1. Families consider all educational alternatives and select the one with the highest value for their child
2. Better home life increases the quality of home schooling ("better" here and below could be, but does not have to be, a judgment on whether parents themselves are good people. I'd assume the most important elements of having a "better home life" have to do with available resources and the capacity to support and teach your kid, not variance in whether someone is a "good parent" or a "nice person").
3. Better communities increase the quality of public schooling
4. Quality of home life and quality of communities are highly correlated
5. There's an opportunity cost associated with home schooling (this is of course taken into account in #1)
It seems to me that these are all pretty defensible, and the conclusion I'm coming up with is that the people who will benefit from home schooling (and therefore select into it, according to #1) are those people who have a high, positive differential between the quality of their home life and the quality of their communities. The distribution of the impact of homeschooling over the underlying distribution of community quality therefore depends on the joint distribution of home life and community quality. Equalizing expenditures on public education across diverse communities should reduce the benefit of home schooling in previously low quality communities and increase the benefit in previously high quality communities.
It doesn't get at the impact, but an interesting first step in looking at this would be to look at whether policy changes around public school financing lead to this change in selection into home schooling.
"people who will benefit from home schooling (and therefore select into it, according to #1)"
ReplyDeleteI really don't this is getting at it (at least if you mean "highest value for their child" as educational quality). The homeschooling movement is largely ideologically motivated, not really a cost-benefit analysis.
The dominant strain is Christian homeschooling, led by Dorothy and Raymond Moore in the 70s. The other is the counterculture-left strain led by John Holt.
Holt started an influential magazine called "Growing Without Schooling" in the late 70s that gave advice (esp. legal advice) on how to homeschool (which was not legal everywhere at the time). He incorporated his experience and insights into the book "Teach Your Own." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growing_Without_Schooling
Basically, homeschoolers today still fall into one of these two groups. The choice is based more on one's ideas about religion or educational freedom rather than the quality of the local schools. Neither of these groups would be more likely to put their kids back into public schools even if local public school spending rose.
So the way economists would think about value is anything that a person places subjective value on - including the value of religious or moral instruction. Not just educational quality (although that's obviously an important value here too).
DeleteI think your last paragraph is wrong to separate it from school quality. That is cited repeatedly and the alleged benefits of home school approaches (letting kids guide the educational process, etc.) is largely focused on educational quality.
That is a margin these families consider, so local school quality is going to matter.
Yes, I'm familiar with subjective value. Clearly, if parents choose homeschooling, they place high subjective value on that method of education in its totality. I thought you were focusing purely on educational quality, since it seems rather redundant to say they choose homeschooling b/c they subjectively value it higher than other options. They wouldn't choose it otherwise, right?
Delete"[the educational benefit] is cited repeatedly and the alleged benefits of home school approaches (letting kids guide the educational process, etc.) is largely focused on educational quality."
Yes, but let me put it this way: say I feel that children learn best by guiding their own learning. Even if my local public school gets 25% more funding but still follows a standard curriculum (with grades, classes, periods, set schedule), why would I send my kids there?
Anyway, isn't it ultimately a matter of parental preference? I guess I'm just curious about the goal of your research.
Quick question: you said before you support school vouchers. Do you support tax credits for homeschooling families (or vouchers, perhaps reduced, to pay for supplies, book, field trips, etc)?
It is a very basic proposition, but still a proposition :)
Deletere: "Yes, but let me put it this way: say I feel that children learn best by guiding their own learning. Even if my local public school gets 25% more funding but still follows a standard curriculum (with grades, classes, periods, set schedule), why would I send my kids there?"
Because people make "children learn best" decisions on the margin. I'm willing to concede some of the pedagogical points to the homeschoolers. But that doesn't mean I'm near the margin where I'd actually homeschool my kids. I'm almost certainly not going to.
re: "Anyway, isn't it ultimately a matter of parental preference? I guess I'm just curious about the goal of your research."
Well there's no research to speak of - this is just out of a facebook conversation and it struck me as something interesting to research. The research goal of what I've laid out here would simply be to look into the homeschooling decision-making process. A bigger goal would be to estimate the returns to homeschooling (which would focus more narrowly on labor market returns - but may incorporate values/morals that might help you succeed in the labor market).
re: "Quick question: you said before you support school vouchers. Do you support tax credits for homeschooling families (or vouchers, perhaps reduced, to pay for supplies, book, field trips, etc)?"
Just off the top of my head that seems worthwhile. I don't know what church-state issues there might be if that turns into tax credits to purchase religious material. That's outside of my bailiwick and anyway doesn't impact that central question. I think the key with vouchers and credits like this is that it probably makes sense to defray the cost of alternatives. I'm not sure I'd be as comfortable with allowing people to opt out of the public provision of education.
"3. Better communities increase the quality of public schooling"
ReplyDeleteAgain, this doesn't necessarily follow if your educational philosophy is "unschooling" (a variant of homeschooling, i.e. complete learner autonomy). I could live in a very "good" community but still be wholly opposed to the standard public school model.
