DOES HOMESCHOOLING “WORK”: A Critique of Advocacy Research

Record: Christopher Lubienski, Tiffany Puckett, and T. Jameson Brewer, “Does Homeschooling ‘Work’? A Critique of the Empirical Claims and Agenda of Advocacy Organizations” in Peabody Journal of Education 88, no. 3 (2013): 378-392.

Summary:

Lubienski is well known as one of the most prominent critics of unregulated homeschooling.  Here he and his colleagues do not challenge the rights of families to educate their children at home.  They limit their critique to the research and underlying agendas of homeschooling advocacy organizations.

Read Full Post »

Brian Ray’s Philosophical Argument for Homeschooling

Record: Brian D. Ray, “Homeschooling Associated with Beneficial Learner and Societal Outcomes but Educators Do Not Promote It” in Peabody Journal of Education 88, no. 3 (2013): 324-341.

Summary:

Ray is without question the most influential researcher in homeschooling given his many decades of work as the head of the high profile National Home Education Research Institute, a research/advocacy organization that has produced a steady stream of reports demonstrating the academic and social benefits of homeschooling, most of them funded by the Home School Legal Defense Association.  Ray has also for decades worked the homeschooling lecture circuit and has appeared as a pro-homeschooling expert witness in dozens of court cases.  In this article he moves beyond his usual empirical arguments to make more philosophical arguments in favor of homeschooling and against its critics.

Read Full Post »

2013 Homeschooling-themed Issue of the PEABODY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION

Every so often an academic journal decides to devote an entire issue to the topic of homeschooling.  Here is a list of such themed issues:

International Journal of Elementary Education 3, no. 1 (October 2010).

Theory and Research in Education 7, no. 3 (November 2009).

Journal of College Admission 185 (Fall 2004).

Evaluation and Research in Education 17, no. 2-3 (2003).

Peabody Journal of Education 75, no. 1-2 (2000).

Education and Urban Society 21, no. 1 (November 1988).

The Peabody Journal of Education, whose 2000 special issue was a landmark in the history of homeschooling research, released another special issue in 2013, edited, as was the 2000 issue, by Dr. Brian D. Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI). 

Read Full Post »

Aasen Summarizes Homeschooling in 3 pages

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 

Read Full Post »

New Ray/HSLDA Study on Homeschooler Achievement

This post briefly reviews preliminary releases of the new study conducted by Brian Ray for HSLDA called “Homeschooling Across America: Academic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics.”  The full study is scheduled for release in November 2009.

While the full report has not yet been published, HSLDA has already posted a press release describing its scope and celebrating its finding that homeschoolers score on average 36-37 percentage points higher than public schooled children on a wide range of standardized tests.   

Read Full Post »

Brian D. Ray and NHERI, part 2

In my previous post I described how a series of email exchanges with Brian Ray motivated me to devote more systematic attention to his work than I had done previously.  Dr. Ray, in an unfailingly courteous manner, criticized previous assertions I had made in this blog about the limited scientific reach of his studies and his ties to HSLDA.  I dealt in the last post with the research methodology and generalizability question.  In this one I’d like to speak to his ties to HSLDA. 

Read Full Post »

Brian D. Ray and NHERI, part 1

Some weeks ago I had an interesting email exchange with Dr. Brian D. Ray who responded to me graciously but critically concerning several comments I have made about his organization in some of my blog posts.  Specifically, Dr. Ray objected to two things.  First, he objected to my association of his organization with HSLDA, maintaining that the two organizations are independent of one another.  Second, he objected to my assertions that NHERI’s research typically does not meet the standards of scientific methodology that are commonly accepted among social scientists and are thus of limited value.  In the course of our email exchange he challenged me to substantiate my claims or else stop making them.  I admitted to him then that my beliefs about NHERI were based upon general impressions I had picked up over the course of my research on homeschooling rather than on any systematic examination of NHERI and promised him that I would engage in a more rigorous study of NHERI and report what I found.  Here is what I found. 

Read Full Post »

Cooper and Sureau on Homeschooling Politics

This post reviews Bruce S. Cooper and John Sureau, “The Politics of Homeschooling: New Developments, New Challenges” in Educational Policy 21, no. 1 (Jan and Mar 2007): 110-131 (available online here)

Cooper, editor of the recent anthology Homeschooling In Full View, and his collaborator Sureau here summarize legal, legislative, and public-image developments in the homeschooling movement. 

Read Full Post »

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. 

Read Full Post »

Part 2 of review of Williams, ed., AT ISSUE: HOMESCHOOLING

In my last post I reviewed the first two entries in this anthology.  Today I will review chapters 3 and 4. 

Read Full Post »