Advocates for Home Education in Massachusetts, Inc.

Are Homeschoolers “Successful”?

By Roberta Van Vlack

Recently I shared my thoughts on why homeschoolers thrive in a college environment. One of you reached out to ask for some more hard numbers on homeschool success. In order to answer that question, we need to ask another one first: What do we mean by “success”? One of the reasons we encourage new homeschoolers to spend some time thinking about how they want to educate is because there are many ways to think about this enterprise. Your family’s values will determine how you define success.

One’s measure of success may be nuanced and many kinds of success are hard to quantify and therefore hard to measure. Having said which, I’d like to suggest eight measures of success which we will consider:

First, let us consider academic success. In a series of four studies over the course of the last 15 years, homeschooled students consistently outperformed their peers on standardized achievement tests by 15-25 percentile points (NHERI). While homeschooled children whose parents were themselves better educated do better on standardized tests (this is true of non-homeschooled students as well), all homeschooled children, regardless of their parents’ level of education, outperform their peers (Ray, pp. 28-29, 34). “[A]t every grade level, the mean performance of homeschool students whose parents … do not have a college degree is higher than the mean performance of students in public schools; their percentiles are at the 80th percentile or above.” (Ray, p. 34). Homeschooled students whose parents did not have teaching certificates actually slightly outperform those whose parents are certified teachers (Ray, pp. 27, 33).

There is no doubt some degree of self-selection in these studies. Not all homeschooling parents choose to use standardized testing. A 2011 study which distinguished structured versus unstructured homeschoolers (defined as whether organized lesson plans were used in the homeschool) found that the former outperform non-homeschooled peers while the latter underperform (Treleaven, p.2). A 2010 study also found that the degree of structure in the homeschool (as self-reported by parents) correlates to increased test scores (Ray, p. 39). However sample sizes in the 2011 study were small, particularly of the unstructured homeschoolers, and it may be that those in the unstructured homeschools were unfamiliar with the testing taking process and/or that they were learning different kinds of materials not represented well by the tests.

Studies that have looked at SAT and ACT scores show mixed results. Some show that homeschoolers do better on these tests while one 2007 study showed that homeschoolers fared worse on the ACT mathematics achievement test (Trelevean, p. 2). One study looking specifically at an alternative college entrance exam, the Classical Learning Test (CLT), which claims to be more rigorous than the SAT or ACT, found that “[h]omeschool students outscored students from other school types by between 3 and 12.1 points” (p. 12). There may, however, be some level of self-selection that influenced these results.

One measure of educational success for which we have some data is college attendance. Older studies (in 2003 and 2004) showed that homeschoolers attend college at higher rates than the general public (Ray, p. 3). However, some newer studies have shown that homeschoolers are less likely to attend college (Case). The recent Cardus study divides students into categories based on how long they were homeschooled, whether only short-term (less than 3 years), medium-term (3-7 years), or long-term (8+ years). This further distinction showed that it is those who were homeschooled for a medium or long length of time who were less likely to attend 4-year colleges. Those who were homeschooled for less than 3 years track with the general population (Cheng). There may be a couple of reasons for this. Homeschooling families may be less likely to desire a four-year degree (Watson, p. 16; cf. Case). While colleges have become receptive to homeschool applicants, there may still be cases in which college admissions policies disadvantage homeschoolers (Case). Once they are in college there is some evidence that homeschooled students, while initially less self-confident, integrate well in college culture (Medlin, p. 11).

Homeschoolers have lower rates of economic success. Those who were homeschooled for any length of time were less likely to be employed. They were also more likely to have an income below the median, though this is likely a result of the other factors we have already seen, lower levels of bachelor’s degrees and lower employment rates (Cheng).

These results may be initially discouraging to homeschooling parents but we need to look at what is behind them. The Cardus study also looked at attitudes towards money and hard work and found that, while medium- and long-term homeschoolers value hard work more than non-homeschoolers and short-term homeschoolers (roughly 50% vs. 40%), long-term homeschoolers in particular value money much less than other groups (19% vs. 34% for non-homeschoolers and approximately 28% for short and medium-term homeschoolers; Cheng). Taking into account all the measures of success we have seen so far, it is reasonable to conclude that many homeschoolers are choosing not to attend 4-year colleges, that they are not pursuing high paying careers, and even perhaps that they are opting out of traditional work altogether. However, there is also reason to think, based on their academic success, that if they do choose these more traditional paths they are perfectly capable of succeeding in them.

It is harder to quantify civic success but one measure might be how much a person is involved in community building organizations. Here too homeschoolers do better than the societal mean. Homeschoolers are 33% more likely to volunteer (Case) with medium- and long-term homeschoolers having the highest rates of volunteerism (Cheng). Homeschoolers are also more likely to have given to a charitable organization (Cheng) and to be voters (Reitz).

While values around family will differ, for our purposes, family success is defined as having stable marriages and producing children. Long-term homeschoolers are the most likely to have been married and to currently be married and the least likely to have been divorced. Not surprisingly, they are also the most likely to report valuing marriage (Cheng). They are the most likely to report that they value having children so again, not surprisingly, they were the most likely to have children and they have the most children (Cheng).

