So I have to imagine that december will be encouraging his oft-mentioned medical-school-professor wife to quit her job and find other work. It’s obvious that the medical disciplines will soon be taught just as effectively by any random parent. Right?
What are you suggesting, December, that we fire all the teachers and replace them with housewives? If we want to make public schools more like home-schools the thing to do is to hire more teachers to reduce class size.
The key to home-school success is clearly the one-on-one instruction. You simply dismissed that with your ‘home-defense’ analogy, but that is deeply flawed. There’s a big difference between winning a case against a prosecutor and teaching a kid to read or do math. The former requires unique skills, training, and experience. The latter is a relatively simple step-by-step process that can be taken straight from a book. In court, one you’ve rested your case, you have no way of knowing if you’ve given the best defense possible. In home-school, you can test your results every step of the way and adjust the pace to ensure that every bit of learning has been absorbred by both of your students. Public schools don’t have that luxury.
“Guarantee” – hmm. No, I’m afraid not. You see, the most demanding part of actuarial work doesn’t invovle mathematics or computers. It involves having a good enough understanding of all the facts and principles so that one knows the strengths and weaknessess of various models. Depending on the line of business, the understanding, ideally, includes knowledge of past and present and future trends in legal and medical aspects. It involves an understanding of what can go right or wrong in the way data is collected and maintained.
BTW part of the actuary’s job is knowing what data to get and getting it. E.g., it is often helpful to look at competitors’ results, so musst know who the relevant competitors are.
And, for lawyers, it’s even more clear, because people do defend themselves from time to time. Congressman James Trafficant did so just last month. Despite his cleverness and oratorical skills, and despite his commitment to himself, he was found guilty, guilty, guilty. (On 8 counts IIRC)
IF you could do the same work as I do by simply spending more time at it, then I would indeed be incompetent.
Sure, but the Geography Bee happened to be current news. I was generally aware that Home-schoolers were doing well by a number of criteria, and I am grateful that evilhanz found those cites. (Thank, evilhanz)
My assertion is that hom-schoolers aren’t doing well. Professional educators are doing badly. I do not mean to imply that the best way to improve schools is to make them like home-schools. I do mean to imply, that schools are doing a poor job, despite enourmous resources being devoted to education. YMMV.
You MUST be kidding. This is so beyond the pale of logic or common sense I can’t believe it isn’t a joke.
December, that doesn’t even connect logically. There’s no such thing as a “home-defended” lawyer or a “real lawyer” that matches the situation in schooling; there’s simply no logical connection to be made. Commercially available lawyers do not simultaneously represent 30 clients in the same courtroom at the same time, and the law is nothing like teaching. You do not have any valid comparison in the legal field to draw to teaching, so your comparison’s compeltely irrelevant.
Rather that drawing this absurd comparison, I would like to see you actually ADDRESS my points, which I will put in point form:
-
A comparison between home schooled and publicly schooled children is of absolutely no validity unless you control for other factors, such as household income, health, parents’ level of education, and a variety of variables in terms of the stability of the household. If you have a study that controls for those differences you can demonstrate something. If you do not, you have no evidence home schooled kids are better educated.
-
A comparison between home schooled and publicly schooled children will also be wildly inaccurate unless you control for the amount of instructional time the child recieves, both in group and one-on-one. You have presented no evidence whatsoever that provides such a controlled comparison.
Basically, you’re just blabbering about stuff for which you haven’t any evidence. IF home schooled kids are better educated, where is your evidence? Show me some evidence that controls for the factors above and we can START to have this discussion. It strikes me as being rock-bottom, first-year-of-community-college common sense that if you’re going to make comparisons you have to adjust and control for other variables. Maybe you forgot that.
Furthermore, you have provided not one iota of evidence to suggest the assertion in your OP is true. (I would pojnt out, incidentally, that demonstrating CURRICULUM is inferior does not go to proving your OP. Teachers don’t set curriculum.) Now do you have some evidence or not?
You’re actually lying now. Nobody’s saying home schooled kids don’t do better. They, and I, are saying that you don’t understand WHY they do better. And apparently, you don’t.
Try to look beyond the ideology here, and stop assuming we’re coming from an ideological viewpoint, and examine this logically. I would like you to specifically address my concerns around controlling for variables aside from teacher skill.
I await with eager anticipation your demonstration of these skills in any Straight Dope Message Board thread. Particularly that last one that I’ve bolded for emphasis. That would be a good one to use wherever someone posts a half-assed assertion based on limited data entirely insufficient to support broad conclusions.
