Heritage Home School Academy

"In the past decade, home schooling has proven itself to parents and researchers to be a highly effective alternative to public and private schooling," says Claudia Hepburn, director of education policy at The Fraser Institute.

In the United States, various estimates suggest home schooling is growing at a rate of between 11 to 15 percent annually. In 2002, it is estimated that approximately 2,000,000 students were being home schooled.

Home School Statistics Back Up Efficacy of Home School Material

"Although parents home school their children for a myriad of reasons, the principal stimulus is dissatisfaction with public education," notes Hepburn.

Research and home school statistics indicate that home-schooled children in the U.S. and Canada regularly outperform their peers in both public and private schools. The international evidence on the academic performance of students that use home school material exclusively is equally encouraging. In the United States, at every grade level, home-schooled students’ average scores placed between the 82nd and the 92nd percentile in reading, and reached the 85th percentile in math.

Overall, test scores for home schoolers placed between the 75th and 85th percentiles. In contrast, public school students
scored at the 50th percentile, while private school students' scores ranged from the 65th to the 75th percentile. Home schooled students also surpass the national averages on both of the major college-entrance tests: the ACT and the SAT. "Almost one-quarter of home schooled students perform one or more grades above their age level peers in public and private schools," says Patrick Basham, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the study's author.

Home Schooling and Socialization:
Contrary to the concerns of the educational establishment, the typical home schooled child participates in a wide variety of extracurricular activities, including afternoon and weekend programs with public school students, day-time field trips and co-operative programs with groups of other home schooled kids.

Ninety-eight percent of home schooled students are involved in two or more outside functions on a weekly basis. Research also suggests that home schooled students are more sociable than their school
peers, as well as more independent of peer values as they grow older. "Popular belief holds that home schooled children are socially backward and deprived, but research shows the opposite: that home schooled children are actually better socialized than
their peers," says Hepburn. "Some studies have shown that home schooled children are happier, better adjusted, more thoughtful, mature and sociable than children who attend institutional schools."

Characteristics of Home Schooling Families:
Parents choose to home school their children for a number of reasons, such as: the opportunity to impart a particular set of values and beliefs, higher academic performance, a lack of discipline in public schools, the expense of private schools for large families, and a physically safer environment in which to learn.

Home schooling parents have above average levels of education. Among American parents who home school, 81 percent have studied beyond high school compared with 63 percent of parents nationwide. Interestingly, having at least one parent who is a certified teacher has no significant effect on the achievement levels of home schooled students.