Are There Differences between Homeschool and Public School Parents, and between their Children?

This post reviews Christa L. Ice and Kathleen V. Hoover-Dempsey, “Linking Parental Motivations for Involvement and Student Proximal Achievement Outcomes in Homeschooling and Public Schooling Settings” in Education and Urban Society 43, no. 3 (May 2011): 339-369. [Abstract available here]

Several years ago I reported on an earlier study by Hoover-Dempsey and one of her graduate students on homeschooling parents’ motivations.  The current study is related.  This time rather than just look at homeschooling parent motivations, the authors want to find out two things.  First, are there important differences between how parents who choose homeschooling view their abilities to teach, level of engagement with their kids, and perception of their kids’ capabilities, and how parents who choose public schools for their kids view the same variables?  Second, do the differences in parental perception lead to differences in student performance and self-image? 

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New Cardus Comment on Homeschooling

A few months ago I reviewed the very important results of the Cardus Education Survey as they related to homeschooling.  The findings weren’t pretty.  Homeschoolers in the survey didn’t do well academically, failed at marriage, have checked out of politics, and feel that their lives are adrift.

Yesterday Jedd and Rachel Medefind posted on the Cardus site an interesting editorial that builds on these findings. 

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Lisa Tucker’s THE WINTERS IN BLOOM

Lisa Tucker is a fairly well known and respected American novelist.  The Winters in Bloom is her sixth book.  In her 2007 work Once Upon a Day, Tucker had explored the themes of kidnapping and raising children in protected isolation from the rest of the world.  Here she returns to these same ideas.  Her protagonists, Kyra and David Winter, have a five-year-old son named Michael over whom they hover obsessively.  Their desire to protect Michael from bullying, not to mention dust, mass media, unhealthy food, and any number of other perils, lead them to homeschooling.

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Beth Kephart’s YOU ARE MY ONLY

This post briefly reviews Beth Kephart’s young adult novel You Are My Only.

Kephart is an award-winning author of 13 young adult titles as well as lots of poetry, essays, and reviews.  This, her latest book, is up for review here because of its use of homeschooling as a plot point.

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Condoleezza Rice on her Childhood Homeschooling

Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State from 2005-2009 under president George W. Bush and is currently a professor of political science at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.  Her 2010 memoir, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family,is a fine account of her life, including lots of great information about her childhood in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1950s and 60s, especially (for us) her year as a homeschooler.

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