Sandy's wager

[Stephen Gilles]

I assume we care about Rick and Sandy's home-school wager because
we want to know whether society should encourage or discourage home
schooling (whether by public opinion or legal regulation).
The evidence that home-schooled kids outperform the public-school
average on standardized tests provides a strong argument against
discouraging home schooling.  I agree that those same home-schooled
kids would outperform the public-school average if they went to
public schools (though whether the advantage would be bigger or
smaller I don't claim to know).  But why?  The most likely answer
(see the Coleman report and any number of subsequent studies) is the
continuing investment of their parents in their education, broadly
defined to include everything from books in the home to parental
involvement in homework to the transmission of parental intellectual
capital via example, imitation, etc.  The fallacy in the
"bluechipper" dismissal of home-schooling is its implausible
assumption that public schools -- rather than educationally-oriented
families -- get credit for the performance of kids who go to public
school and perform well above average there.  My two oldest children,
for example, attend public schools.  Before either of them started
kindergarten they were achieving at (conservatively) second-
or third-grade levels in reading and math.
It would be a strange causal story indeed that gave the school
(rather than the mother who home-educated them and who continues to
do so now that they also go to school) much credit for their high
test scores, now or in the near future.  My point is not to bash
the schools (we like our public school teachers a lot), but to
argue that parents who opt for home-schooling, like
public-school parents of high-performing students, are generally
good, reliable suppliers of education to their children.  Putting
aside redistributive-egalitarian arguments (which no one has raised
on this thread so far), that proposition should dispose of the
argument that home schooling shortchanges children.

But I want to go beyond this.  I think we should encourage
home-*education* -- defined, not as opting out of public
(and private) schools and providing all formal schooling in the home,
but as making a commitment, as parents, to be heavily involved in,
and to use one's best efforts to maximize the quality of, the
education one's children receive.  Now obviously that commitment can
be met in a variety of ways.  At a minimum, however, the evidence
suggests that home schooling is for many parents an
attractive way to make that commitment -- a way that can induce them
to redouble their efforts on behalf of their children.  We should
encourage these people and facilitate their efforts.  For
example, public schools should be required by law to allow home
schoolers to enroll in gym, band, art, music and other classes for
which it is difficult for home-school families to find good
substitutes.  At the same time, we should encourage parents who want
to be more, not less involved, with their public schools.  There is
no contradiction in doing so.  For what we need is increased parental
investment in the education of their children, and both home
schooling and being a teacher's aide in your child's classroom are
good ways to do that.


Steve Gilles
Quinnipiac College School of Law (visiting at Washington and Lee)