A Review of the Empirical Research on Private School Choice

Parents in the United States have had the legal right to choose the school their child attends for a long time. Traditionally, parental school choice took the form of families moving to a neighborhood with good public schools or self-financing private schooling. Contemporary education policies allow parents in many areas to choose from among public schools in neighboring districts, public magnet schools, public charter schools, private schools through the use of a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, virtual schools, or even homeschooling. The newest form of school choice is education savings accounts (ESAs), which make a portion of the funds that a state spends on children in public schools available to their parents in spending accounts that they can use to customize their children's education. Opponents claim that expanding private school choice yields no additional benefits to participants and generates significant harms to the students “left behind” in traditional public schools. A review of the empirical research on private school choice finds evidence that private school choice delivers some benefits to participating students—particularly in the area of educational attainment—and tends to help, albeit to a limited degree, the achievement of students who remain in public schools.     

The Private Voice: Homeschooling,Hannah Arendt,and Political Education

What becomes of the political orientation of American education when children are educated in the home rather than in public schools? Homeschooling critics raise concerns over the larger consequences: political exit and even indoctrination. Drawing on a recent study of 62 interviews with 35 homeschooling families in 11 states in the USA, we offer a theoretical argument grounded in empirical observations and perceptions of homeschoolers themselves. Using the work of political theorist Hannah Arendt as a guide, we suggest that, contrary to critics’ claims of political exit over voice, homeschooling may provide the opportunity for some families to respond with a “private voice” that is politically robust because it is intentionally subversive to a (perceived) homogenous dominant culture. We thus argue that some homeschoolers offer an understanding of private life that is political without being “public,” and that they reconcile this irony by attempting to cultivate reflexive “thinking” in their children regarding questions of conformity, materialism, and plurality.     

Homeschool Parents and Satisfaction with Special Education Services

ABSTRACT

Homeschooling is controversial for a variety of reasons. One concern is whether families are sufficiently equipped to serve students with disabilities. We investigate this issue by assessing parental satisfaction with the special education services that their child is receiving in various educational sectors (e.g., homeschool, traditional public, public charter, and private). Using a nationally representative sample of U.S. households from the National Household Education Survey, we find that parents who homeschool are more satisfied than parents of children in traditional public schools and a variety of private schools with the special education services that they are receiving. Despite obvious selection bias in our sample, we view parental satisfaction as one of many important indicators for the quality of special education services. The results from this study suggest that homeschooling is a potentially beneficial option for serving students with disabilities, though additional research examining other student outcomes would be invaluable.     

EDUCATION,SCHOOLING, AND CHILDREN'S RIGHTS: THE COMPLEXITY OF HOMESCHOOLING

By blurring the distinction between formal school and education writ large, homeschooling both highlights and complicates the tensions among the interests of parents, children, and the state. In this essay, Robert Kunzman argues for a modest version of children's educational rights, at least in a legal sense that the state has the duty and authority to enforce. At the same time, however, it is important to retain a principled distinction between schooling and education—not only to protect children's basic educational rights, but also to prevent the state from overreaching into the private realm of the home and family.     

“Thank God for Mississippi!” How Disparagement of the South Has Destroyed Public Schooling in New Orleans—and Beyond

Reasons for neglect of homeschooling in educational research literature are explored. The ideological hostility that occasionally surfaces in policy debates is unlikely to have a major influence on mainstream researchers. An alternative explanation based on Kuhn's concept of normal science is proposed. The dominant paradigm of educational research emphasizes quantitative analyses, standardized settings, and large randomized samples. Unlike homeschooling, public schools, with their state-mandated curricula, age-graded classrooms, and tight regulation of facilities and personnel, provide an ideal setting for this paradigm. The congruence between setting and method is reinforced by universities. The training of licensed public school teachers generates most of the revenue that supports faculty positions in colleges of education. Consequently there is little incentive to study homeschooling. The article concludes that a scientific revolution in educational research is not in prospect. Moving beyond the current neglect will require a change in approach in investigating homeschooling. Rather than focusing on holistic comparisons, aimed at demonstrating the superiority of one educational mode over another, homeschool researchers can gain mainstream attention by investigating factors that affect motivation and learning across educational contexts, thereby generating results that would be useful to both public school teachers and home educators.     

Homeschooling Associated with Beneficial Learner and Societal Outcomes but Educators Do Not Promote It

This article reviews research on homeschool learner outcomes and evaluates opposition to homeschooling. It synthesizes research on learner outcomes related to homeschooling in areas of students’ academic achievement and children's social, emotional, and psychological development and the success of adults who were home educated and finds generally positive outcomes on a variety of variables are associated with homeschooling. The author identifies four classes of negativity expressed toward home-based education by the education profession, such as the claims homeschooling is bad for the collective good and that without much state regulation significant numbers of homeschooling (home schooling) parents will harm their children. The evaluation reveals that proactive opposition to homeschooling and calls for significant state control over homeschooling do not offer any empirical research evidence that homeschooling is bad for individual children, families, neighborhoods, or the collective good. The alleged harms of homeschooling or arguments for more control of it are fundamentally philosophical and push for the state, rather than parents, to be in primary and ultimate control over the education and upbringing of children so they will come to hold worldviews more aligned with the state and opponents of state-free homeschooling than with the children's parents and freely chosen relationships.     

