I am of the firm opinion that there is no substitute for a formal education.
Homeschooling is great if one or both parents are teachers or come from a teaching background. Homeschooling is a disaster if neither parent has much of a formal education, or lack teaching acumen, but still feel that they are qualified to teach their kids. Between those two extremes is a huge range of variability.
Exams are going to become even more of a factor to ensure kids coming from a range of diverse backgrounds meet the minimum bar for university.
At the end of the day, facts are facts. Not knowing them is detrimental to self, and if in a position of authority, to others as well. People can pretend all education is equivalent, until they need to see a doctor for a disease, or an engineer to build a house or a lawyer to fight their case. Then they want the best, the most qualified. Four years of engineering/medical/law cannot fix 12 years of poor educational foundations.
Edit: Downvotes are welcome, but it won't change what is factual. Homeschooling is guaranteed to increase inequality, not decrease it.
A 2016 study by the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) indicates homeschoolers scored between 15 and 30 percentage points higher on standardized academic achievement tests and usually scored higher on the SAT/ACT.
No, that's not a fact. It's an observation that shows how people with training and resources can do a better job than the public school system. But as more affluent kids move out of the school system, funding will decrease, leaving the kids belonging to poor or uneducated parents stranded, until they too are forced to homeschool.
It's funny how people will gut the foundation of public education over decades, then turn around and point saying "Look, it's shaky." Of course it's shaky. It's chronically underfunded, teachers have no say over student behaviour and no control over the curriculum.
If you look at more detailed studies you will see that many of them correct for parental education and income etc. and home educated kids still do better on average. This is true across multiple countries - I know of studies in the US, the UK, and Australia.
Last time I looked home educated kids didn't do better on average when you corrected for parents. They even did worse than average in STEM fields, but of course since they were on average equal they did better on average on non-STEM subjects. This makes sense since it is mostly moms that home school and women are often weak at STEM themselves.
Your first link dares back to 1995 and a lot has changed since.
The data from Alaska is based on "students are enrolled in the state’s popular correspondence programs". If that implies state control of materials and syllabus it is more like school than real home education.
I think you are right in so far as there is a particular sizeable group (affluent hippie women in my experience in the UK) of home educators tend to encourage humanities and creative arts.
In general, the internet has been of huge help to home educators: online classes, better access to resources, online advice and community (only useful thing I have ever found on Facebook are HE groups!) so I would expect that to have had a major impact.
> Homeschooling is guaranteed to increase inequality, not decrease it.
Your statistics support the previous claim. If you have a group out performing the public school by 15 to 30% there will be more spread in educational outcomes. Many would see that as a good thing when some kids get closer to reaching their potential, but not everyone wants that.
Homeschooling is great if one or both parents are teachers or come from a teaching background. Homeschooling is a disaster if neither parent has much of a formal education, or lack teaching acumen, but still feel that they are qualified to teach their kids. Between those two extremes is a huge range of variability.
Exams are going to become even more of a factor to ensure kids coming from a range of diverse backgrounds meet the minimum bar for university.
At the end of the day, facts are facts. Not knowing them is detrimental to self, and if in a position of authority, to others as well. People can pretend all education is equivalent, until they need to see a doctor for a disease, or an engineer to build a house or a lawyer to fight their case. Then they want the best, the most qualified. Four years of engineering/medical/law cannot fix 12 years of poor educational foundations.
Edit: Downvotes are welcome, but it won't change what is factual. Homeschooling is guaranteed to increase inequality, not decrease it.