Misleading Report Circulated
at State Capital
from Howard
Richman
A research paper entitled Quality Control of Home Schooling in
Pennsylvania by Dr. Steven A. Melnick of Penn State, Harrisburg, was recently
passed out to many legislators in Harrisburg. It was based upon results of
surveys of home schoolers, school administrators, and Departments of Education
in other states. Unfortunately, Melnick
misunderstood the home education law and over-generalized his findings. This paper could leave legislators with many
misimpressions about home education in Pennsylvania.
Inaccurate
Portrayal of Home Ed. Law
Melnick began with a portrayal of Pennsylvania’s home education law
which was so inaccurate as to cast doubt upon his credibility. This portrayal began:
Unfortunately
Act 169 was not written specifically as a “home schooling act,” but rather
amended the compulsory attendance law, thereby providing the opportunity to
educate children at home. Consequently,
the language of the Act is vague and open to interpretation....
However, if he
would have looked up the laws that specifically address private home education
in other states, he would have found them all in the compulsory
education sections of the school code.
This is so because it is only compulsory education which gives the state
any say over private education.
He then stated, wrongly, that
parents test their own children under the provisions of Act 169. Specifically he wrote, “All home schooled
students must take a nationally norm-referenced standardized test in grades 3,
5 and 8 — these tests can be administered by the parent..” Actually the home
education law is quite specific that the tests can not be administered
by the parent.
Perhaps his biggest misunderstanding was in regard to home education
evaluations. Throughout his paper he
ignored the fact that the quality of home education is already evaluated in
Pennsylvania by those teachers, former teachers, and psychologists who are
privately hired and paid for by parents to interview their children, evaluate
their portfolios, and specify that appropriate education is taking place. Melnick instead appears to think that the
school districts pay for and conduct these evaluations. For example, in his introduction he wrote,
“Each home school supervisor is required to maintain a portfolio of student
work documenting the student’s progress— this portfolio must be evaluated by a
qualified evaluator at district expense.”
Judging from this inaccurate summary of Pennsylvania’s home education
law, one would give Melnick a “D” or an “F” in reading!
Melnick’s
Parent Survey
The 228 parents that he surveyed were parents who participated in fall
testing with Pennsylvania Homeschoolers testing service. As a result of taking
the time to learn about home schoolers by conducting this survey, Melnick
became impressed with home schooling parents’ level of education and the
stability of the home schooling family.
Specifically, he found that home schoolers come from stable two parent
families with relatively high parent-education levels and concluded that these
factors might contribute to home schoolers’ higher levels of academic
achievement.
Melnick also found that parents reported spending an average of $422
per child (the median level that home schoolers report nationally is $450
according to research conducted by Brian Ray) compared to $4,000 to $9,000 per
child in Pennsylvania public schools, and then concluded, “Home schooled
children do not receive the same level of support as their public school
counterparts.” However, if he had read
our 1990 and 1992 studies (that were published in the Home School
Researcher) of test results with the same population (those tested in the
fall by the Pennsylvania Homeschoolers testing service), he would have learned
that these students have, over the years, consistently had a mean achievement
corresponding to the 86th percentile in total reading and the 73rd percentile
in total math. Thus, if he had put
these results in context, his conclusion might have been quite different: Instead of worrying that home schoolers were
being limited by lack of resources, he might have speculated upon how home
schoolers could get so much more education than public schools out of each
dollar.
Melnick also found a variation in the amount of money that parents
report spending per child on home education and concluded that this indicated
“a disparity in available resources among home school students.” However, this variation should not be
surprising! Every beginning statistics
course discusses normal distributions and how they tend to arise as the result
of the normal variation of things. Also, if he would have read our 1990 Home
School Researcher study of test results with the same population, or Brian
Ray’s 1999 study of the national home schooling population, he would have
learned that home schoolers’ family income is not significantly correlated with
academic achievement.
Melnick also asked parents whether they would like to get more services
and more monitoring of their programs by school districts. While 89% thought that home schooled
children should be allowed to participate in school district extra-curricular
activities, only 30% thought that the school district should bear more of the
costs of home schooling, and only 1% wanted more monitoring of their programs
by school districts.
Survey
of School District Administrators
Most of Melnick’s questionnaire to districts paralleled his
questionnaire to parents. He found that
only 27% of the administrators felt that home schooled students should be
allowed to participate in extra-curricular activities and that 64% of the
school administrators thought that home schoolers should monitor the progress
of their own children.
One of his questions asked school administrators “to estimate the real
cost to the district of administering and evaluating home schooling each year
(including salaries and fringe benefits).” [Again Melnick repeated his
misunderstanding that school districts perform home school evaluations.] He
found that school administrators estimate spending an average of about $6,200
per year to do the home schooling paperwork.
Melnick did not suggest ways that the school districts’ paperwork could
be reduced, but I will suggest two of the most obvious. Procedures could easily be streamlined for
each of the two tasks that involve school administrators:
1.
The
beginning-of-the-year home education notarized affidavit could be streamlined
to include fewer attachments. Then the
administrators could simply place it in a file without having to take the time
to go back and forth with parents if attachments have not all been included.
2.
The
end-of-the-year reporting requirement could be simplified so that home
schoolers no longer turn in the entire portfolio for review, which must later
be returned to the parents, but simply turn in a copy of the evaluation letter
(which certifies that an appropriate education is taking place) and required
test results. Then superintendents
could simply place the evaluation letter and test results in a file.
