Although home schooling is a relatively new phenomenon, 45% of Americans have close friends or family members who home school their children. Among those who have children, 51% have home schooled friends of family members. [sic]
Among all adults, just 27% say the nation would be better off if more parents home schooled their children. Half (50%) say the nation would be worse off, while 23% are not sure.
However, among those who know someone who is home schooled, the response is much more favorable. Thirty-seven percent (37%) say the nation would be better off while 42% say the opposite.
Fifty percent (50%) of Republicans have home schooling friends or family members. That number falls to 36% among Democrats. Fifty-three percent (53%) of those unaffiliated with either party know home schoolers.
Public Schools Best or Worst?
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Monday, February 28, 2011
survey results for homeschooling
from the Rasmussen poll:
How interesting! Not surprising though is it? People fear what they don't know. As they become familiar with something new, they begin to realize that the sky isn't going to fall down if other people abandon government provided schooling.
ReplyDelete"As they become familiar with something new, they begin to realize that the sky isn't going to fall down if other people abandon government provided schooling."
ReplyDeleteI don't think the fear is that the kids aren't in government provided schools. If so, then there would be equivalent concern over kids going to private schools (which there might be, but I doubt it).
The issue here is that homeschooling is very *DIFFERENT* from institutional schooling, whether offered by the government or by private sources.
It is easy to imagine lots of new ways for homeschooling to fail ... and if you don't know people doing it then you don't have any counterweight to your fears. Once you know people doing it (and, hopefully see that their kids seem to be doing okay), the concern drops. Which is what this data seems to suggest.
-Mark Roulo
P.S. How do you feel about freezing bodies and heads of "dead" people, hoping that we can thaw/repair them sometime in the future. Would the nation be better off or worse off or are you not sure? :-)
lolllll!
ReplyDeletewell, I probably would have frozen my parents if it was something 8% of the population was already doing - !
Not 8%... are homeschoolers up to 2% now?
ReplyDeleteSo let's say I would have frozen my folks if 2% of the country was already doing it AND I know a whole lot of people who knew people who did it....
"Not 8%... are homeschoolers up to 2% now?"
ReplyDelete2.9% as of 2007 according to the folks at the Department of Education, up from 1.7% in 1999.
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91
I'd guess that we are at close to 3.4% now ...
-Mark Roulo
Many non-homeschoolers stereotype homeschoolers based on the families they knew growing up without realizing that it's much more mainstream today than back 15-20 years ago. It's not just for hippies and fundamentalists these days. Most of the HS families in our support group aren't any crunchier or more religious than the families we know with kids in private, charter, or traditional public schools.
ReplyDeleteI think once people start encountering mainstream parents who happen to homeschool, they tend to look more favorably upon it as an option.