Arkansas Home Schooled Students Score Higher in Reading Than Public School Students

Home schooled students are required to take a nationally normed test that compares them to students across the nation in the same grade levels as the public schools take, grade 3 through 9. The nationally normed test is chosen by the Arkansas Department of Education. Keep in mind that the home schooled students take the test cold turkey, the way these tests were designed to be taken; and the way many of us adults took them. According to the Home School Director at ADE, the Department of Education does nothing to prepare home schooled students for the tests. In public education there is a great deal of preparation. In addition, teachers give the "practice" type tests and are able to see specific types of items on the test which gives them a great advantage.

When the state first started putting emphasis on test scores, I was teaching 7th grade. Our superintendent handed out in the fall during a teachers' meeting, a previous edition of the test we were to take in the spring and allowed all teachers to read over it (he gave us 20 to 30 minutes to do so). I was able to improve my 7th grade language scores from five to ten percentage points in all classes from just looking at the test and seeing what they included, what they did not include; and the format of the questions. So home school students are definitely at a disadvantage.

In 2008 home school students had the following scores on the nationally normed test that they are required to take. (The 2009 scores for home school students are not yet in for this year. ) The Public School scores in reading are given in the 2nd column.

Comparison of Reading Scores for Home School Students and Public Schools in 2008

Reading 2008	Home School	Public School
3rd Grade	61%	48%
4th Grade	66%	64%
5th Grade	65%	56%
6th Grade	62%	46%
7th Grade	62%	53%
8th Grade	60%	53%
9th Grade	61%	53%

Home schooled students and public school students did take a different nationally normed test in 2008 and 2009, but that decision was made by ADE, not the home schoolers. The last year home school and public school students took the same test was in 2005. In that year home schooled students had higher scores in Reading in all grades but one. In 3rd grade the reading score for home schoolers was one point below public school. However, home school scores in math were lower than public schools. There has been a trend in modern education even on nationally normed tests to move from the basics in math to interpreting tables, charts, data, and probability, etc. I believe this is the reason that math scores for home schoolers are lower than public school scores. Home schoolers still teach a traditional math curriculum. Home school scores and law can be found at this link: http://www.arkansased.org/schools/pdf/hs_report_07-08_081908.pdf Public school scores can be found in table above and at this link: http://arkansased.org/communications/pdf/assessment_071309.pdf

Most teachers of home school students (parents) don't even have a college education; they have not had the so called benefit of staff development, the rich resources the state is now providing, and they cost the state nothing. If the state had left the educational system in the hands of the teachers instead of the experts, our educational system would be far superior to what it is now, and we would have saved several billion dollars. Neither would we be to the point of moving into the type of international education that Obama is promoting. See article below for that.

Centerpiece of Obama's Education Plan – International Benchmarked Standards

"On July 24, 2009, the U.S Department of Education (DOE) announced that the "centerpiece of the Obama administration's education reform efforts" in its "$4.35 billion Race to the Top," will include "adopting internationally benchmarked education standards." These will be national standards, said the press release, keyed to international standards and will be incentivized to the states with federal "stimulus" dollars.

"By the term "education standards" DOE means content standards; meaning curriculum-the content schools must teach. By "national education standards" DOE means that schools in all 50 states will teach the same content. This will create a de facto federal curriculum. The Department of Education will financially reward those states that teach what DOE wants taught. The Department can be expected to insist that the values taught in the national curriculum conform to the very liberal ideology of the Obama administration.

"According to the announcement, this federal curriculum will consist of "internationally benchmarked" standards. The only extant comprehensive "internationally benchmarked" education standards are those developed by UNESCO, the UN's education arm The UNESCO website clarifies that its education standards conform to the treaties and agreements of the UN. This means that its curriculum includes, for example, the requirements of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which says, "Education shall . . . further the activities of the United Nations" (Art. 26:2).

"The UNESCO standards also include the UN's Earth Charter which further defines internationally benchmarked standards. The Charter says these standards must entail what it calls "sustainability education" (Art 14:b). The Charter explains that "sustainability education" entails the "promotion of the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations" (Art. 10:a), nuclear disarmament (Art. 16:d), gay marriage (Art. 12:a), legalized abortion (Art. 7:e), adoption of an "international legally binding instrument on environment" (The way Forward), and indoctrination in pantheism (Art. 14d and Art. 16:f).

"The National Governor's Association is enabling the Obama administration's plans by calling for "voluntary national education standards." Goals 2000 of 1994 was "voluntary," too, but most legislators were unaware of the fine print in the companion bill, HR6, which required that states would lose all their federal education funding if they failed to comply. That is why all 50 states joined Goals 2000. The Obama administration has made it clear that it views "voluntary national standards" the same way."