Another study on the academic performance of home educators in America is about to be released, and preliminary results indicate that. . . Homeschoolers today are doing EVEN BETTER than they were in the 1990s when the Rudner Study was released. For the last twelve years we have relied on the E.R.I.C. Clearinghouse (Rudner) Study that put homeschoolers 30-35 percentile points ahead of the national average (of 50%) on the standardized tests. With the massive growth seen in home schooling since then, there was some doubt in the ranks that we would sustain the excellence we saw in the 1990s. But the new study confirms even higher percentile averages. Before you get too excited though, I do need to point out that American educational standards are still falling fast! A federal study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics finds that literacy among college graduates in America has dropped 10% from 52% in 1992.
Yet, is academic excellence what we are pursuing in the paideia (nurture and instruction) of our children or is it something else? A study performed by UCLA found that the highest value of college kids is to get a good job and make boatloads of money. What are our highest values? Should we seek academic excellence in order that our children might “get into a good college,” so that they will make their $52,000 a year on graduation? What values are passing on to our children? These were the questions I asked 60 parents at our high school seminar last Saturday. Then, I read Matthew 6:33, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” If we seek what God wants first, He’ll take care of the grades and the college education, and the 52K per year, or whatever junk they’ll need in life. So what does God want us to focus on? In all our academic studies, we want to focus on things like “the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom,” humility, faith, and character. We want to make sure that our young men become the men of God that He envisions in passages like 1 Tim. 5:8, Eph. 5:23,25,28, Eph. 6:4, Neh. 4:14, 2 Samuel 24, and 1 Tim. 2:8.
This is what God wants! And He so highly values our precious daughters who become beautiful cornerstones configured in passages like 1 Pet. 3:4, 1 Tim. 2:9-15, Titus 2:3-5, and Gen. 2:20. These things are important to God. I don’t really know why. But if He thinks they are important, let’s focus on these things first - and I guarantee that He’ll make sure of our academic and economic success. Then, we’ll begin to see national studies where home schooling parents sans teaching certificates are yielding a home school population that scores 35-40 percentile points above the national average.
