Should We Focus On Academic Excellence In Homeschooling?

Homeschooling has become a much more popular topic of conversation and heated debate after the virus-that-shall-not-be-named led to school closures across the nation. Suddenly, kids were at home, and everyone thought they were homeschooling by plopping their children in front of a computer and completing their public school classes from the kitchen table. Spoiler: That’s not homeschool. But I digress… Homeschool is on the radar like never before, and this question inevitably comes up. Why homeschool? Providing a good education is undoubtedly one reason, but maybe Christians focus too much on academic excellence in homeschooling.

Facts About Homeschooling

One of the biggest challenges against homeschool from many parents and professional teachers is the assumption that homeschooling provides a subpar education. With the amount of resources available at our fingertips, this concern is nearly unnecessary. Not good at algebra? No problem. There’s a video for that. The help is out there, and it’s easier than ever to obtain it.

Research seems to support the claim that homeschoolers are growing in number and succeeding. Let’s look at some findings.

Who Homeschools?

According to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), the number of homeschoolers was growing at a rate of approximately 2-8% a year. In 2019, 3-4% of school-age children were homeschooling. The number jumped significantly, however, in the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years. I think we can safely assume those numbers are in large part due to the pandemic. In 2021-2022, there were 3.1 million homeschoolers, or about 6% of school-age children.

Due to the very nature of homeschooling, the numbers are not entirely accurate, but it’s safe to say the trend suggests an uptick in the homeschool community. And thanks to the pandemic and increasingly unstable political climate, the homeschool community is changing. It’s not all white Christians any longer. The NHERI reports that 41% of homeschool families are Black, Asian, Hispanic, and other non-White racial identities. On a personal note, I can say from experience that I am encountering more nonreligious homeschool families than I ever have before in my twelve years as a homeschool mom.

Why Homeschool?

All kinds of people in growing numbers are choosing to leave behind the traditional school route and homeschool instead, but why? What do they get out of it? I mean, homeschooling usually means the family takes a financial hit, and it takes a lot of work on the parents’ end. Not to mention, some days are guaranteed to make everyone feel like a failure!

Some reasons mentioned by the NHERI include:

Ability to customize education for each child

Foster stronger bonds with family

Access to guided social interactions

Create a safer learning environment

Impart a preferred belief system, values, or worldview

Better academic outcomes

Academic Excellence In Homeschooling Is Real

Measuring Academic Excellence In Homeschooling

When you try to find out how homeschoolers compare academically to public and private school students, the truth can be difficult to decipher. Generally, the best measures we have available are standardized tests (e.g., PSAT, ACT, SAT), and those examinations have been developed with traditional schooling in mind. Many homeschoolers have limited experience taking such exams, and are they are also not learning subjects at the same exact time as their peers. For instance, my children are learning U.S. History in ninth grade, but most public schools are teaching that in tenth or eleventh grade. Does it matter? Maybe when it comes to taking these tests it will make a difference.

Another factor in collecting data is the sample of homeschoolers available. Over 90% of American students go to public or private school which makes taking samples of these students relatively simple. Meanwhile, homeschoolers are a much smaller sample that skews Christian. They are also a very specific kind of family because they have chosen to go against the norm of society and take on a gargantuan task. In addition, homeschoolers don’t have to “register” in every state, so we may never have access to some homeschool students because we don’t have any sure way to know they are, in fact, homeschoolers.

I say all this to say that the research findings regarding homeschooling are helpful, but they are not the full picture. It’s difficult to draw conclusions about causation, but we can see the general picture with the research. We should approach it as a tool to help us understand homeschool rather than the gospel truth.

The Findings

The NHERI reports that homeschoolers usually score 15-25 percentile points higher on academic achievement tests than their peers in public school. In 2015, a study found that Black homeschool students had an even larger gap between themselves and their Black public-school peers. They score 23-42 percentile points higher! Interestingly, research showed that parents’ income, education level, and certification (or not) as a teacher did not make a significant difference in students’ academic achievement. The same can be said for governmental involvement in homeschooling.

I think it’s important to add that studies show homeschoolers who are learning in a structured and organized way consistently score higher than their peers in traditional school while homeschoolers learning in unstructured environments score lower. So, academic excellence in homeschooling isn’t achieved simply by being at home. The method matters.

These findings are well-known in higher education, and colleges are actively pursuing homeschoolers. It turns out that homeschool is not hindering students’ opportunities and future careers. These students are growing up into fully functional members of society who are just as engaged and capable as everyone else. Is that because of a strong focus on academic excellence in homeschooling, though?

More Important Than Academic Excellence In Homeschooling

Now we have arrived at the point. Take a moment and consider the likelihood that every homeschool environment is pushing high level academics and/or has high-achieving and gifted children. Seems unlikely, right? In my personal experience, homeschool families come from all backgrounds and academic abilities. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down with a distraught mother as she unloads on me about her concerns for a struggling child. I’ve been that mom on occasion, too.

