HOME SCHOOLING IN CANADA: A Fraser Institute Report

Record: Deani Neven Van Pelt, “Home Schooling in Canada: The Current Picture–2015 Edition.”  Barbara Mitchell Center for Improvement in Education (June 2015).  [Available Here]

Summary: Van Pelt, who has published occasional studies of home education since 2003, is director of the Barbara Mitchell Center for Improvement in Education at theFraser Institute, a libertarian think-tank based in Canada with a long history of advocating market-based policies drawn from libertarian economists like Friedrich Hayek, Edwin G. West, and George Stigler.  This report updates a 2007 update of the widely cited 2001 report the Fraser Institute published called Homeschooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream.  The 2001 report was written by Patrick Basham, who has since moved on to be a prominent voice at the Cato Institute, another libertarian think-tank based in the United States.

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HOME SCHOOLING: A CQ Researcher Report

Record: Marcia Clemmitt, “Home Schooling: Do Parents Give their Children A Good Education?” CQ Researcher 24, no. 10 (7 March 2014), pp. 217-240. [Available Here]

Summary:

The CQ Researcher has long been an influential publication, especially among politicians and others connected to the United States Congress.  Clemmitt is a veteran journalist who has provided in-depth analysis of several educational issues in the past.  She brings her wide experience and the publication’s resources together here on the topic of homeschooling.

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A New Study on Academic Achievement of Homeschoolers

This post reviews Sandra Martin-Chang, Odette N. Gould, and Reanne E. Meuse, “The Impact of Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Homeschooled and Traditionally Schooled Children.” Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science 43, no. 3 (July 2011): 195-202.

The authors of this study of 74 children, half homeschooled, half institutionally schooled, conclude that structured homeschooling is best, public schooling next, and unstructured homeschooling worst at producing high levels of academic achievement. 

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New Ray Study of Homeschooler Demographics and Achievement

This post reviews Brian D. Ray, “Academic Achievement and Demographic Traits of Homeschool Students: A Nationwide Study” in Academic Leadership Live: The Online Journal 8, no. 1 (February 2010).  [Available Here]

This is the latest of a long line of nearly identical studies Ray has been performing for decades now at fairly even intervals.  In two previous posts I reviewed this large body of work, which you can read here and here.  This new study tries very hard to overcome one of the most persistent deficiencies of his previous work (and the 1999 Rudner study)–the near exclusive reliance on HSLDA’s advertisement to recruit subjects, leading to unrepresentative samples.  This time around Ray tried to recruit families from outside of the HSLDA orbit.  Did he succeed? 

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Kunzman on Christian Homeschooling, part 1

This post reviews Robert Kunzman, Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009).

Kunzman [see his wonderful homeschooling research website here], Associate Professor of Education at Indiana University, Bloomington and author of many works on religion, ethics, and education, here gives us one of the most important books on homeschooling ever written. 

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Glass on Homeschooling and Privatization

This post reviews Gene V. Glass, Fertilizers, Pills, And Magnetic Strips: The Fate Of Public Education In America (Charlotte: Information Age Publishing, 2008).

Glass, a professor of education at Arizona State University and author of numerous studies related to empirical research in education, here provides a sweeping, almost epic account of the broad economic and social trends that have affected recent educational policy.  While homeschooling is not a central theme of his book, it is for him one facet of a larger trend toward educational privatization that he tries to account for here. 

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Millman on Homeschooling in New Jersey and College Admission

This post reviews Gregory and Martine Millman, Homeschooling: A Family’s Journey(New York: Penguin, 2008).

Gregory Millman, economics journalist and author of several books on monetary policy, and his wife Martine Millman here produce a beautiful book that is part memoir, part how-to guide, and part research review on select homeschooling topics.  For this review I will stress the research component of the book. 

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Lips and Feinberg on Homeschool Economics

This post reviews Dan Lips and Evan Feinberg, “Homeschooling: A Growing Option in American Education” in Backgrounder 2122 (June 2008). [Available fulltext here]

Lips and Feinberg, both with the Heritage Foundation, here produce a synthetic overview of homeschooling for the Foundation’s publication Backgrounder.  Most of what they describe will be very familiar to anyone who has spent any time studying the movement.  I will not here summarize everything they say but instead mention a few points unique to this paper. 

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Haan and Cruickshank on Homeschoolers in College

This post reviews Perry Haan and Cam Cruickshank, “Marketing Colleges to Home-Schooled Students” in Journal of Marketing for Higher Education 16, no. 2 (2006): 25-43.

Haan and Cruickshank, both affiliated with Tiffin University in Ohio, here orient college administrators to the homeschooling movement and make a case for increased recruitment from its ranks as a viable strategy for enrollment growth. 

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Part 4 of review of Williams, ed., AT ISSUE: HOMESCHOOLING

In this final entry I will finish out my review of the anthology AT ISSUE: HOMESCHOOLING, summarizing chapters 7-13 much more briefly than in previous entries. 

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