Sandy's Wager

[richard duncan]

> But Student A and Student B come from biassed samples.  Homeschooled
> children almost surely have parents who are more keenly interested in =
> their=20
> education, *on average,* than public school children.  Since parental =
> involvement in their children's education is a key factor in how =
> children do in school, home schooled children will do better in Rick's =
> test.  But these=20
> same students, if sent to public schools, would probably also do better =
> than other public school students on the same test.
>
> Jeff Spinner-Halev
> Assistant Professor of Political Science
> U of Nebraska
>
Of course, Jeff is correct. Home school parents are special. They
are indeed "more keenly interested in education" which is why I
believe Sandy's intuition about "typical" home school curricula is
suspect. I know many home school families and almost without exception
their approach to education is similar to what Mike McConnell
described.

Oh, and about my wager. According to a major recent study, on average
home school students out-perform their public school peers by 30-37
percentile points across all subjects.

Home schools work for a lot of reasons. Because home school parents
care about education. Because home schools have a great
student-teacher ratio. Because home schools tend to teach great books
without regard to the race, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation
of the authors and the characters. Because there is no such thing as a
"typical" child--every child is different and has different
educational needs and interests; a one-size-fits-all education is
about as good as one-size-fits-all shoes. Oh, and home schools expose
children to *both* religious and secular texts and ideas, and this
makes their curricula more heterogeneous than that used in strictly
secular public schools.

--
                   ----------
             Rick Duncan (rduncan at unlinfo.unl.edu)

"Be of good courage,
 And He shall strengthen your heart,
 All you who hope in the Lord."
       --Psalm 31:24