I’m sure I am not alone when I tell you that sometimes I fear that I am totally inadequate to be my kids teacher! So long as I’m admitting that, I might as well tell you that I’m frequently afraid that I’m totally inadequate to be my kids’ mother either, but I’m going to try to focus on homeschooling here.
I was a good student, and I always got good grades, but I think that had more to do with the fact that I’d learned the “system”, and not that I was oh so smart. I always had this niggling feeling that I hadn’t really learned that much. That little tid-bit became alarmingly apparent when my son started the first grade, and I starting learning all the things I missed during my first go ’round! Apparently, whatever I learned in Kindergarten stuck with me, but long about first grade I must have started dozing! I’ve been homeschooling for 6 years, so I figure I’m in the fifth grade now, and I cannot tell you how much I’ve learned so far!
This is funny stuff to me, as someone who currently homeschools 6 kids and has been at it for 6 years, but maybe you aren’t there yet. Maybe you are just getting started, and you are seriously wondering if you are smart enough to do this. Maybe you’re thinking, “That’s fine for you Nicole, but I didn’t graduate High School.”
I’ve got good news for you – YOU CAN DO IT!
It turns out that it doesn’t matter what your your level of education is, your homeschooled children still have a better chance of excelling, than their public school peers. I really encourage you to read the article “Academic Statistics on Homeschooling” from the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) website. It a very detailed article that shows precisely how homeschooling children of all backgrounds fair academically.
For those of you who just want me to give you the bottom line, here it is: “The study demonstrated that homeschoolers, on the average, out-performed their counterparts in the public schools by 30 to 37 percentile points in all subjects.”
One of the Independent Evaluations noted in the HSLDA article, called “Strengths of Their Own: Home Schoolers Across America,” clarifies that there is no relationship between your student’s achievement and:
- whether dad is a certified teacher,
- whether mom is a certified teacher,
- family income,
- money spent on education,
- legal status of the family,
- time spent in formal instruction,
- age formal instruction began, or
- degree of state regulation of home schooling.
This tells me that the only thing that matters is that you do homeschool your child! But it does beg the question – if all of that doesn’t matter, then is the common denominator the fact that they are at home, or the fact that they are not at school? I’ll let you decide.
