I've known families that had done excellent work teaching their children at home, however this is not always the case. Some of these children turn out to be dumb as a box of rocks...like PC Chick.
Full Story @
Home-schooled and illiterate - Salon.com
Though I fell out of touch with my home-schooled friends as we grew older, a few years ago, I reconnected with a few ex-Quiverfull peers on a new support blog called
No Longer Quivering. Poring over their stories, I was shocked to find so many tales of gross educational neglect. I don’t merely mean that they had received what I now view as an overly politicized education with huge gaps, for example, in American history, evolution or sexuality. Rather, what disturbed me were the many stories about home-schoolers who were barely literate when they graduated, or whose math and science education had never extended much past middle school.
Take Vyckie Garrison, an ex-Quiverfull mother of seven who, in 2008, enrolled her six school-age children in public school after 18 years of teaching them at home. Garrison, who started the No Longer Quivering blog, says her near-constant pregnancies – which tended to result either in miscarriages or life-threatening deliveries – took a toll on her body and depleted her energy. She wasn’t able to devote enough time and energy to home schooling to ensure a quality education for each child. And she says the lack of regulation in Nebraska, where the family lived, “allowed us to get away with some really shoddy home schooling for a lot of years.”
“I’ll admit it,” she confesses. “Because I was so overwhelmed with my life… It was a real struggle to do the basics, so it didn’t take long for my kids to fall far behind. One of my daughters could not read at 11 years old.”
No Longer Quivering
Standardized test results for 16,000 home educated children, grades K-12, were analyzed in 1994 by researcher Dr. Brian Ray. He found the nationwide grand mean in reading for homeschoolers was at the 79th percentile; for language and math, the 73rd percentile. This ranking means home-educated students performed better than approximately 77% of the sample population on whom the test was normed. Nearly 80% of homeschooled children achieved individual scores above the national average and 54.7% of the 16,000 homeschoolers achieved individual scores in the top quarter of the population, more than double the number of conventional school students who score in the top quarter.
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Harvard University (MA) admissions officer said most of their home-educated students "have done very well. They usually are very motivated in what they do." Results of the SAT and SAT II, an essay, an interview, and a letter of recommendation are the main requirements for home-educated applicants. "[Transcripts are] irrelevant because a transcript is basically a comparison to other students in the school."
HSLDA Homeschooled Students Excel in College
Still, many admissions officials say they are becoming more at ease with applicants who took alternative paths, if for no other reason than it’s a booming market. Almost 2 million American students are educated at home, and more than 80 percent of colleges have formal policies for assessing these applicants – up from 52 percent in 2000.
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/apr/18/news/chi-homeschool_18apr18
The number of home-learners in Massachusetts is about 9,000—1.2% of all students—up from approximately 3,000 in 1983, said Patrick Farenga, publisher of Growing Without Schooling magazine in Cambridge, Mass. This increase is remarkable in an era of two-income families because it pretty much requires one dedicated parent (generally the mother) at some financial sacrifice.
Home-Schooled Kids Get Into Harvard And
For Carey, home-schooled since she was 2, acceptances are more than an entrance ticket to a college classroom--she's already taken courses and will earn a Harvard Extension School associate's degree (
AA) in June--they are evidence her schooling is as rigorous and legitimate as those earning traditional high school diplomas.
http://www.dce.harvard.edu/pubs/alum/2003/12.html
Recent statistics from The College Board and the American College Testing Program (ACT) indicate that home schoolers are exceeding the national average test scores on both the SAT and the ACT college entrance exams. In 1999, the 2219 students who identified themselves as home schooled students on the SAT test, scored an average of 1083 (verbal 548, math 535), 67 points above the national average of 1016. A perfect SAT score is 1600. Also in 1999, 3616 home school students taking the ACT scored an average of 22.7, compared to the national average of 21, a perfect score being 36.
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College-bound Home Schoolers Make Headlines HSLDA National Center News
Everything I did was only possible because my parents were dedicated and loving enough to homeschool my sister and me. My mother, a former Montessori teacher and author of several children’s books, took the time to instruct us every day. Aside from textbook lessons, she had us perform many exercises designed to stimulate our creativity.
Homeschooling and College - HowStuffWorks
In your face, huh?