Homeschooling: By The Numbers infographic

Homeschooling: By The Numbers is a good infographic from the DegreeSearch.org blog.  Simple statistics with a very clean design, but varied use of data visualization styles (bars, scales, pies).

Homeschooled students generally achieve higher SAT scores in reading, math and writing; as well as, ranking in the 80th percentile for math, science, social studies, language and reading. This may be due to the higher level of education of fathers and mothers that stay home to teach their children. Most have some college, an associates degree, or a bachelors degree.

Found on the Daily Viz from Visual Loop

Comments

[Yoav]

I've ever seen a better visualization of the phrase "There are lies, there are damn lies and there's statistics"

[Julien]

That infograph looks interesting, but I find some representations weird.

I won't really talk about the pie chart for the education level of parents, with which I have to jump from 1 pie to the other to figure out if the ranking is different ...

No, what bugs me most is the number of children per homeschooled families. 3 children and 4-6 children homes have about the same value (26 vs 25.9%), but since they are represented by the number of children one would first think the there are more homeschooled large families than smaller families ...

[Sarah]

In addition to the possible (i'd say likely) influence of parental education on homeschooled students' success, we should also consider the socioeconomic class privilege that enables one parent to stay home instead of earning a second income. Mitchell Stevens' Kingdom of Children goes into the various demographic differences among homeschooling families and those who sent their children to private, parochial, and public schools.

Bottom line: this infographic is interesting but ultimately fails to control sufficiently for some very relevant variables.

[Johnny]

There should be a measure of social skills applied to the various schooling environments. I find its often the case that home schooled children grow up to be ill-prepared for social situations as compared to their more traditionally schooled counterparts. Book smarts are not the gold standard.

[Lisa]

Johnny, how many homeschoolers do you personally know to state that you "often" find the children Ill prepared socially?

"So, what about socialization?" is the oldest question in the book.
Perhaps these kids will have less emotional scarring than their schooled counterparts, but how can you measure that?

And Sarah, I think many families that choose to homeschool believe in having one parent stay at home, regardless of income. They find a way to make it work. Where honeschooling is less of a privledge and more of a practice.
I will def look at Stevens' writing!

[Johnny]

I know surprisingly many actually. A few in high school, who until then, were home schooled, numerous in the Marines, and a bunch since (who were slightly less socially awkward thanks to some college). Not to mention my sister's two oldest before she realized the mistake and moved them to public school. Most of these people were very socially awkward and often did not realize it. It's certainly possible that non-school social interaction that isn't supervised can provide the same opportunity for self education. I just don't find it to be common.