Homeschoolers outperform public school students in new report

Homeschool students outscore their public school counterparts by double-digit percentages on standardized tests, according to a report published earlier this year in a peer-reviewed journal.

A Nationwide Study on the Academic Achievement of Home-Educated Students, conducted and written by Brian Ray and Braden Hoelzle, appeared May 21 in the “Peabody Journal of Education.” It is the first study of its kind in 15 years, the authors say.

“The aim of this study was to offer an updated snapshot of the academic achievement of homeschool students and identify predictors of their achievement, a new, albeit limited, comparison of homeschoolers’ academic performance to that of institutional school students, and ascertain parents’ reasons for homeschooling,” the authors wrote.

The National Home Education Research Institute, where Ray and Hoelzle serve as president and research associate, respectively, posted select findings from the report on Facebook. Homeschooled students outperformed their conventionally schooled counterparts by the following amounts:

• Reading: + 29 percentile points

• Science: + 27 percentile points

• Social studies: + 26 percentile points

• Language: + 25 percentile points

• Math: + 25 percentile points

The report could mark a significant advancement in scholarship, a Michigan-based researcher told Michigan Capitol Confidential. “It’s difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison of homeschoolers to conventionally schooled students because of data limitations,” said Michael Van Beek, vice president for research at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Ray and Hoelzle’s report, Van Beek said, is perhaps one of the best done so far on the subject, and it offers clear and consistent positive results of homeschooling on academic performance.

The report relied on data from homeschooling families from a variety of settings: 30% of respondents lived in rural areas; 28% lived in urban clusters (defined as having a population of 2,500 up to 50,000); and 42% lived in urban areas (defined as having a population of 50,000 or more). One in five Americans lives in a rural area, according to the Census Bureau.

Regardless of student location, ethnicity, and family income, homeschool students achieved better academic outcomes than other students.

Families choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons, the report said, including a desire to instill family morals and beliefs, being able to have more family time together and providing for special needs children. Slightly more than one in ten respondents — 13% — cited COVID policies or exposure in public schools as their initial reason.

In spring 2020, only 5.3% of Michigan families homeschooled their children, according to estimates by the Johns Hopkins Homeschool Hub. But that number more than doubled to 11.3% by the fall of that year, as most public schools closed or went to online-only instruction. These numbers closely match the national figures of 5.4% for the spring and 11.1% for the fall.

Homeschool participation fell back as the state came out of the pandemic, dropping to 5.04% in 2022-23, though it increased to 6.58% during the 2023-24 academic year.

Nearly two-thirds of public school students in grades three through seven are not proficient in English or math on the state’s standardized test, the M-STEP.

Michigan outperformed only two states in fourth-grade reading on the latest version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, scoring worse than 31 jurisdictions and performing as well as 18 others.

The National Home Education Research Institute did not respond to an email seeking comment.