Homeschoolers' success

A colleague lent me a book, Brining up Boys, by Dr. James Dobson.(2001, Tyndale House Publishers) I have been reading it off and on for a while. I can't really recommend it, though if you are Christian and would like to have like minded advice for raising children it isn't awful.

There was one interesting statistic in it about homeschooling. It was a quote from Bill Bennett, the former Secretary of Education under Reagan and drug czar under the first Bush.

The kids in public schools score, appropriately enough, at the fiftieth percentile on tests of academic competence. In other words, their combined score is "average." Homeschoolers, however, are at the eighty-seventh percentile--for about one-sixth the cost. The homeschool kids are getting into the colleges that their parents want them to attend and the program produces a high degree of parental and child satisfaction. (p. 192)

I did some homeschooling with my children here in Japan through American schools, and I will continue to balance the best of both formal and homeschooling. In discussions with my eldest son, he claims that he would have preferred to have done more home schooling. The more I read, the more I like the idea.