Like in the OP of this thread.
Sorry, but I’ve had my fill. I had several very specific items to address (see above) and the data given by some one other than the OP did not address it.
Simply put neither the OP nor the data supplied by some one else supported, in any way, the claim made by the OP.
In order to support the claim, they must:
-
demonstrate that home schooled children and Public schooled children start off on the ‘same foot’ (ie are statistically similar). The data presented demonstrates exactly the opposite (that their parents are more often more educated, ethnic demographics are wrong, too for two quick examples).
-
That the only thing that is different between the two groups is the home schooling vs. public schooling (no data presented).
-
That one child winning some competition is somehow proof that the overall education is ‘better’ (some data re: test results given, however, again, the two groups were not analogous in comparison - the home schooled children had more educated parents, different ethnic backgrounds etc. And I don’t recall seeing data re: those w/developmental and other disabilities).
-
That the ‘home schooled’ teachers were in fact ‘amatures’, ie no college training in education. (no data presented ).
And - to demonstrate the utter idiocy of presenting some news story about a single case as deciding that one specific piece of data is caused by another piece of data in that case, and should be extrapolated to the whole, let’s also remember the dangers of home schooling
:rolleyes:
Another point that I haven’t seen mentioned yet is that homeschooling parents, like private schools, have the luxury of being selective in their enrollments. If homeschooling turns out not to be “effective” for your kids—the parent/child/teacher/pupil interconnections just don’t work right for some reason—you can send your kids to school instead. Professional educators, on the other hand, generally don’t have the option of saying “Gee, I don’t seem to be reaching this kid very effectively, I guess I’ll stop trying and let somebody else teach him/her.”
Schools with professional curriculums, certified, educators, and the most up-to-date teaching materials do not teach their students as much as ordinary, untrained parents do.
Sometimes. Sometimes the “ordinary, untrained parents” teach their students that the universe is less than 5000 years old and that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. I’m very impressed by the achievements and dedication of many homeschooling parents, but you can’t just point to some individual homeschooling success stories and extrapolate from them to conclusions about all homeschooling. As wring notes, “data” is not the plural of “anecdote”.
(Say, I’ve got a homeschooling suggestion: I think that december should have to submit his proposed OP’s to Prof. Mrs. december before posting them, so she can help him iron out the lapses logicae and save the rest of us the trouble. Who’s with me on this? ;))
Let me get this straight December…you are making an argument that there are flaws in the public education system and that the educators are primarily to blame. Correct?
If not, then could you please have pity on such as me and rephrase what you were originally trying to say.
Thank you.
As a homeschooling parent, I have to say that, using the above criteria, “professional educators” are not incompetent. A homeschooling parent does not do the “same work” as a public school teacher.
For example, many of the “crowd control” functions that exist in the public school system do not exist in the homeschool environment.
When I decide to learn something new on my own, I can study for a while, then stop if I start to get burned out, then pick it up again when I’m ready to go at it again.
I can do the same with my children. If I was trying to teach a group of students, I couldn’t do that.
In my “day job,” the best part (in my opinion) is training (teaching) people to use the computer software I sell. When I work one-on-one (or 2- or 3-on-one) the students learn a lot better than in a large classroom, but I can’t teach 15+ people in a (nearly) one-on-one basis at the same time.
Public school teachers have to teach to a crowd.
Public schools also wind up doing (good) “social work” type of activities because the government has decided (for good or bad) that since most of the children are together at school it’s more efficient to provide those services at school. This takes time away from the pure teaching. (As an example, children in public school are given basic vision and hearing screenings at school. My children aren’t, I have to take them to have the vision and hearing checked, but I don’t have to wait for the other 14+ students to also have the screening to get back to teaching them.)
It is up to december to defend his assertions. I merely stopped in to provide some data of (hopefully) limited bias. I found some more source material. Here’s the Rudner study, Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998. Some of the earlier cites reference this study. Since it is published in a peer reviewed journal, it is worth reading the associated Commentary to understand what the analysis really means for the homeschooled population as a whole.
The Rudner study shows that 24% of the parents in his selective sample had obtained a teaching certification at one time or another.
thanks ** evilhanz**, so let’s correct that bullet to reflect that his supposision (that they’re amateurs and not professionals) is incorrect in at least 24% of the cases, ( I assume that the data doesn’t break it down further so that we can actually see if the ‘trained’ home schooled teachers pupils fare better, eh?)
and, of course, there’s also the problem of sampling error, since the classification of ‘home schooled’ is by virtue of itself, not a random sampling. And, since it’s demonstratably true that those pupils in home schooling are statistically quite different from those in the general public, quite a bit of specific research would need to (and hasn’t) happen in order to even begin speculation on any appreciable difference in results.
