Author and homeschool researcher Milton Gaither writes: “This new study tries very hard to overcome one of the most persistent deficiencies of his [Brian Ray's] previous work (and the 1999 Rudner study)–the near exclusive reliance on HSLDA’s advertisement to recruit subjects, leading to unrepresentative samples. This time around Ray tried to recruit families from outside of the HSLDA orbit. Did he succeed? Not really.”
Writing for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Daveen Rae KurutzIn portrays the disctinction between homeschooling and cyber charter schools right.
“The advent and success of cyber charter schools has had a huge impact on our students,” said Charles Machesky, superintendent of Uniontown Area School District, where homeschool enrollment dropped by half in five years. “We’ve got six or seven cyber schools sending us bills, and some of those are in place of homeschooling.”
Homeschooled children are taught using a curriculum the parent fashions. The state Department of Education does not consider children enrolled in cyber schools as being homeschooled.
While “homeschooling” comes off a bit odd in the title, (In-home schooling popularity slipping across state), research tying homeschooling to standardized testing is cited and a few mythical assumptions are made, it is still good to see this article.
Oh, yeah. The numbers make more sense too. But that seems to follow getting the distinction right.
Read the entire article here. Read more about NHERI research here.