Bravo, Ed

The fallacy of statistics here is, as you said, the public school
statistics include the whole of the population whereas the home school
statistics include a more specialized population where the parent is
(presumably) capable of teaching at the appropriate education levels.
In order to truly compare more accurately (although still skewed), one
should eliminate the top and bottom quintiles from both groups to
eliminate "anomalies" of status, etc.

I do agree, however, that home-schooling kids does tend to make better
use of time. Our current system (I would guess) wastes about half the
school time on discipline, settling down, moving between classes and
things like that.


Koz

Ed Huntress wrote:

"Gunner" wrote in message
.. .


"People disagree over homeschooling's social and academic benefits.
Test score data from states requiring testing or from homeschooling
associations, while not totally representative, suggest that tested
homeschooled children are above average (Lines 2001). According to two
Time reporters (Cloud and Morse 2001), "the average SAT score for home
schoolers in 2000 was 1100, compared with 1019 for the general
population."



Kids from disfunctional families and illiterate, impoverished families are
included in the "general population." Home-schooled kids almost exclusively
are not.

Another case of lying with statistics.