[Vision2020] Why Do Politicians Always Want To "Fix" That Which Is Working?

[John Harrell]

Why Do Politicians Always Want To "Fix" That Which Is Working?

Take homeschooling as an example. In all studies performed, homeschoolers 
fair much better than their public educated peers. Oh sure, every now and 
then a student in either the public schools, private schools, or homeschools,
doesn't perform up to his/her potential, but this occurs in all environments.

(I could create quite a list of the failures in the public schools - just 
like with homeschooling. I could also create quite a list of successes in 
the public schools - just like with homeschooling.)

But when something is working, why do the politicians insist on fixing it?

Their regulation always ends up creating a mediocre system, with more 
bureaucracy, and all the associated NEW TAXES that goes into administering
the new bureacracy. And as always, the new bureacracy will grow and the 
funding required will grow, and the mediocre system gets worse and worse.

In this study, parents responded to a questionnaire requesting background 
and demographic information. 

Major findings include: 

the achievement test scores of this group of home school students are 
exceptionally high--the median scores were typically in the 70th to 80th 
percentile; 

25% of home school students are enrolled one or more grades above their 
age-level public and private school peers; 

on average, home school students in grades 1 to 4 perform one grade level 
above their age-level public/private school peers on achievement tests;

by the time home school students reach grade 8, their median scores are 
almost 4 grade equivalents above their public/private school peers;

the achievement test score gap between home school students and public/
private school students starts to widen in grade 5;

Students who have been home schooled their entire academic life have higher 
scholastic achievement test scores than students who have also attended 
other educational programs;

this group of home school parents has more formal education than parents 
in the general population; 

the median income for home school families is significantly higher than 
that of all families with children in the United States; 

and almost all home school students are in married couple families. 


Table 3.3 shows the median scaled score (DSS score) for home school students 
on the Composite with Computation, Reading Total, Language, Mathematics 
Total with Computation, Social Studies, and Science subtest scores by grade. 
The corresponding percentiles shown in the table are the within grade 
percentile scores for the nation that correspond to the given scaled scores. 
For example, home school students in Grade 3 have a median composite scaled 
score of 207 which corresponds to the 81st percentile nationwide. The median 
home school student in third grade out- performs 81% of the third graders 
nationwide. As an additional comparison, we provide the national median for 
each grade in the last column. By definition this is the 50th percentile of 
students nationwide. 


Table 3.3
Median Scaled Scores (corresponding national percentile)
by Subtest and Grade for Home School Students 

Grade  Composite         Language         Soc. Stud.      National Median 
     N           Reading             Math            Science  
1 1504 170 (91) 174 (88) 166 (82) 164 (81) 166 (80) 164 (78) 150 (50)  
2 2153 192 (90) 196 (89) 186 (80) 188 (85) 189 (81) 195 (86) 168 (50)  
3 2876 207 (81) 210 (83) 195 (62) 204 (78) 205 (76) 214 (83) 185 (50)  
4 2625 222 (76) 228 (83) 216 (67) 220 (76) 216 (68) 232 (81) 200 (50)  
5 2564 243 (79) 244 (83) 237 (69) 238 (76) 236 (71) 260 (86) 214 (50)  
6 2420 261 (81) 258 (82) 256 (73) 254 (76) 265 (81) 273 (84) 227 (50)  
7 2087 276 (82) 277 (87) 276 (77) 272 (79) 276 (79) 282 (81) 239 (50)  
8 1801 288 (81) 288 (86) 291 (79) 282 (76) 290 (79) 289 (78) 250 (50)  
9 1164 292 (77) 294 (82) 297 (77) 281 (68) 297 (76) 292 (73) 260 (50)  
10 775 310 (84) 314 (89) 318 (84) 294 (72) 318 (83) 310 (79) 268 (50)  
11 317 310 (78) 312 (84) 322 (83) 296 (68) 318 (79) 314 (77) 275 (50)  
12  66 326 (86) 328 (92) 332 (85) 300 (66) 334 (84) 331 (82) 280 (50)  



Reference:
In "The Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of
Home School Students in 1998"

An independent study by Lawrence M. Rudner, Ph.D., Director of 
the ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation

20,760 student achievement test scores and their family demographics 
make this the largest study of home education to date!

http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/


Cheers!
John Harrell



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