I can’t help but wonder how, then, it could be possible that homeschoolers generally do so well. The research findings, I fear, suggest that homeschool is really just a college prep academy in the home environment because moms are seeing these successful homeschool graduates and feeling the pressure to measure up. They’re planning six-hour school days, two field trips a week, and asking for the most rigorous curricula available. May I humbly suggest that this approach won’t work for most homeschool students? Rather, I think we see academic excellence in homeschooling by keeping our priorities in place.

As Christian homeschoolers, what should we focus on above academic excellence?

1. God/Discipleship

Don’t be shocked when a Christian blogger says to focus on God before anything else. His command is clear. He comes first.

“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.”

Matthew 22:37-38

Is there any reason to believe this would not also apply to our children’s education? What good is biology and geometry if our children don’t know the Lord? We can’t save our kids no matter how much we may want to, but we are tasked with the responsibility to teach them all we can about God and how Jesus saves. Do math. Study history. Explore the wonders of science. But don’t forget that none of these subjects is truly secular. Demonstrate loving God above all else by integrating Him in everything.

God Wants Us To Teach Our Children About Him

“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”

Deuteronomy 6:6-9

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

Proverbs 1:7

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)

2. Individual Study

Don’t just put books on a table and tell your kids to learn, but always be working toward independence. Our children should know how to find the answers to their questions without our help by the time school ends. Teach them where to find the answers and how to discern between trustworthy and sketchy resources.

One of our educational goals should be to raise life-long learners who know how to teach themselves anything they want to learn.

3. Independent Thinking

Independent thinking relates to being a life-long learner. If our children continue to study and learn as adults on their own, then they will be inquisitive people who are not satisfied with being given answers. It’s not that I want to raise conspiracy theorists, but I do want adult children who think for themselves. I want them to believe things because they have come to that conclusion, not because someone told them to believe it.

Independent thinking can be scary for some Christian parents because they are accustomed to telling their kids what to think. “I said so” and “our church believes” are common expressions. That might be all right when they’re young, but I pray the Lord would seal my lips shut before I ever tell my twelve-year-old son that we believe any particular doctrine because our church says it’s true. He needs to see evidence from God’s Word and make that truth his own. I wonder how many young people have deconstructed and left the Church because they were told what to believe and discouraged from asking questions and thinking through hard things themselves.

4. Self-Discovery

Pardon me if I sound like a self-help writer on this one, but homeschooling allows children to investigate interests and gain experience with them. I believe my experience in public school is fairly typical. As a straight A student, my guidance counselors put me on the college track. I was handed a list of classes I needed to complete in order to get into college and was instructed to take those. If I didn’t, I would have no future. One guidance counselor warned me that I could end up working in a grocery store or “doing hair” if I didn’t stick to the plan…

(I still fail to see how we can look down on those jobs. I love getting my hair done when my stylist does a good job. And I actually wouldn’t mind seeing some more cashiers at Wal-Mart. Can you imagine a world in which we all had to cut our own hair? That’s nightmare fuel for me…)

The end result of my high school career was being an eighteen-year-old with no idea about what I was good at or even truly interested in pursuing. There was a large future student loan debt waiting for me, though, as I pursued a relatively generic degree at a private university just to go to graduate school to have a career in what my stepmom likened to volunteering. (The pay was, well, not great.)

I spent a long time learning my strengths and weaknesses, but all that learning came after six years in college, getting married, and having children. Having the time and encouragement to get to know my natural gifts and interests when I was young would have been a tremendous blessing, and homeschooling offers that.

5. Service

A strong focus on academic excellence in homeschooling runs the risk of being very me-focused. I was this student, and I became prideful and put too much of my worth into my grades. The same thing can happen inside a Christian homeschool family. I’m sorry to say this, but some homeschoolers come across as braggarts. It isn’t pleasant to be around, but it’s also quite unbecoming of a professing Christian. These individuals spend more time listing their achievements than adding anything useful to a conversation. It’s so cringe.

Rather than put all our focus on conquering academic challenges so we can get into the “best” school and impress others, how can we use some of our gifts and effort for those around us? You see, our children won’t grow into regular church attendees and ministry-minded adults if they don’t learn it in their youth. And I’m sad to see how many parents claim their children don’t have time to serve in church and the community because they have so many activities to take part in and so much schoolwork to do. If that’s true, then someone’s priorities are off. You can be active, studious, and save time to minister.

Final Thought

Am I saying academic excellence in homeschooling should not be a priority? Not at all! The truth is that we should want our children to be competitive in the academic and professional world, but that shouldn’t overshadow the bigger picture. As Christian parents, do we really believe that God is most concerned about whether or not our children get college degrees or have a 4.0 GPA? If the only thing our children take away from being homeschooled is a solid academic career, then we fail them.

Our first job is to model a healthy Christian life in which we teach who God is and make sure the gospel is abundantly clear to them. After that, if we teach them to be life-long learners, think for themselves, know who they are and what they’re passionate about, and serve others in Christ’s name, that academic excellence we often become obsessed with will likely fall into place. However, it might not, and we shouldn’t fear that outcome. God’s plans for our children may not be what the world says all high school graduates do. We can trust Him with our children, and we ought to teach them that they can trust Him, too.

How important do you think academic excellence in homeschooling should be?

Image courtesy of Suad Kamardeen via Unsplash.