Research & Statistics
Resources
The Homeschooling Revolution
Kingdom of Children : Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology)
More than one million American children are schooled by their parents. As their ranks grow, home schoolers are making headlines by winning national spelling bees and excelling at elite universities. The few studies conducted suggest that homeschooled children are academically successful and remarkably well socialized. Yet we still know little about this alternative to one of society's most fundamental institutions. Beyond a vague notion of children reading around the kitchen table, we don't know what home schooling looks like from the inside.
Sociologist Mitchell Stevens goes behind the scenes of the homeschool movement and into the homes and meetings of home schoolers. What he finds are two very different kinds of home education--one rooted in the liberal alternative school movement of the 1960s and 1970s and one stemming from the Christian day school movement of the same era. Stevens explains how this dual history shapes the meaning and practice of home schooling today. In the process, he introduces us to an unlikely mix of parents (including fundamentalist Protestants, pagans, naturalists, and educational radicals) and notes the core values on which they agree: the sanctity of childhood and the primacy of family in the face of a highly competitive, bureaucratized society.
Kingdom of Children aptly places home schoolers within longer traditions of American social activism. It reveals that home schooling is not a random collection of individuals but an elaborate social movement with its own celebrities, networks, and characteristic lifeways. Stevens shows how home schoolers have built their philosophical and religious convictions into the practical structure of the cause, and documents the political consequences of their success at doing so.
Ultimately, the history of home schooling serves as a parable about the organizational strategies of the progressive left and the religious right since the 1960s.Kingdom of Children shows what happens when progressive ideals meet conventional politics, demonstrates the extraordinary political capacity of conservative Protestantism, and explains the subtle ways in which cultural sensibility shapes social movement outcomes more generally.
Research Organizations
Home School Research from HSLDA
Education Resources Information Center (ERIC)
The Home School Researcher
National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI)
Cato Institute
Homeschool Research Analysis
Home Schooling in the United States: Trends and Characteristics
Academic Statistics on Homeschooling
The Case for Homeschooling
Parents' Literacy and Their Children's Success in School: Recent Research, Promising Practices
Socialization: A Great Reason Not to Go to School
Home Schooling Achievement
Homeschooling in the United States: 2003 Statistical Analysis Report
Home Schooling and the Question of Socialization
Virtually all homeschooling parents will hear the question at some point ... What about socialization? It is a puzzling question to homeschoolers, as the term itself has various meanings. This well-documented paper by Richard G. Medlin takes a look at this question and concludes that homeschooled children certainly are not isolated. In fact, they associate with and feel close to many types of people. Their socialization skills are very good and they demonstrate good self-esteem, confidence, and resiliency.
Research Facts on Homeschooling
NHERI, the National Home Education Research Institute, has compiled these research facts on homeschooling. These fast facts cover the number of homeschooled students, demographics, motivations for home educating, academic performance, social, emotional, and psychological development, socialization, homeschool successes, and general interpretation of research on homeschool success.
U.S. Department of Education Longitudinal Study of 2002: Homeschool Student Questionnaire
Homeschooling Benefits: Children less preoccupied with peer acceptance
Research Facts on Homeschooling
Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998
State Laws Concerning Participation of Homeschool Students in Public School Activities
Homeschooling Grows Up
Evidence for Homeschooling: Constitutional Analysis in Light of Social Science Research
Homeschooling Growth in the 1980s
Structured homeschooling gets an A+
Testing the Boundaries of Parental Authority Over Education: The Case of Homeschooling
The Boundaries of Parental Authority: A Response to Rob Reich of Stanford University by Thomas W. Washburne, J.D.
Thomas W. Washburne, J.D. discusses how Reich's ideas for home education have a dangerous implication on the freedoms of homeschooling parents. Let's Stop Aiding and Abetting Academicians' Folly by Larry and Susan Kaseman
Larry and Susan Kaseman discuss the weaknesses in Reich's study and include strategies to counteract negatively biased research on homeschooling.
Homeschooling: Back to the Future?
Statistics and Data for Kentucky and the U.S.
The Case for Homeschooling
Homeschooling in the United States: 2003 Statistical Analysis Report
Research Facts on Homeschooling
NHERI, the National Home Education Research Institute, has compiled these research facts on homeschooling. These fast facts cover the number of homeschooled students, demographics, motivations for home educating, academic performance, social, emotional, and psychological development, socialization, homeschool successes, and general interpretation of research on homeschool success.
Home School Research from HSLDA
Homeschooling in the United States: 1999
Home Schooling Works!
Sources of Curriculum or Books
1.1 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2003
Homeschool Statistics and Achievements
Parents' Reasons for Homeschooling
Featured Resources
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