Black students and private schooling

Conclusions As black students move into private schools at greater rates, a number of questions are raised. To what extent and under what conditions is a private school education better than a public school education for black students? What are the social and educational benefits and costs of being educated in a largely white environment? And what will be the benefits and costs as private schools themselves become increasingly black? Are the economic sacrifices made by black families to send their children to private school worth it to the individual child—to the black community?     

Finding a Golden Mean in Education Policy: Centering Religious and Public Schools

The separation between Church and State, private and public education, is blurring, and coming together, as the government gives families vouchers to attend private and religious schools. Religious groups are starting and supporting their own charter schools, and local jurisdictions (cities and counties) are providing free transportation and food services to children attending private schools. What emerges, and is the focus of this analysis, is the new “middle ground,” a “golden mean,” by which public schools learn diversity and choice while private/religious schools are helped by public programs and funds. The oldest, perhaps, was Lyndon Johnson's compromise with the Catholics to get Title 1 passed as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that sends public school teachers into private schools to help children in need. This study examines the emergence of a middle group in public–private education, and how the policies are working and what's changing. It argues that the child is the center of education, and government and private agencies are changing and should come together to serve the clients, the children.     

美国家庭学校教育的特点及对我国教育的启示

介绍了家庭学校教育的内涵,追述了美国家庭学校兴起的历程及原因,分析了美国家庭学校教育的教学特点及它对中国教育理论和实践产生的影响。指出其在更新教育理念,重视家长在教育中的作用,加强对学生创造力的培养,以及建立家长与学校教育互动方面具有重要启示。     

Confrontation and Cooperation: The Complicated Relationship Between Homeschoolers and Public Schools

Throughout the modern homeschool movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, homeschooling families have clashed with public institutions. Early homeschoolers joined together to win favorable legislative and judicial outcomes that resulted in the legalization of homeschooling in all 50 states by the early 1990s. Homeschoolers continue to face opposition from professional educators and the organizations that advocate for them. But although some interactions between homeschoolers and public schools are confrontational, in other cases, public school districts offer a variety of resources and opportunities to home educators. Some homeschoolers accept public school offerings through charter or online schools that allow children to remain at home while completing public school curricula. Others have gained the right to access public school extracurricular programs including high school sports. Not all homeschoolers agree on the merit of participating in programs offered by public schools. It is likely that instances of both cooperation and confrontation will continue.     

School Choice in Black and White: Private School Enrollment Among Racial Groups, 1990–2000

This study investigates how much the racial composition of communities influences the private school enrollment rates of members of different racial groups. Some scholars argue that private school enrollment contributes to racial segregation in public schools because White families attempt to enhance the social status of their children by leaving public schools serving communities with higher percentages of children who are Black. A second group of scholars argue that private school enrollment is primarily based on nonracial factors. A third, related perspective argues that race is of diminishing importance in driving behaviors such as school choice. This study explores these perspectives using 1990 and 2000 Public Use Micro Data Samples to estimate private school enrollment rates by student race and community racial composition. Findings indicate that private school enrollment rates among Asian, Black, and Hispanic students do not fluctuate much with community racial composition. By contrast, private school enrollment rates among White families are strongly and positively correlated with the percentage of children in their communities who are Black—even after holding constant a series of individual and community-level factors that may account for this trend. Moreover, the association between race and choice has changed little between 1990 and 2000.     

What Have We Learned About Homeschooling?

This article discusses quantitative research on homeschooling, including the available data, pitfalls of using the data, estimates of the number of homeschooled children, part-time homeschooling, and why families homeschool. I compare research on homeschooling to research on charter schools, voucher programs, and private schools.     

Homeschooling,Virtual Learning,and the Eroding Public/Private Binary

ABSTRACT

Regulators ubiquitously dichotomize schooling into two discrete sectors: public and private. Although homeschooling is regulated in some contexts as a third sector, the general approach is to treat it as a species of private education by subjecting it to public regulation while simultaneously denying it public funds. But the public/private binary is increasingly difficult to sustain as charter schools multiply and, especially, as virtual schooling increasingly penetrates primary and secondary education. Public school systems are deploying virtual education in ways that erode once impermeable walls between public and private. Many obstacles to homeschooling will fall with those walls—particularly obstacles related to government financing of homeschooling activities.     

The privatization of education in Argentina

This paper intends to analyse the empirical and historical evidence, gathered by recent research, on the privatization process of the argentine educational system. In the 1960s, two main changes occurred: an increase in the private sector enrolment and an increasing deregulation of private schools along with a hyper-regulation of public schools. Additionally, a significant mutation of the demand profile served by the private and public sector can be observed. Such a mutation is closely related to the socio-economic characteristics of the families sending their children to either sector. The article suggests that the process of privatization of the argentine education meant a switch from a state quasi-monopoly system to a dual public/private system, where the social sectors with higher purchasing power are able to choose to ‘exit’ from the public sector to the private and, by doing so, consolidating an educational environment of their own.     

