SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES: A Review of the Literature

Record: Joseph Murphy, “The Social and Educational Outcomes of Homeschooling” in Sociological Spectrum 34, no. 3 (April 2014), 244-272. [Abstract Here]

Summary: Murphy, a professor at Vanderbilt University and author of the excellent book-length review of homeschooling scholarship Homeschooling in America, here again summarizes much of the literature on homeschooling, attending especially to studies of the outcomes of homeschooling on the children who experience it.

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HOMESCHOOLED ADOLESCENTS: Drugs, Delinquency, and Grade Level

Record: Sharon Green-Hennessy, “Homeschooled Adolescents in the United States: Developmental Outcomes” in Journal of Adolescence 37, no. 4 (June 2014): 441-449 [Abstract here]

Summary:  Green-Hennessy is a psychology professor at Loyola Maryland.  After beginning with a very strong lit review, she describes the methodology of the data set she’ll be using in this study, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).  It is a yearly, nationally representative survey of U.S. household residents age 12 and over.  Subjects are interviewed by trained professionals and paid $30 for their trouble, which results in very high response rates (between 69 and 77% during the years Green-Hennessy uses).  Green-Hennessy combined the data on children aged 12 to 17 for the years 2002-2011, which gave her 182,351 subjects overall.  The demographics of this massive sample reflects the nation at large quite well.  Since one of the questions asked on the survey was type of schooling, Green-Hennessy was able to use this data to determine to what degree homeschooling prevents or exacerbates behaviors known to put adolescents at risk for drug use.

Of the 182,351 adolescents surveyed by NSDUH between 2002 and 2011, only 1094, or .6% reported being homeschooled. 

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AFRICAN AMERICAN HOMESCHOOLERS: Religion and Race as Motivators

Record: Ama Mazama and Garvey Lundy, “African American Homeschoolers: The Force of Faith and the Reality of Race in the Homeschooling Experience” in Religion and Education (forthcoming).  [First page here]

Summary: In previous articles Mazama (of Temple University) and Lundy (of Montgomery County Community College) have drawn on what is to date the largest and most geographically diverse sample of African American homeschoolers ever collected to probe parental motivation.  In a 2012 article they first articulated what has become a standard theme of their work, the idea that African American homeschoolers are motivated largely by what they call “racial protectionism,” a desire to protect their children from the racism they often face in conventional schools.  In a 2013 piece they refined their concept, calling it “educational protectionism,” and giving it both a curricular and a pedagogical dimension.

In this article they draw on this same data to add yet another dimension to their account of parental motivation.  Here they focus particularly on religion. 

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IS ALL PREPARATION EQUAL: Homeschoolers at Community Colleges

Record: Molly H. Duggan, “Is All College Preparation Equal? Pre-Community College Experiences of Home-Schooled, Private-Schooled, and Public-Schooled Students” in Community College Journal of Research and Practice 34, no. 1 (2010): 25-38. [Preview Here]

Summary: Duggan, who has written several other articles about various aspects of homeschooling and the community college experience, here adds to her growing body of work on the topic by reporting the results of a survey she conducted that sought to compare the pre-college preparation of homeschoolers to that of conventionally-schooled students attending the same community college.

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