th grade Math percentile scores, coupled with (a) the populatity of Alaska’s subsudized correspondence K-12 school system and (b) the observation that homeschoolers’ –average– (Median?) score is close to the 90th percentile for conventional students. If Alaska’s high (relative to other States) 90th percentile score rose in parallel with the increase in correspondence school enrollment, one might reasonably infer cause.
Just as one might deduce the mass of a molecule of X by reducing the proportion of contaminants Y from a mixture of X and Y, homeschool effects can be estimated by measuring the effects of increases in parent control (e.g., later age of compulsory attendance, smaller school districts, district-wide school choice, school vouchers).
The issue is whether the difference between Alaska and other states is related to schooling type or something else. You’re suggesting that Alaska’s high NAEP scores are due not to the unique class and racial make-up of the Alaskan population but to correspondence education. Is that true? I don’t know enough about Alaska to say. It’s an interesting question though!