ICT and Home Schooling

From IAE-Pedia

Contents 1 Brief Summary 2 Introduction 3 History 4 Current 5 References 6 Author or Authors

This Page is a Work in Progress. People interested in this topic are strongly encouraged to add to the Page.

Readers interested in this Page will likely also be interested in the pages:

• Especially for Parents.
• Good Project-Based Learning Lesson Plans.
• Open Source (free) Textbooks.
• Open Content Libraries.
• Distance Learning.
• Video Games in Education.

Brief Summary

In the United States, the number of children being home schooled is growing, and is now approximately 2.9% of school age children. Computer technology is proving to be a quite useful aid to home schooling.

ICT can play a number of important roles in home schooling. Among them are:

• Access to library information. The Web is a huge and rapidly growing library.
• Access to distance education.
• Access to people. This is being provided by a combination of email and a variety of social networking systems.
• Access to computer-assisted learning materials and other curriculum material.

Introduction

A 6/20/09 Google search of the expression Homeschool OR "Home School" produced 12.5 million hits. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia:

Homeschooling or homeschool (also called home education or home learning) is the education of children at home, typically by parents but sometimes by tutors, rather than in a formal setting of public or private school. Although prior to the introduction of compulsory school attendance laws, most childhood education occurred within the family or community, homeschooling in the modern sense is an alternative in developed countries to formal education.

Homeschooling is a legal option in many places for parents to provide their children with a learning environment as an alternative to publicly-provided schools. Parents cite numerous reasons as motivations to home school, including better academic test results, poor public school environment, improved character/morality development, and objections to what is taught locally in public school. It is also an alternative for families living in isolated rural locations or living temporarily abroad.

Homeschooling may also refer to instruction in the home under the supervision of correspondence schools or umbrella schools. In some places, an approved curriculum is legally required if children are to be home-schooled.

History

Quoting from the Website http://www.edweek.org/rc/issues/home-schooling/:

Home schooling has often been dismissed as a fringe activity, its practitioners caricatured as head-in-the-sand reactionaries and off-the-grid hippies. The most vocal and organized home schoolers have tended to be religiously motivated, most often conservative Christians. But a newer breed of home schooler is emerging, motivated not by religious belief or countercultural philosophy. Uppermost for such parents are concerns about violence, peer pressure, and poor academic quality in their schools.

Back in 1980, home schooling was illegal in 30 states. It was not until 1993 that all 50 states made the practice lawful. But in recent years, the practice of home schooling has taken off. Consider these statistics—in 1999, the federal government estimated the number of students being home schooled to be around 850,000 (Bieleck et. al., 2001). By 2003, the number had jumped to somewhere between 1.7 and 2.1 million students, according to data from the National Home Education Research Institute. While reliable numbers are hard to come by since states define and track home school enrollment differently, some experts argue that home schooling is the fastest-growing form of education in the country (Ray, 1997, 2001).

Current

Quoting from a 5/28/09 article in USA Today article:

Parents who home-school children increasingly are white, wealthy and well-educated — and their numbers have nearly doubled in a decade, a new federal government report says.

…

As of spring 2007, an estimated 1.5 million, or 2.9% of all school-age children in the USA, were home-schooled, up from 1.7% in 1999.

The new figures come from the U.S. Department of Education, which found that 36% of parents said their most important reason for home schooling was to provide "religious or moral instruction"; 21% cited concerns about school environment. Only 17% cited "dissatisfaction with academic instruction."

Perhaps most significant: The ratio of home-schooled boys to girls has shifted significantly. In 1999, it was 49% boys, 51% girls. Now boys account for only 42%; 58% are girls.

References

NHES (December 2008). 1.5 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2007. National Center for Educational Statistics. Retrieved 6/20/09: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009030.pdf.

Quoting from this report:

Since 1999, the National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES), conducted by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in the Institute of Education Sciences, has collected nationally representative data that can be used to estimate the number of homeschooled students in the United States. This Issue Brief provides estimates of the number and percentage of homeschooled students in the United States in 2007 and compares these estimates to those from 1999 and 2003. In addition, parents’ reasons for homeschooling their children are presented. Estimates of homeschooling in 2007 are based on data from the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey (PFI) of the 2007 NHES.

Toppo, Greg (5/28/09). Profound shift in kind of families who are home schooling their children. USA Today. Retrieved 6/20/09: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-05-28-homeschooling_N.htm.

Author or Authors

The original version of this page was developed by David Moursund.