As I posted earlier, and xeno added (with that pithy comment from the OP), the fact that the OP apparently works with data IRL, and seems to be totally unable to understand basic causes and effects should make us all very, very happy that mrs. december is there to help.
I vote for Kimstu’s solution.
Immediate issues I have with the Rudner study…
Sample was self selected, not random - these parents contracted with Bob Jones to test - and paid a fee to do so.
Test administrators were often the parents - who had a vested interest in their children testing well.
I’m not saying home schooled students don’t perform well, just that the study is somewhat (and admittedly) flawed from the outset.
Lawrence M. Rudner wrote:
Sounds pretty remarkable, doesn’t it?
The word “conservative” in the first Rudner quote above seems to imply that even if additional co-factors required some downward adjustment, the home schoolers’ results would still be exceptional.
But, then the SOB turns around and totally disavows his own results and all the other studies as well. He says,
This quote supports those of you who claim that the studies aren’t good enough to draw comparative conclusions.
How in the world should these two POV’s be reconciled?
My own philosophy (which has served me well in the stock market) is to look first at what’s in front of my nose. When a stock has appeared dramatically cheap, there has sometimes been problem, which I didn’t know about. OTOH it has often been a genuine bargain. I have found the latter more common than the former. I sometimes lost money following the obvious conclusion, but I made a lot more than I lost.
In the case of home-schooling, if the researcher controlled for more variables, the study might show that home schooling has an even greater degree of superiority. Or it might show the same degree of superiority, or a lesser degree of superiority, or no superiority. Based on the huge magnitude of the difference, I think the odds are that home schooling is considerably superior.
BTW, I am struck by the selectivity of when people do or do not require statistical design purity. E.g., [ul][li]University Presidents and administrators, who should know better, will tout the difference in lifetime income as if that were caused by attendance at their institution. [] School systems routinely boast about their students’ above-average performance on standard tests, without correcting for other variables. [] The New York Times editorialized against a judicial nominee because 50 of his decisions had been reversed, but they didn’t express his reversal rate as a percentage of all his decisions or compare it to an average reversal rate. [/ul] OTOH, where the finding criticizes standard education, we’re suddenly co-variable virgins – willing to look only at data with the utmost in statistical purity.[/li][quote]
**Jeu_D’esprit **
Let me get this straight December…you are making an argument that there are flaws in the public education system and that the educators are primarily to blame. Correct?
[/quote]
Yes, although by “educators,” I do not mean “teachers.” I mean all those involved in the system: teachers’ unions, government education departments, university education departments, texbook publishers, school administrators, etc.
I think much teacher training is useless, many texbooks are poor, the officially recommened and required teaching methods have often followed new fads, rather than become more effective. I think the classroom teacher has been severely burdened by losing much of her ability to disiplline and punish students and by having to cope with various external requirements.
The art of being december read something, agree with it, it must be true. Read something else even if it’s in the same article, by the same author and it is something you disagree with, reject it completely as being ‘not true’.
geez.
you are looking at a study which identified certain pieces of data.
THe coexistence of data does not prove causation. The author recognized this. PEople who work w/data often would/should recognize this.
FOr example, you could have discovered that 98% of the students who scored well had cereal for breakfast that day. Wouldn’t mean that the cereal caused the test score.
There are too many potential variables available to do attempt to suggest that the single most defining and most important characteristic is the nature of the teacher’s training or the common thread of home schooling.
Did you bother to read anyone else’s posts?? Like the person who was home schooling and said ‘I couldn’t do it with any more than the few kids I have’.
and, again, using your technique, we could safely posite that homeschooling your children in Houston raised the risk of them being killed by their mother by drowning them in a bathtub, too.
come on, say it with me: Coinciding does not prove causality.
two events can coincide, and have zero relation to each other. You have no way of knowing that ‘home schooling’ is the significant factor, and not all of the other issues.
** The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong – but that’s the way to bet.**
Yes, wring, coinciding does not necessarily prove causality. However, when several large independent studies all show extremely marked results in one direction, the likelihood is that home-schooled students are indeed getting a better education.
I’d say it has considerably more than a “minimal” effect on bright children. I spent most of my grade school and high school reading trashy books in class because I had finished the textbook in the first two weeks and already knew the material being “taught” in class. In fact, the teacher I consider the best I ever had earned that honor by recognizing what was going on and slipping me good and challenging books to read in her class.