(Just to let you know: I'm spilling so much ink on this b/c I've followed this issue for a decade now. I've read all of Holt's books, Illich's Deschooling Society, and some books on the Sudbury Valley School. So I know the ideological roots of "New Left" homeschooling pretty well, I think).
Arnold Kling just put up a related post you may find interesting: http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/deschooling-society-2/
What if expenditures don't improve the quality of schooling? Kansas City famously embarked on an experiment following a "consent decree" to raise taxes and schooling expenditures, to little avail. Freakonomics noted that good schools are the result of good students (or those whose parents have desirable characteristics) rather than funding.
ReplyDeleteI think there has to be a a middle ground between financing determining educational quality and finances not entering the educational production function at all.
DeleteCertainly funding isn't the only factor. That's why I was vague about "community quality". I just can't think of an obvious test case of the propositions and conclusions besides the funding equalization.
Maybe busing or some kind of new teacher policy. I dunno.
If this chart is accurate, there doesn't seem to be any relationship at all btw spending and educational quality (measured by test scores, which aren't quite the same thing):
Deletehttp://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uploads//Andrew-Coulson-Cato-Cost-of-a-K-12-Education.jpg
Take a look at a comparable cross-section and I think you'll agree with me that the story is a little more complicated than what Cato wants you to think.
DeleteDon't mistake me for proposing that education is something that we can just throw money at.
If you have any links to other studies, I'd be interested to take a look.
DeleteHowever, any study that focuses on test scores alone isn't really measuring total learning, since so much of what we know can't be assessed through math/reading/science tests. I know this sounds hippie-ish, but it's quite obviously true.
Some related David Friedman posts (he unschooled all of his kids):
Unschooling theory: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.kr/2006/02/case-for-unschooling.html
Getting kids to do boring stuff: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.kr/2006/02/unschooling-advantage-of-real-world.html
Modern conception of childhood: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.kr/2010/07/breaking-walled-garden-of-childhood.html
It doesn't sound hippie-ish. That's precisely why I didn't cite test scores specifically in the post.
DeleteOr put it this way - if it's hippie-ish it's a credit to the hippies.
Delete"...the people who will benefit from home schooling (and therefore select into it, according to #1) are those people who have a high, positive differential between the quality of their home life and the quality of their communities."
ReplyDeleteI don't think this will hold as a general rule. We currently live in one of the nicest areas in the country (by pretty much any measure you can imagine except, possibly diversity) - the seacoast region of New Hampshire. The local public schools are consistently rated among some of the best in the country and have some of the highest spending per pupil as well. This is a fantastic place to raise a family - yet, we are giving serious consideration to home schooling (and absolutely NOT for religious reasons).
Yes, the schools here do very, very well when compared to other schools but that is misleading. My wife is a college professor (and I've spent the last two years in an evening, part-time MBA program and took a couple of graduate electives with 'regular' day-time students) and what we've seen is pretty frightening. The kids aren't dumb but they are phenomenally lazy. On the whole, they simply will not read, everything must be spoon fed, they cannot write, and, most concerning, they cannot think - they cannot get from A to C unless someone gives them B. Worse, our sample size is skewed to include only the better students! I can't even imagine how bad it must be on the average. My feeling is this is a product of No Child Left Behind and the years of focus on standardized tests.
Unless one has a tremendous income or existing wealth, private schools are out of the question. I work about a mile from Phillips Exeter Academy and the quality of education there is excellent - if you've got +$30,000 per year to spend on it.
Our concern is that our kids, especially when they are young, are going to face 7+ hours per day in school, then the at-times ridiculous amount of 'busy work' homework, and *then* have to deal with us trying to actually give them all they are missing - and this isn't taking extracurricular activities into consideration. That's not fair to the kids. Education (not standardized test-taking) is extremely important but they also need time to be kids - to play, to wander about, to not have an adult hovering over them all the time.
So correct me if I'm wrong - but there's a positive differential between what you think you can offer at home and what can be offered at school, right?
DeleteThat's why you're selecting homeschooling (maybe).
Now what you quoted did indeed say "community", but now "school", and I concluded it based on a statistical relationship between home quality and community quality and community quality and school. So in the sense that it's a probabilistic relation it's not a "general rule" if by "general rule" you mean "deterministic rule". It's not deterministic.
But you are definitely considering homeschooling because of the differential benefit it offers.
Steven,
DeleteIf you were allowed an annual tax credit of say, $5,000 per child for your homeschooling expenses, how influential would that be on your decision to possibly homeschool?
Homeschooling now spreading to the elites. If this is like Freakonomics baby names, expect a tidal wave of homeschooling in the next decades:
ReplyDeletehttp://childrensmd.org/uncategorized/why-doctors-and-lawyers-homeschool-their-children-18-reasons-why-we-have-joined-americas-fastest-growing-educational-trend/#.UViHUeclG3M.gmail