NCES HOMESCHOOLING DATA: 2012 Complete Report

Record: Jeremy Redford, Danielle Battle, Stacey Bielick, and Sarah Grady, Homeschooling in the United States: 2012, (NCES 2016-096) (U.S. Department of Education: Washington, D.C., 2016) [Available Here]

Introduction: Every four or five years, the National Household Education Survey developed by the National Center for Education Statistics includes questions about homeschooling. This survey provides us with the best information available about homeschooling because it is consists of a representative, randomized sample of the entire American population. In 2013, we summarized some preliminary findings from this 2012 data-set; however, we now have the complete findings at our disposal. As I summarize this article, I will be making frequent reference to the previous survey from 2007, which we summarized here.

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HOW TO MISLEAD WITH DATA: A Critique of Brian Ray’s Methodology

Record: Chelsea McCracken, “How to Mislead with Data: A Critical Review of Ray’s ‘Academic Achievement and Demographic Traits of Homeschool Students: A Nationwide Study’ (2010).” Coalition for Responsible Home Education (15 January, 2014).  [Available Here]

Summary:  McCracken, who serves as the senior research analyst for the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, an organization advocating for increased regulatory protection of homeschooled children in the United States, here scrutinizes Brian Ray’s most recent study of homeschooler academic achievement.  For my own summary and critique of Ray’s study click here.

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THE POLITICS OF HOMESCHOOLS: Culture Wars and State Regulations

Record: Andrea Vieux, “The Politics of Homeschools: Religious Conservatives and Regulation Requirements” in The Social Science Journal (9 July, 2014).  [Abstract Here]

Summary: Vieux, a Political Science professor at the University of Central Florida, here provides quantitative data to try to determine the degree to which a state’s percentage of religious conservatives correlates with its level of homeschooling regulation.

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The Cardus Education Survey, 2014

Record: R. Pennings, et al, “Private Education for the Public Good: 2014 Report,” Cardus Education Survey, 2014. [Available for download here]

Summary:

In 2011 the first Cardus Education Survey was released.  With its large randomized sample of young adults age 24-39, it provided some of the best data ever compiled about the experiences of young adults who had graduated from various forms of private schooling, including homeschooling.  The present survey is another equally robust survey of 1500 young adults, age 24 to 39.  The sample was obtained by GfK, whose Knowledge Networks Panel respondents constitute a representative sample of the U.S. population.  Cardus drew on the GfK contact list to generate a sample of 500 public school graduates who served as a baseline for comparison to 1000 graduates of various kinds of private and home schools. Each of these subjects answered about ½ hour’s worth of questions about their high school experiences.

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FIRST MARRIAGE AND FIRST BIRTH: Comparing Religious, Home, and Public Schools

Record: Jeremy E. Uecker and Jonathan P. Hill, “Religious Schools, Home Schools, and the Timing of First Marriage and First Birth” in Review of Religious Research 56, no. 2 (June 2014): 189-218. [Abstract Here]

Summary: Uecker, a sociology professor at Baylor University, and Hill, a sociology professor at Calvin College, are both familiar names to readers of these reviews.  In a 2008 article Uecker found (among other things) that there was no difference in levels of adult religious commitment between graduates of public or home schools.  Parent religiosity, not school type, made all the difference.  In a 2013 article Hill found that homeschooled young adults were less likely to engage in volunteer activities than demographically equivalent graduates of public schools.  Both of these articles had drawn from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), a remarkably ambitious project that has borne great fruit in understanding the religious and political lives of young adults in the United States.

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VIRTUAL SCHOOLS IN THE U.S.: A Comprehensive Analysis, part 3

Record: Alex Molnar, ed., Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2014: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence (Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center, 2014).  Available here.

Summary: Part one of this report summarized recent legislative activity relative to virtual public schooling.  Part two surveyed the academic research on virtual schools.  Part three, which I review in this post, provides raw data on the number of online schools in operation, the providers that run them, and the students who attend them. 

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DOES HOMESCHOOLING PROMOTE INTOLERANCE: A Quantitative Study

Record: Albert Cheng, “Does Homeschooling or Private Schooling Promote Political Intolerance? Evidence from a Christian University” in Journal of School Choice 8, no. 1 (2014): 49-68. [Abstract Here]

Summary and Critique: Cheng, a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas, here reports the results of a quantitative study comparing college students who were homeschooled with those who attended public and private schools on a measure of political tolerance.

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The 2013 NCES Homeschooling Data

Every four years the National Center for Education Statistics’ enormous National Household Education Survey includes questions about homeschooling.  The results of the latest round of homeschooling questions (from the 2011 survey) were released in August of 2013.  This massive survey (n=17,563) provides us with the best data by far on homeschooling, consisting as it does of a representative sample of the entire population of the United States.  You can read the preliminary results in tables 7 and 8 of the latest survey here.

Five years ago I summarized what previous rounds of the NCES survey had uncovered about homeschooling.  Here I will update that summary, incorporating the newer data.

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State Homeschooling Enrollment Data 2013

In the past I have occasionally posted all the available data on enrollment compiled by the various states in the USA.  This data is not the best for several reasons.  First, many states do not collect data on enrollments at all.  Second, even those that do often do so on an ad hoc basis, and the results can be unreliable between counties and from year to year.  Third, even if a state has done its best to collect accurate data, an unknown percentage of homeschoolers simply do not register with the state.

With those caveats in mind, we can nevertheless learn some things from this data, especially by attending to trends over time. 

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Joseph Murphy Reviews Gaither and Kunzman’s “Comprehensive Survey of the Research”

A few months ago I reviewed Joseph Murphy’s excellent book that synthesizes nearly all of the literature on homeschooling into a convenient, coherent, and literate volume titled Homeschooling in America: Capturing and Assessing the Movement.  A couple of years before Dr. Murphy’s book came out Rob Kunzman and I decided that we wanted to do the same thing.  I’ve been reviewing homeschooling literature since 2008 on this blog, and Dr. Kunzman has compiled an exhaustive bibliography, which can be accessed here.  Our article summarizing and synthesizing all of this literature came out a few weeks ago and I asked Dr. Murphy if he would review it for me.  He graciously agreed to do so, and here are his comments:

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