Tolerance and Liberty: Answering the Academic Left's Challenge to Homeschooling Freedom

Millions of children in the United States are educated in the home. Millions more receive their education from private institutions. For parents, a common reason for seeking alternatives to public education is the desire to ensure that they receive instruction in accord with their religious beliefs. In many cases, these beliefs include exclusive claims about the nature of God, salvation, or morality. Recently, several scholars have argued that, to achieve a diverse and tolerant society, homeschooling and private education should be abolished or severely limited. They have contended that “a liberal multicultural education,” which will expose children to different ideas and perspectives, is necessary for the preservation of democratic values. Homeschooling, they claim, leads to close-mindedness and intolerance because children are taught to affirm certain beliefs which imply that not all other traditions are equally valid. The argument that homeschooling should be banned or severely restricted, however, relies on illiberal and intolerant premises that have already been discredited as inconsistent with our constitutional liberties. Although tolerance may be a valuable objective, it cannot be forcibly imposed by using the state's power to create philosophical homogeneity. True tolerance and diversity require a constitutional commitment to liberty for all, not a “constitutional norm” of silencing the “intolerant.”     

What are we educating towards? Socialization,acculturization, and individualization as reflected in home education

This article examines the educational objectives of parents who homeschool (or practice home education) in terms of the widely accepted division of primary educational objectives, namely, socialisation, acculturation, and individualization. Using qualitative methodology and in-depth interviews, 30 homeschooling mothers were interviewed about their educational goals. The findings indicated that a significant number of the objectives cites by the interviewees were associated with the primary objective of individualization. In some cases, parents were interested in achieving goals of socialisation and acculturation in their children’s education. This analysis may help identify the pedagogical ideology of parents who chose to homeschool, thus informing the policy-making. In addition, the case of homeschooling offers an example of the struggle among the three primary objectives of education, against the backdrop of far-reaching changes underway around the world in the post-modern era, which poses a challenge for educational policymakers, as well as school systems.     

The private problem with public service: rural teachers in educational markets

Staffing rural and remote schools is an important policy issue for the public good. This paper examines the private issues it also poses for teachers with families working in these communities, as they seek to reconcile careers with educational choices for children. The paper first considers historical responses to staffing rural and remote schools in Australia, and the emergence of neoliberal policy encouraging marketisation of the education sector. We report on interviews about considerations motivating household mobility with 11 teachers across regional, rural and remote communities in Queensland. Like other middle-class parents, these teachers prioritised their children's educational opportunities over career opportunities. The analysis demonstrates how teachers in rural and remote communities constitute a special group of educational consumers with insider knowledge and unique dilemmas around school choice. Their heightened anxieties around school choice under neoliberal policy are shown to contribute to the public issue of staffing rural and remote schools.     

Confronting School: Immigrant Families,Hope, Education

While children remain at the center of families’ decisions to emigrate, the global contexts and technologies that allow diasporas to remain connected to their cultures have influenced families’ aspirations in relation to their children’s education. This article presents data from a qualitative study on how immigrant families negotiate the schooling of their children in Australia. Findings highlight there are incongruencies between immigrant parents’ understanding of education and what the Australian public school system offers. This clash is combined with parents’ determination to reinforce their culture at home, which is usually overridden by schools’ standardization of practices and values. The study suggests there is a need to better understand the range of experiences and expectations that immigrant families bring to schools for educational institutions to be more attuned with an increasingly diverse, mobile, and mediatically interconnected population.     

“Homeschooling Is Our Protest:” Educational Liberation for African American Homeschooling Families in Philadelphia,PA

As increasing numbers of researchers, parents, and youth are rethinking the traditional school system as the default educational option in the United States, homeschooling is not only growing in size but also in philosophical scope and demographic diversity. African Americans particularly have been one of the steadiest-growing homeschooling demographics. Among the few ethnographic accounts of black homeschooling families, youth perceptions tend to be overlooked. This article builds upon scholarship exploring racial injustices in education with new qualitative research: observations and interviews with 15 African American homeschooling families living in Philadelphia. This research reveals a variety of motivations undergirding African American families’ homeschooling decisions and perspectives, including commentary from youth homeschoolers. Previous research has critiqued homeschooling as a neoliberal exercise in privatization that entrenches the social reproduction of inequality, or operates as a destabilizing threat to public interest. Yet, findings from this study complicate these assessments by examining the ways African American homeschoolers enmesh themselves within educational reform conversations, some viewing homeschooling as a form of political protest.     

Equity and Quality in Private Education: The Haitian paradox

Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, has a unique education system. The overwhelming majority of children are enrolled in private schools. In the absence of a functioning system of public schools, religious communities and private operators have become the main providers of educational services. This situation raises the question of the fairness of a system in which the quality of the education children receive is directly related to the level of tuition their families can afford. This paper assesses whether private education is playing an appropriate role in a poor country like Haiti in terms of providing quality education and promoting equity. It also reviews strategies which could allow the government to use its limited financial resources in a more cost-effective and equitable manner.