A 2013 meta-analysis looked at homeschoolers’ social success. The Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) measures “children’s cooperation, assertion, responsibility, self-control, and problem behaviors” (Medlin, p. 4). This survey asks individuals (parents, teachers, or the children themselves) to rate social skills. Overall homeschooled children rated well. Perhaps the most surprising result from a 2004 study was that there was little difference between boys’ and girls’ social skills in the homeschooling population leading Richard Medlin to hypothesize that “the homeschool environment is less likely than that of conventional schools to bring about or support gender differences in social behavior” (p. 6). Other studies that looked more specifically at interpersonal relationships showed that homeschoolers have high quality close relationships with peers and adults (p. 9).

Homeschoolers fare well when it comes to psychological success. They have lower rates of substance abuse, depression, and suicide (McDonald) and are less likely to engage in illegal and antisocial behavior (Medlin, p. 10). In recent years, due to concerns such as cyberbullying and the negative influence of social media, “there is reason to suspect that the well-being gap between home-schoolers and public-school students has widened” (Case). In the Cardus study, long-term homeschoolers were the most optimistic, had the highest levels of life satisfaction and the lowest levels of depression. Specifically, only 1 in 5 long-term homeschoolers reported feeling hopeless versus 1 in 3 for all the other groups. Ninety-four percent of long-term homeschoolers felt positive about the future versus roughly 78% for all other groups (Cheng). While the Cardus study looked at homeschool graduates, there is also some evidence that younger homeschool students also rate well on measures of happiness and optimism (Medlin, p. 7).

Not all homeschoolers are religious but for those that are, religious success is important. Homeschoolers are more likely than average to report that they believe in a higher power (Cheng) and are 51% more likely to attend religious services (Case). Medium- and long-term homeschoolers in particular were more likely to report that religion is very important to them (Cheng). This is perhaps a reflection of their upbringing. Homeschooling parents are themselves more likely to attend religious services (44% vs. 33% for the general population) though the numbers that are not religious also match the general population (Watson, p. 9).

The homeschooling movement in the United States at this point is about 40 years old. There have been some significant changes in the homeschooling landscape over those years. It is a very different thing to take up homeschooling now when it is much more common and when there are ample online resources than it was in the early days of the late 1980s and 1990s. In the scheme of academic research this means that there hasn’t been a lot of time to do big studies on homeschoolers and that the characteristics of the homeschooling population may not be static. Studies on the success of homeschooling (however we define it) are not as easy to find as one might like. Many are dated and usually they have fairly small sample sizes. Many studies lump all who are homeschooled in together or, conversely, focus only on specific subsets of the homeschooling community (eg. religious homeschoolers). Homeschoolers are not at all a unified group, and it is also a very different thing to be homeschooled for one year and to have been homeschooled over one’s entire school career. The recent Cardus study is to be applauded for distinguishing between short-, medium-, and long-term homeschoolers. Let’s hope that that continues in future studies.

When we look at the evidence we have, we find that while homeschoolers generally have more academic success, they are less likely to have educational or economic success. These three measures are not unrelated to one another and there is some evidence that personal values are affecting outcomes. Not surprisingly, those who were homeschooled for less than three years look the most like the non-homeschooled population particularly when it comes to their values (this includes values around both economic and family areas) and various psychological measures.

It is worth saying a word at this point about those medium-term homeschoolers (again, these are the students homeschooled for 3-7 years). There are a number of measures on which they appear to do worse than other groups. They are the least likely to be employed full-time and have the lowest household income. They are the most likely to report that they lack any sense of direction (59% vs. roughly 38% for all other groups) and they have the lowest life satisfaction score (Cheng). They are also the most likely to have never been married (Cheng). There is probably a lot more going on behind these numbers that needs analysis. Knowing the homeschooling world, we can observe that families come to homeschooling at many points in life and for many reasons. Short-term homeschoolers are very similar in many ways to non-homeschoolers (statistically speaking). Those who homeschool long-term make the decision when their children are fairly young and are more likely to be committed to homeschooling for its own sake. In the middle group, however, we will likely find many of those who pull their children out part way through their education because of specific problems they are encountering. In other words, there may be other issues going on that may contribute to the long-term success (or lack thereof) that these students experience. How they would have fared if they had remained in school and not ever been homeschooled is something we can only speculate about.

And what about long-term homeschoolers? Here we have to end where we began and say that success depends on how we define it. There are many measures by which long-term homeschoolers are the most successful including in the areas of civic, familial, psychological and religious success. (The studies of academic and social success did not distinguish length of homeschooling.) If they are less successful in terms of their higher education and economic success, there is still no reason to think that they cannot be successful in these areas if they choose to pursue them. A good future study perhaps would be to look at what those who have not gone to college and are not employed are doing or even simply to ask if they are seeking employment and are not able to find it or if they are unemployed by choice.

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