Is it Any Surprise?
Hello, , from NHERI and Dr. Ray.
Many journalists ask me, “Why to homeschool students do so well academically?” And I have had to answer this same question as an expert
witness in court many times. There are some simple answers, one of which I would like to propose in this piece.
The Context
First, about three decades of research by many different scholars has revealed that home-educated students consistently score 15 to 30 percentile points
above the public school average on standardized academic achievement tests. That is, they score, on average, better than 65% to 80% of public school students. Further, state-collected data show the same thing as do these studies.[1]
Methods
The researchers who repeatedly tell us about the high average achievement of the homeschooled have used various methods in their studies. Many are cross-sectional descriptive studies that take a snapshot of hundreds or thousands of students’ test scores at one point in time. These students are not followed over time and they are not randomly assigned
to treatments (e.g., public school, private school, and homeschool). These studies mostly simply reveal correlations or mathematical patterns between achievement and various variables (e.g., parent’s formal education level, degree of structure in the homeschooling).
Other studies have followed designs that are called causal comparative. The researchers statistically control certain variables to get
a better sense of cause and effect.
In some states, the government mandates parents to give achievement tests to their homeschooled children and report the scores to the State. This results in a simple record of test scores for many children without other demographic or learning-context information gathered related to the children.
Findings
Regardless of the above-mentioned studies’ designs, it is consistently found that homeschool students score higher than public school students. It is, however, difficult to say why their scores are so high based on the research
designs.
Many studies have been done on institutional schooling, especially public schools, and what is correlated with or causes high student achievement in them. A classic report along these lines is Benjamin Bloom’s 1984 pieced entitled, “The 2 Sigma Problem: The Search for Methods of Group Instruction as Effective as One-to-One Tutoring.”[2] I have thought about his work ever since I began doing and following research on homeschooling around that same year.
Bloom explained the research of doctoral students who compared the learning of students under three conditions of instruction in carefully designed studies in which students were randomly assigned to
the three groups. The three groups or conditions were conventional schooling, mastery learning, and tutoring.
In mastery learning, “[f]ormative tests (the same tests used with the conventional
group) are given for feedback followed by corrective procedures and parallel formative tests to determine the extent to which the students have mastered the
subject matter” (p. 4).
“Students [under tutoring] learn the subject matter with a good tutor for
each student (or for two or three students simultaneously). This tutoring instruction is followed periodically by formative tests, feedback-corrective procedures, and parallel formative tests as in the mastery learning classes. It should be pointed out
that the need for corrective work under tutoring is very
small” (p. 4).
The differences in final achievement were striking. “Using the standard deviation
(sigma) of the control (conventional) class, it was typically found …” that the “… average student under mastery learning was about one standard
deviation above
the average of the control class (the average mastery learning student was above 84% of the students in the control class)” (p. 4). Further, “the average student under tutoring was about two standard deviations above the average of the control class (the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class)” (p. 4).
No matter how one looks at it, these are big differences in achievement scores.
Questions
One might ask, “Are there things inherent to homeschooling that are like mastery learning and tutoring?” Is there
something about parent-led home-based education that makes mastery learning and tutoring more likely to occur than in institutional public schools with 25 to 30 students per class and a school-year timeline that must be followed regardless of the students’ mastery of the curriculum?
For anyone who has studied homeschooling practices for some time, has been a somewhat successful homeschool parent,
or who has watched a number of homeschooling parents in action with their children, the obvious answer is, “yes.” That is, the homeschooling environment is naturally amenable to mastery learning. The teaching parent is constantly formatively assessing the child and giving him corrective help until he learns (or masters) the knowledge or skill at hand.
In home-based education, students are
essentially tutored, either alone or with two or three students simultaneously. In this, tutoring instruction is often followed by “tests” that may be verbal or written given by the parent that help the teacher and student understand to what extent the student has learned the information or skill. Then feedback-corrective procedures are executed by the parent-teacher.
Conclusions
Is it any surprise that home-educated students do well, on average, academically? Is it any surprise that any given child will do better, probably, being homeschooled rather than placed in a conventional institutional school with 25 to 30 students with one main teacher? Is it any surprise that if one’s child would be scoring 20 percentile points
below average in public school that she would only be 5 percentile points below average if she were home educated? Is it any surprise that teaching-learning practices such as mastery learning and tutoring that are only sometimes done in state-run conventional schools can be regularly and readily applied in homeschooling? Most people who have in-depth knowledge of homeschooling would answer “no” to all of the preceding questions.
If you are a homeschool parent, the next time your neighbor, local school teacher, or your child’s grandparent is cynical or grumpy about your homeschooling, try filling him or her in on the 2-sigma effect.
--Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.
National Home Education Research
Institute
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Endnotes:
[1] Ray, Brian D. (2013). Homeschooling associated with beneficial learner and societal outcomes but educators do not promote it. Peabody Journal of Education, 88(3), 324-341. [2] Bloom, Benjamin S. (1984). The 2 sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Educational Researcher, 13(6) (Jun. - Jul., 1984), 4-16.