In a one-on-one teaching situation, we simply would have moved on to more challenging material, rather than waiting for the rest of the class to catch up.
Oh so true. I’ve spent the last three years helping to kick a self-educated “lawyer” up and down the eastern seaboard. Partly as a result, the Florida Supreme Court just held that he had engaged in sixteen counts of the unauthorized practice of law.
It was fun. 
december, find stats on the results of one-on-one teaching by professional teachers and compare them to one-on-one teaching by homeschooling parents. For all I know, the homeschooling parents may very well win the comparison.
But until you make that comparison, there is no Great Debate here, because Great Debates do not consist of an analysis of the qualities of particular red fruits as compared to particular orange fruits.
Sua
Sua
not when you are unable to ascertain which of the potential variables is responsible for the data.
Did you ever see Medicine Man a perfectly awful movie about a guy in the rainforest who discovers the cure for cancer? He spends all this time, testing stuff, finding data and so on and fails ultimately because, you see, he made the assumption that the item that made the difference was a plant/part of a plant and the real cure was a particular bug that inhabited it. (or vice versa)
The fallacy we’ve all attempted to show you here is that you’re assuming that the relevant difference is the home schooling, vs. say, classroom sizes, education of the parents, involvement of the parents, specific data re the kids, or for all we know length of their ulna bone.
you can shout all you want that you find differences in the data, but as Sua points out, the correlation is not exact and you’re comparing apples and oranges.
Sua, I think I understand your thesis. Home-schooling is so different from school-schooling that the comparison is meaningless. I agree that the comparison is not conclusive, but I think it creates an indication that schools could be better. Your anectote may be helpful.
I went to grade school in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Our class was divided into 3 groups, so that we could do work closer to our capability. Occassionally kids in the top group “tutored” other kids. One way or another, the teacher kept our interest. There was also a program in New York City for bright kids to skip a year, which helped them to remain academically challenged. By Junior HS, all academic classes were heterogeneously grouped.
Yet, in your era, Sua, education had apparantly regressed to the point where your school no longer knew how to keep bright students occupied and engaged. Why did that teacher you admire have to “slip” you challenging books? Why shouldn’t it be normal for a teacher to pay attention to his/her students’ needs and to deal with them?
In most areas of service or manufacturing, methods have advanced with time. Products are better, and they’re created with less manual effort. Yet, in education, we haven’t progressed at all; in fact, we seem to have moved backward. Far more resources are devoted to education today, and results have gotten worse.
BTW, for those who want statistical proof of this last statement, consider the easing up of Scholastic Aptitude Test scoring several years ago – a reflection of the fact that scores had dropped over a period of years.
BTW note that home-schooling would have been more convenient back when I was in school, because few mothers had outside jobs. Yet, it didn’t exist to any degree at all.
Just curious; why have you refused to address my specific questions?
I wrote a detailed response at the office, which was not quite what I wanted. (One problem was how to deal with becing called a liar. I will not get into a pissing contest, but I wish you would apologize.) Then, I got distracted by some other posts. I thought that my actual post did address your questions. Let’s see if I can remember my thoughts:
Sua made the same point. No analogy is perfect.
Actually, commercially available lawyers do indeed represent many clients at a time, as their cases are in different stages of preparation.
Whatever.
You’re in good company here with wring, but I disagree. One needs to distinguish between various degrees of meaningfulness, e.g.,concusive, indicative, suggestive, absolutely no validity. I agree that without the control of the factors you suggest, the comparison is not conclusive. IMHO the enormous difference makes the comparison at least indicative or suggestive.
Same answer. Instructional time would be helpful, but its lack doesn’t make the study useless.
As I said earlier, this is a high hurdle. How many other OPs in Great Debates are based on studies of such quality? I believe this OP met or exceeded the usual SDMB GD standard of evidence.
I hope I have already clarified that I do not mean to blame the teachers. but rather many others involved in education. Teachers are closest to the students and they are doing the best they can for them.
Even if I’m wrong, I’m not lying. But, I think some posters here are questioning whether home-schooled students do better.
Please re-read the OP. It asked that very question.
In conclusion, Rick, I feel like I’ve been hit with a one-two punch here. On the one hand, the cited data in no way show that home-schoolers are doing better, so I’m wrong. OTOH everyone agrees that home-schoolers do better, so I lied when I denied this.
I can’t win. 