Homeschooled Students Score Over Peers

Homeschooling was unpopular once, but it has now shot up in the public estimation. It is an alternative educational method with higher graduation rates than traditional schooling, according to naturalnews.com.

Today, there are about 2.2 million US students who gain home education. Over the years, its popularity has gone up rather than declined. Such students score 30 percentile points over the public-school students on standardized tests.

Homeschooling through family members at home permits youngsters to gain customized education that they would not be able to get in schools. It would also strengthen family relationships in a safe environment.

Home schooled children also score higher graduation rates as well as test scores. Moreover, among homeschooled children, 66.7 percent were found to graduate. Students from a public school got a 57.5 percent graduation rate.

This was found due to a 2009 University of St. Thomas study that compared academic achievements of homeschooled students as against those who studied in traditional systems. It showed higher college graduation rates as well as the highest GPA scores among homeschooled students. They also overshot other students in college preparedness tests for reading, science and English.

Moreover, homeschooled children were also not socially inapt. They are not more isolated at home, or socially clumsy. Brain Ray, National Home Education Research Institute president, notes that more of them are active volunteers, involved in sports or with others through book clubs. "Research shows that in terms of self-concept, self-esteem and the ability to get along in groups, homeschoolers do just as well as their public school peers," he said.

It's in fact a plus for home-schooled students to spend less time in class, which gives them more options to go out into the world and interact adults and teens. In fact, the trend is to think that socialization is a nonissue for most home schoolers, as they are already achieving most of it, according to Huffingtonpost.com.

Jeffrey Koonce, a school superintendent in Miller County, Missouri, is also convinced that homeschooled children score over their peers, and wrote a doctoral dissertation on the transitional shift from home to a high school. He felt that the children were not unaware of sexual activity or drunken behavior, and quickly integrated with the others. In fact, they seemed to be more mature and socially adept than their non-homeschooled peers.