Time Magazine by Meredith Melnick
In some cases, home schooling may give kids a leg up on their public-school peers, finds a small, new study published in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science.
As long as it's structured and follows a set curriculum, home schooling may actually lead to better scores on tests of math and reading, compared with public schooling, say the researchers from Concordia University and Mount Allison University in Canada.
The researchers studied 74 children aged 5 to 10 living in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick: 37 kids were schooled at home, and the other 37 attended local public schools. Each child was asked to complete standardized tests of reading, writing and math.
Researchers found that the public-school kids tested at or above their grade levels, but home-schooled children tested even higher than that — about a half-grade higher in math and 2.2 grades in reading, compared with the traditionally educated children.
The researchers said the difference remained even after they accounted for other factors that affect children's academic performance, like household income and mothers' education, employment and marital status. Although many previous studies have found higher academic achievement in home-schooled children, those results have often been ascribed to socioeconomic and education differences among parents who choose home schooling.
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