CAN HOME EDUCATED CHILDREN COMPETE ACADEMICALLY? Pulpit Helps 5/91 p.18

Dozens of studies over the last few years have brought uniformly positive results: home educated students tend to excel.

Dr. Raymond Moore, founder of the Hewitt-Moore Research Foundation, studied several thousand home schooled children throughout the United States. His research found that home schoolers score, on the average, between the 75th and 95th percentile on the Stanford and Iowa Achievement Tests. (Percentile ranks indicate the percentage of students who scored lower on the test).

South Carolina home schooled students averaged scores which were 30 percentile points higher than national public school averages on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.

The Tennessee Dept. of Education conducted a study of 3rd Grade home schooled children in 1986. They scored on the average 90% in reading on the standardized test, while public school students averaged 78 %. In math, home schoolers averaged 86.8, while their counterparts scored 80.

Alaska's State Dept. of Education found that on the average, home schoolers scored approximately 16 percentage points higher than children in the same grades in public schools.

According to the Arizona State Dept. of Education, all home schooled children in grades one through nine scored above grade level on standardized tests for the 1988-89 school year. Four grades tested a full grade level ahead.

ADVANTAGES: Home schooling families are lavish in praise of home education... enthusiastic about the flexibility it offers.... Academically, the tutorial method gives the child immediate feedback, allows more time to concentrate on concepts the child may find difficult, and spares him or her from dwelling unnecessarily on those concepts already grasped.

Parents particularly value the chance to exercise more control over negative influences, and they observe that their children have become less peer dependent. Additionally, they note such benefits as increased self-confidence, greater ability to relate to people of all ages, closer family relationships, improved self-motivation and enhanced spiritual growth.

One of the best advantages for the Marings is that "the kids love it." When she was in public school, Jessica, now 14, used to have nightmares, her mother says. She dreamed she was being shoved back and forth by bad people. After she left the public school, the nightmares stopped. The other day she said, "Thank you, Mom, for home schooling me, I was going toward the world, but now I'm on the right track."