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Research

Here you'll find summaries and links to research on homeschoolers as well as rebuttal pieces and other websites which catalog and comment on this subject. 

and: "Contrary to some analyses, the data show that home schooling has caught on with divergent population groups for a variety of reasons," stated George Barna, whose company conducted the research. "It appears that there are three dominant forces in the home school movement. There is certainly the conservative evangelical niche that constitutes a small, but visible segment - perhaps one out of every seven home school households. There appear to be about twice as many home school families that are people of color - blacks, Hispanics, Asians - who have rejected traditional educational options. But nearly half of the home school contingent seems to be a group of politically moderate, family-oriented households with traditional values who engage in religious activity and accept many Christian principles, but are not driven by a compelling, personal relationship with Jesus Christ."

Here's the link .

August 2001: Home Schooling in the United States: Trends & Characterics
by Kurt J. Bauman
http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0053.html

"This report uses the 1994 October CPS, and the National Household Education Survey of 1996 and 1999 to determine the extent of home schooling. It presents social, demographic and geographic characteristics of households that engage in home schooling and examines the potential for future growth. It is found that home schooling is less prevalent than shown in earlier estimates, but that the potential for growth is large."

July 2001: Homeschooling in the United States: 1999
National Center for Education Statistics says 850,000 homeschoolers nationwide.
Here's an html version: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/HomeSchool/index.asp
Here's the link to the actual study in .pdf format

"This report, Homeschooling in the United States: 1999, presents an estimate of the number of homeschooled students, characteristics of homeschooled children and their families, parents' reasons for homeschooling, and public school support for homeschoolers."

"The new figures come from a telephone survey of 57,278 households conducted from January through May 1999." Here's the link to the AP story via Yahoo!

 

August 20, 20001 Barna Research does an independent assessment of HSers and:  

"Contrary to some analyses, the data show that home schooling has caught on with divergent population groups for a variety of reasons," stated George Barna, whose company conducted the research. "It appears that there are three dominant forces in the home school movement. There is certainly the conservative evangelical niche that constitutes a small, but visible segment - perhaps one out of every seven home school households. There appear to be about twice as many home school families that are people of color - blacks, Hispanics, Asians - who have rejected traditional educational options. But nearly half of the home school contingent seems to be a group of politically moderate, family-oriented households with traditional values who engage in religious activity and accept many Christian principles, but are not driven by a compelling, personal relationship with Jesus Christ."

Here's the link.

September 2000 The Education Freedom Index ranks Tennessee as 48th in the nation as regards homeschooling freedom and 36th in overall educational freedom.

"We find that students in states that have higher scores on EFI also have higher scores on standardized tests, even after controlling for other demographic and policy factors."

Read the whole report here.

Summer 2000: Survey of Nashville's potential homeschoolers 

Patricia Lines has an interesting 10 page article on homeschooling in the summer issue of The Public Interest . (The article is not online at this time.)
(snip)

"Future growth could occur most rapidly among ethnic minorities. Though African-American and other non-Caucasian groups are under-represented among homeschoolers, the next generation of minorities is seriously considering it. In a survey of selected classes at Vanderbilt University and Nashville State Tech (a selective private university and a two-year-college), almost half (45.5 percent) of the African-American students said "yes" or "maybe" when asked if they would homeschool their own children in the future. Among other non-Caucasian minorities, two-thirds indicated "yes" or "maybe." Incontrast, less than one-fourth of the white students said this. The survey was small (254 students) and nonrandom, representing students enrolled in the classes of the researchers, whose influence was perhaps stronger among the non-Caucasian students. Nonetheless, the results are startling. Public educators who count on the loyalty of ethnic minorities as the backbone oftheir big-city clientele may be in for yet another surprise."

Spring 1999: Homeschoolers: Estimating Numbers and Growth by Patricia M. Lines
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/SAI/homeschool/

1998: Scholastic Achievement and Demographic Characteristics of Home School Students in 1998 by Lawrence M. Rudner
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v7n8/
This study has been widely quoted. It has some fundamental flaws. It was financed by a conservative Christian organization and used homeschoolers enrolled in the Bob Jones University homeschooling program. As a result this study cannot be considered a snapshot of the larger and more diverse national homeschooling community.