Page 17 - Tracy Anderson Magazine - Fall 2021

Government schooling as we know it today did not exist un- Outpacing Public Education
til 1850—nearly everyone was educated at home. Eventually,
private schools did develop for students from wealthy fami- Today 2.3 million children in grades K–12 in the U.S. are
lies who planned to go to college in New England or Britain, educated at home, and the number is growing at 2 percent
but for the vast majority of the population, school was at to 3 percent per year. There are a lot of misconceptions
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home around the kitchen table. In time, and as populations about homeschooling, the greatest being that a homeschool
grew, community-run schools proliferated across the nation education is inferior to a public school education and can’t
as one-room schoolhouses. properly prepare students for college. Decades of research
refute this misconception, and in fact, studies show that
So for nearly two thirds of America’s current 414-year his- homeschooled students consistently outperform public
tory, a land was settled, a revolution won, and a nation school students in every subject on virtually every grade
created that would grow into international prominence, level, even into college. Test scores don’t lie, and it’s clear
producing citizens who would change the world with in- that Holt and Moore were on to something.
ventions like the light bulb, airplane, telephone, mass
production of automobiles, and countless more. The On average, homeschooled students regularly score 15 to
U.S. accomplished all this without a centralized system 30 percentile points above public school students on stan-
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of federally funded compulsory schooling or standard- dardized achievement tests. The most comprehensive study
ized education. America was thriving on home education ever completed included 11,739 homeschool students in all
and a largely decentralized network of private schools 50 states between 2007 and 2009 and drew from 15 indepen-
owned and operated by local communities. In fact, liter- dent testing services. Results showed that homeschool stu-
acy during this time was actually very high, estimated at dents who participated in the California Achievement Test,
91 percent to 97 percent in the North and 81 percent in Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and the Stanford Achievement
the South. 1 Test scored an average of 37 percentile points above public
school students. The homeschool to public school national
Mandates & Movements average percentile scores were: reading (89/50), language
arts (84/50), math (84/50), and science (89/50).
It wasn’t until the 1850s that legislator Horace Mann, known
as the Father of America’s Public Schools, instituted com- The study, Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academics, Achieve-
EMAN CIP A TING 1. The Alliance for the Separation of School and State; 2, 3. National Home Education Research Institute; 4. WorldNet Daily; 5. Canadian Journal of lum oversight in Massachusetts. By the 1870s, all other ex- Education Research Institute and showed that homeschooled
ment and Demographics, was conducted by the National Home
pulsory education in state-sponsored schools with curricu-
boys scored in the 87th percentile and homeschooled girls
isting states had adopted some form of Mann’s mandatory,
EDUC A TION state-run system. In 1918, the federal government required in the 88th percentile. If both parents held college degrees,
Behavioral Science; 6. University of St. Thomas; 7. The Huffington Post
all children to attend at least elementary school outside the
the children scored in the 90th percentile. The report not-
ed that public schools spend well over $10,000 per student
home, and by the 1940s and ’50s, the federal government
was providing funding to state schools for agricultural, in-
dustrial, home economics, and other courses. The U.S. De- per year, while the homeschool parent spends about $500
per child.
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Exploring the freedom of homeschooling. partment of Education didn’t exist as a stand-alone agency
until 1980, by which time the federal government controlled Studies also show that homeschooled students consistently
all primary and secondary public education. perform .5 to 2 grade levels above their public school coun-
terparts and continue to outperform them in college. Not
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By the 1970s, a movement begun by educational theorists only do they graduate college at a higher rate (66.7% com-
John Holt and Raymond Moore saw government-run insti- pared to 57.5%) but they earn higher grade point averages
tutionalized education as too rigid for many children. They along the way. Many attribute the success of homeschooled
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believed it didn’t foster creativity or individuality, emphasiz- students to the individually tailored and focused instruction
ing rote memorization instead of personal growth. Its one- style, creativity, and flexibility in the curriculum and pre-
size-fits-all approach put certain students at a disadvantage sentation, smaller class size, and fewer distractions. In addi-
because it didn’t acknowledge that children learn in differ-
Pexels, Monstera ent kinds of ways. The movement grew and gained popular- education are thought to give those students an advantage
tion, the independence and self-direction built into home
ity, and in the 1980s many states made homeschooling legal.
in college. Since 1981, 23 large-scale research projects have
By the early 1990s, homeschooling was legal in all 50 states.
been conducted on homeschool and public school student

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