Fact Sheet IIb
General Characteristics

• Continued growth in the home education movement parallels a simultaneous decline in the enrollment in other forms of education.(1) About 700,000 to 1.15 million grades K-12 children are home educated during 1996-1997.(2)

• Key reasons for home educating are the transmission of a distinct set of beliefs and values to children, close family relationships, controlled and positive peer social interactions, quality academics, alternative approaches to teaching and learning, and the physical safety of children.(3)

• Patricia Lines of the U.S. Dept. of Education concluded that home education families "... have not turned their backs on the broader social contract as understood at the time of the Founding [of America]. [They are] ... asserting their historic individual rights so that they may form more meaningful bonds with family and community. In doing so, they are not abdicating from the American agreement. To the contrary, they are affirming it."(4)
  
• Home educators and their families are not dependent on public, tax-funded resources. (In Oregon, they appear to be saving taxpayers at least $31 million per year.(5)) Neither do they, in general, have a strong desire for access to tax-funded resources. Their children are learning well, they do not need or want more state regulation and will strongly oppose it, and the parents will not likely be coaxed into more regulation by the lure of offered services. They want to be understood and treated as people and educators of integrity.(6)
  
  Academic Achievement
  

• Dr. Howard Richman and his colleagues have found that the home educated in Pennsylvania score, on average, at the 86th percentile in reading and the 73rd percentile in math(7) (The national average is the 50th percentile.)
• Repeatedly, across the nation, the home educated score as well as or better than those in conventional schools.
  
  Social and Emotional Adjustment
  

• Dr. Larry Shyers observed children in free play and group interaction activities. Conventionally schooled children had significantly more problem behaviors than did the home educated. This is probably because the primary models of behavior for the home educated are their parents.(8)
  
• Home educated children are more mature and better socialized than are those sent to school, according to Thomas Smedley's personal interaction and communications approach to understanding socialization.(9)
  
• Dr. Gary Knowles, of the University of Michigan, explored adults who were home educated. None were unemployed and none were on welfare, 94% said home education prepared them to be independent persons, 79% said it helped them interact with individuals from different levels of society, and they strongly supported the home education method.(10)