The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education, produces the world’s premier database of journal and non-journal education literature. The ERIC online system provides the public with a centralized ERIC Web site for searching the ERIC bibliographic database of more than 1.1 million citations going back to 1966. More than 107,000 full-text non-journal documents (issued 1993-2004), previously available through fee-based services only, are now available for free.

Although a credit or deduction could be helpful for homeschoolers, HSLDA opposes any tax break legislation that could come with governmental regulations. Homeschoolers have fought far too long and much too hard to throw off the chains of government regulation that hinder effective education and interfere with liberty. It would be inconsistent and foolhardy to accept tax incentives in exchange for government regulation. However, HSLDA supports tax credits that promote educational choice without threatening any regulation of homeschoolers. - See more at: http://nche.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200504150.asp#sthash.tvLv2ItR.dpuf

Homeschooling was growing rapidly in the 1980s in the United States, after starting from a very small base.

This Canadian study has confirmed what has been known for over two decades, much to the chagrin of public school officials: Homeschoolers perform better than public school students in the crucial core academic disciplines of reading and math. The study, published in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, compared the standardized test scores of 37 homeschooled students between the ages of five and 10 to those of 37 public school counterparts, finding that while public school students typically tested at or slightly above their grade level, homeschooled kids performed about a half grade higher in math and 2.2 grades higher in reading.

Home Schooling Achievement provides a concise look at home school achievement test score data, followed by a more in depth comparison of student's scores with parent education levels, money spent on home school curriculum, government regulation, and race, and gender. In all categories, home school students' successes defy the standard predictors. The final chart examines activities and community involvement and resoundingly explodes the myth that home schooled children lack adequate socialization opportunities.

Parents opting for homeschooling express three primary concerns about public schools: the perceived lack of academic rigor, the presence of maladjusted graduates, and an anti-religious atmosphere. Homeschool advocates assert that homeschooling effectively addresses these issues, contending that, regardless of one's educational philosophy, homeschooled students tend to excel. Proponents also argue that private schools share similarities with public schools, albeit to a lesser extent, thus facing similar criticisms. The arguments for homeschooling can be evaluated through personal case histories and scholarly analysis, with this paper focusing on the numerous studies conducted on various aspects of homeschooling.

20,760 student achievement test scores and their family demographics make this one of the largest study of home education. Results demonstrate that home schooled students are doing exceptionally well and provide an informative portrait of America’s modern home education movement. Conducted by Dr. Lawrence M. Rudner, Director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation.

This is an appendix table to the report Homeschoolers: Estimating Numbers and Growth, Spring 1999. It provides an estimate of homeschooled children in 12 states and extrapolates that data out to a national percentage.

Assessment is authentic when we directly examine student performance on worthy intellectual tasks. Traditional assessment, by contract, relies on indirect or proxy 'items'--efficient, simplistic substitutes from which we think valid inferences can be made about the student's performance at those valued challenges.

Both the number and the proportion of students in the United States who were being homeschooled increased between 1999 and 2003. Approximately 1.1 million students (1,096,000) were being homeschooled in the United States in the spring of 2003, an increase from the estimated 850,000 students who were being homeschooled in the spring of 1999. In addition, the percentage of the entire student population who were being homeschooled increased from 1.7 percent in 1999 to 2.2 percent in 2003.

This technical paper provides an estimate of the number of children in homeschooling.

In this paper, Rob Reich, Department of Political Science, Stanford University, traces the rise of home education, the interests in education held by the government, the parent, and the child, and sets forth his suggestions for balancing these interests. These suggestions lead Reich to conclude that "while the state should not ban homeschooling it must nevertheless regulate its practice with vigilance." This paper caught the attention of many in the homeschooling community and spawned many rebuttals, including:

The Boundaries of Parental Authority: A Response to Rob Reich of Stanford University by Thomas W. Washburne, J.D.
Thomas W. Washburne, J.D. discusses how Reich's ideas for home education have a dangerous implication on the freedoms of homeschooling parents.

Let's Stop Aiding and Abetting Academicians' Folly by Larry and Susan Kaseman
Larry and Susan Kaseman discuss the weaknesses in Reich's study and include strategies to counteract negatively biased research on homeschooling.

