Please Don't Make Bad Arguments (Homeschooling Is Good For Your Brain Edition)
We'll admit in advance that there's no good reason for us to be publishing this post. It's not a core area of interest to most of our readers, it's a random attack on a technical political ally over something that is insignificant. A bone that ought not be picked, because there's no important issue at stake. But we kind of have a distaste for home-schooling to begin with - education is communal and education has always been communal. Non-communal education is not education. It's fact memorization (a skill that is decreasingly important in a world of functionally unlimited digital storage, coupled with advanced search algorithms). And besides - it's 4:55 in the morning, we're taking a break from writing, and this email we just got is just an untrue argument. Townhall.com (among others, Hugh Hewitt's organization) puts out an update every morning where one of their radio guys gives a couple paragraph synopsis of some issue of concern. This morning was David Aikman's turn, and in a discussion of German efforts against homeschooling he wrote:
I happen to teach in a college in Virginia, Patrick Henry College, where most of the students have been homeschooled through high-school. Their SAT scores compare with Ivy League colleges. If the college were in Germany, however, all of their parents would be subject to arrest.
Not sure how to break this to everyone, but... no. All we've got are some back of the napkin calculations, but no. Statistically, demonstrably no.
The average SAT score at PHC for the 2004 freshman class was 1307. It's tough to get specific figures on what their current numbers are (because unlike many other schools, they're not listed on Princeton Review's site). But they seem to hover historically between 1260 and 1315. Now each portion of the SAT section is centered around 500 with a standard deviation of 100. As of 2005 there are three SAT sections, but we couldn't find post-2004 PHC scores in the three minutes we searched. But since college entrance boards basically ignore the new writing section (which ETS only added it so that annoying Education MAs would leave them alone), that doesn't really affect comparisons. And speaking of comparisons, even if we low-ball it, the average Ivy League SAT score looks like it hovers just about 1450. That would be more or less a full standard deviation for each section. Or, as the kids like to call it, "a lot".
Now Aikman might be saying that only PHC's homeschooled kids rival the average Ivy League student, and that the rest of the school is not up to snuff. That's actually what the grammatically correct reading of that sentence says - but we don't think that's what he means. Because if it was, then the inverse of what's happening with their 1600s holds: they're accepting some really dumb kids who are from high schools and are dragging everyone else way down. Why do they have to be really dumb? Because the majority of the kids at PHC are homeschooled (a fact you find all over their webpage). So you need to get a population where the average of the majority of the kids is Ivy-level but the average of all the kids is roughly one standard deviation below Ivy-level. In other words, they're accepting coma patients - not good for a school's reputation.
Anyway, again, this post is more just out of peevishness than anything else. But come on. A lot of things are defensible. But the idea that the average mom and dad can teach a broad array of subjects better than the average teacher is just silly. You know why? Because the average mom and dad were also taught by the average teacher - except the average teacher has at least been teaching the same thing for a couple decades. Maybe there are good reasons to home-school kids. Average SAT scores are obviously not among them.
I happen to teach in a college in Virginia, Patrick Henry College, where most of the students have been homeschooled through high-school. Their SAT scores compare with Ivy League colleges. If the college were in Germany, however, all of their parents would be subject to arrest.
Not sure how to break this to everyone, but... no. All we've got are some back of the napkin calculations, but no. Statistically, demonstrably no.
The average SAT score at PHC for the 2004 freshman class was 1307. It's tough to get specific figures on what their current numbers are (because unlike many other schools, they're not listed on Princeton Review's site). But they seem to hover historically between 1260 and 1315. Now each portion of the SAT section is centered around 500 with a standard deviation of 100. As of 2005 there are three SAT sections, but we couldn't find post-2004 PHC scores in the three minutes we searched. But since college entrance boards basically ignore the new writing section (which ETS only added it so that annoying Education MAs would leave them alone), that doesn't really affect comparisons. And speaking of comparisons, even if we low-ball it, the average Ivy League SAT score looks like it hovers just about 1450. That would be more or less a full standard deviation for each section. Or, as the kids like to call it, "a lot".
Now Aikman might be saying that only PHC's homeschooled kids rival the average Ivy League student, and that the rest of the school is not up to snuff. That's actually what the grammatically correct reading of that sentence says - but we don't think that's what he means. Because if it was, then the inverse of what's happening with their 1600s holds: they're accepting some really dumb kids who are from high schools and are dragging everyone else way down. Why do they have to be really dumb? Because the majority of the kids at PHC are homeschooled (a fact you find all over their webpage). So you need to get a population where the average of the majority of the kids is Ivy-level but the average of all the kids is roughly one standard deviation below Ivy-level. In other words, they're accepting coma patients - not good for a school's reputation.
Anyway, again, this post is more just out of peevishness than anything else. But come on. A lot of things are defensible. But the idea that the average mom and dad can teach a broad array of subjects better than the average teacher is just silly. You know why? Because the average mom and dad were also taught by the average teacher - except the average teacher has at least been teaching the same thing for a couple decades. Maybe there are good reasons to home-school kids. Average SAT scores are obviously not among them.