Melnick’s most controversial conclusion came when he asked the school
administrators to give their estimates of the quality of the work submitted by
home schooled students in their portfolios. His Table 11 displays these
administrators impressions of the quality of the work that they see. It was top heavy with good grades: 50% of
the students achieving “A” level work, 29% “B” level, 28% “C” level, 14% “D” level, and 9% “F” level. It is noteworthy that these figures add up
to 130% instead of 100%. Although
Melnick had clearly directed the administrators in capital letters in his
survey, “(PERCENTS SHOULD SUM TO 100%),” the administrators presented Melnick
with data that didn’t add up. Perhaps
the strongest implication of this data is that school administrators deserve a
“D” or “F” in math!
Undeterred by the clear inaccuracy of his result, Melnick drew the
conclusion from it that, “The district may need to monitor student progress
more frequently and, if necessary, revoke the right to home school.”
He never explained why he thought a normal variation in grades is only
acceptable in public schools, not in home education. Obviously, not every homeschooled student is “above
average.” Many parents have chosen home
education in order to meet the needs, through individualized instruction, of
their LD or ADHD children. Perhaps
Melnick believed that only those from Garrison Keillor’s mythical Lake Wobegon
(“where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children
are above average”) should be permitted to home school!
Nor did he speculate about how many of these supposed “D” or “F”
students were failing in school before their parents, in desperation, brought
them home. (There are many high school
students with records of failures and discipline problems whose parents are
bringing them home in a last-ditch attempt to salvage their educations.)
Nor did Melnick express any doubt that the administrators’ actually
have knowledge of these students’ achievement, perhaps because he was still
under the misimpression that the school districts, not private evaluators,
conduct the in-depth evaluations of home education portfolios.
Nor did Melnick consider that the home schooling community could help
these “D” or “F” students. Perhaps
school administrators could let new home schoolers know about conferences and curriculum
fairs that take place at locations throughout Pennsylvania including annual
conferences that take place in Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Erie, and
Stroudsburg. Information about these
events is available on the Internet.
Perhaps it could be collected by the Pennsylvania Department of
Education and passed along to Pennsylvania’s 501 school districts, or perhaps
home school support groups could be more proactive letting districts know about
these home school “in service” options.
According to interviews that Melnick conducted with a few school
administrators from the Harrisburg area, the home schooled parents who are
giving their children an “inadequate education” are those parents who
“reactively pull their child out of the public school because of behavior
problems or as a result of a particular incident.” It is indeed likely that such parents would not have taken the
time to learn about home education before they began.
It is possible, however, that school administrators were not completely
objective in their criticisms of these parents. I may have talked with such parents on the phone. Typical examples are “DL” who told me that
she decided to home school because her son was being beaten up in school and
the principal wouldn’t do anything about it and “SG” who told me her son was
being publicly humiliated by a teacher and that the principal indeed recognized
the problem but would not take any action to stop it. Perhaps if Dr. Melnick had taken the time to interview some of
these “inadequate” parents, he might have found another side of the story that
pointed to the existence of “inadequate” school administrators.
Melnick’s
Conclusions
Most of Melnick’s conclusions are thoughtful and reasonable. For example:
·
“Pennsylvania,
through Act 169, provides more structure and control of home schooling than do
most states....” [This was his main conclusion from his survey of other
states.]
·
“There
is an obvious disparity in how home schoolers and districts perceive their
communication with each other. On one
hand, 17 percent of home schoolers agree the district welcomes communication
from them; 65 percent of the school districts believe that they welcome
communication....”
·
“There
is little disagreement between groups that parents should monitor the progress
of their own children....”
·
“It
is clear from district reports that most home schooled students do “A” or “B”
work (78 percent). Parental monitoring
does seem to be appropriate and effective....”
·
“District
policies vary widely regarding participation of home schoolers in
extracurricular activities and academic courses....”
Melnick’s
Implications
The final section of Melnick’s paper advanced possible policy
implications. He suggested that discussion
begin toward the possibility of a trade, with home schoolers getting direct
financial assistance in return for increased monitoring. Specifically:
Although
home school parents value their independence, many want the district to bear
more of the cost. It seems inconsistent
to be independent yet receive direct assistance without any
accountability. Clearly much discussion
needs to occur between state policy makers, district administrators, and home
schoolers before the educational needs of all children in the state are met.
Indeed, at least three states have already established public home
education options (Washington, California, and Alaska) that stand side-by-side
with private home education as an alternative for home schoolers. Those home schoolers who want state funding
and monitoring of their programs go with the public home education option while
those who value their independence go with the private home education option.
Alternative
Implications
Although Melnick did not state the following implications for private
home education, they follow from his data:
1.
Neither
school administrators nor home schoolers want to trade school district money
for home school freedom. Specifically,
only 30% of home schoolers and only 1% of school administrators think that the
school district should bear more of the costs of home education. At the same time, 90% of home schoolers and
64% of school administrators think that home schoolers should monitor the
progress of their own children.
2.
Affidavits
and end-of-the-year reporting procedures should be simplified in order to
reduce the administrative costs to the school districts.
3.
In
order to help new home schoolers get a firm start, communication between home
school organizations and school districts should be improved. Perhaps the Pennsylvania Department of
Education could take on the role of passing along information about upcoming
home school conferences and curriculum fairs to the 501 school districts via
the new PA Dept of Education web site (http://www.pde.psu.edu/homeed/homeed.html). Then school administrators could routinely
refer new home schoolers to this already-helpful web site. s
For your own copy of Quality Control of Homeschooling in Pennsylvania, write to Dr. Steven Melnick, School of Behavioral Sciences, Penn State Harrisburg, 777 West Harrisburg Pike, Middletown PA 17057