Use this interactive model to examine how changes in the number of children currently being homeschooled, the percentage change of children being homeschooled, and the number of school-aged children effect the growth of homeschooling.

This article by American Psychological Association Monitor staff writer Bridget Murray, details how psychologists look at families that have chosen to school their children at home. It is a good example of the negative stereotypes and biases towards homeschoolers that can be found in mainstream society. This is a negative critical look at homeschooling, with a bias on looking at what is considered by the educational and medical establishment as the sheltered nature of homeschooling, perceived lack of exposure to diversity, and lack of participation in greater society. This attitude clearly contradicts the experiences, research, and results that the homeschooling community has seen for decades.

Explore some of the history of the homeschooling movement, why some parents choose to homeschool, the basics of homeschooling, and more. The article includes some homeschooling statistics and demographic information. Also included is a discussion of the influences of Dr. Raymond Moore and John Holt on the emerging homeschool movement.

Reviews a carefully done study that uses a matched-pair design. This research shows that students in structured homeschooling academically outperform conventional-school students, and there is no evidence that the difference is simply due to the family’s income or the mother’s educational attainment.

This article features a summary of the NHERI study about home-school academic achievement.

This is a survey sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, with a stated goal of being used by educators and by federal and state policy makers to address important issues facing the nation's schools: educational standards, high school course-taking patterns, dropping out of school, the education of the disadvantaged, the needs of language minority students, and the features of effective schools. We are including this link as an item of interest, to demonstrate what directions institutional survey writers are taking in their approach to homeschooling. In our opinion, it is a completely inadequate attempt to measure homeschooling demographics or success, focusing heavily on cultural notions of "socialization" and structured educational models. It is also invasive in terms of the amount of personal information required.

This report presents the results of the largest survey and testing program for students in home schools in 1998.

This research presents a demographic portrait of the homeschooling community and families in South Carolina through a 22 question survey administered during the 2010-2011 school year to 751 homeschooling families. It is the first study of its kind conducted in the state since 1992, as well as the largest survey sample to date of South Carolina homeschoolers. The data include 1,584 homeschool students, approximately 10% of all South Carolina homeschoolers, with members of the South Carolina Association of Independent Home Schools (SCAIHS) as well as numerous third-option associations throughout the state responding to the survey. Homeschooling families responding to the survey are overwhelmingly intact, two-parent families (97.4%) and are double the size of the typical South Carolina family, averaging 5.04 members with 3.09 children, with the mother as homemaker (69.8%) often acting as principle educator in the home. A majority of responding families (61.3%) report an annual household income in excess of $60,000, substantially higher than the median household income of $44,695 for South Carolina in 2008. The vast majority of respondents were religious (98.6%), white (95%), and Republican (75.4%), all to a greater degree than their national counterparts. Most responding families opposed future enrollment in a public (72.6%) or private (61.6%) school, though many do express an a la carte interest in particular programs offered by local public schools, including athletics, band, choir and orchestra. Responding parents were highly educated, successfully completing high school (98%), a bachelor's degree (39.5%), a master's degree (18.0%), or a doctoral degree (4.6%), with rates of academic achievement comparable to homeschooling parents nationwide. Motivations for homeschooling varied but were typically based upon positive perspectives of the benefits of homeschooling, rather than negative perceptions of public or private schools. This is comparable with homeschooling families nationwide, whose reasons for homeschooling, while diverse, are often framed positively.

Homeschooling is a time-honored and widespread practice. It often presents, however, a conflict between the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children and the State’s right to impose regulations in the interest of ensuring an educated citizenry. The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that any regulation impacting this constitutional right must be “reasonable.” Courts have therefore generally resolved homeschooling cases by examining whether State regulation of homeschooling places an unreasonable burden on the rights of parents. The courts, however, have altogether failed to address another, more fundamental question: whether the State regulation, in fact, advances the State interest. A regulation that fails this criterion cannot be “reasonable.” Using a recent California appellate court case that initially upheld a regulation prohibiting parents from homeschooling their children unless they first obtained a state teaching credential, we show how recent social science research should impact the analysis. Instead of assuming away the issue of whether the regulation advances the State interest, we show that empirical research will allow courts to be able to answer this threshold question.1