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Comment by khzw8yyy | Hacker News Reader

You interacted with a homeschooled student who made it to college. Huge difference compared to the average homeschooled student.

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Can we please not get into the homeschool flame war here again? Every time it comes up it turns into a pointless war of anecdotes, because the data on outcomes simply isn't strong enough for it to be anything else (trust me, I've tried).

Sorry, I jumped in because I hadn't seen it before. I agree it's difficult to generalize at this point, I just chafe at the suggestion that homeschooled kids do better overall since I've heard it my whole life and my experience was so different.

We really need to get better data that's disaggregated based on reason for homeschooling. A lot of academically inclined parents are afraid about the risks of homeschooling when they're not really the population that needs to be targeted by messaging about the risks of homeschooling.

All good—this difference is why it always turns into a war of anecdotes.

Homeschool outcomes are as diverse as parents are—in public schools we at least try to standardize, but not so for homeschool. And since emotions surrounding our parents are some of the strongest that we have, everyone who's been homeschooled has strong opinions of some sort about how it turned out.

I'd be happy for the conversation to happen if there were data, but the big problem is that for every study that leans one way there's another that goes the opposite, because the outcomes are so incredibly diverse and the numbers involved are so small.

I said in another comment before I read yours: homeschooling, having more outcomes at the extremes, lead to many people to have observational biases (and strong opinions) in both directions.

I think the only conclusion I've been able to draw from anecdotes about homeschooling (having experienced it myself) is that outcomes are more varied than traditional education, whether there's a bias in that variance is not something anyone can speak to (as of yet).

A very smart student has the opportunity to get much farther ahead whereas a poorly crafted education plan and/or an unmotivated student has the potential for negative outcomes.

I has to disagree about the "education plan". I did not plan very much, and my kids have done very well academically. The advantage is you can try stuff and do what works.

It is also more motivating.

It is possible to mess it up, but schools mess up too. On the whole kids seem to usually do better than comparable kids at school (at least in the UK) and there are studies that back that up.

The data is biased by many things that need to be corrected for. For example (at least in the UK) a lot of kids with SEN or mental health problems are home educated because in many areas schools do not have adequate provision. On the other hand if you have a home that encourages academic achievement (i.e. the sort background that leads kids to do better in school) they will probably do a lot better than at school

Maybe 'educational plan' is a misnomer. How about 'strategy and tactics'. Both knowing what the child should eventually learn and adapting so that they learn it.

I disagree with your comment. When I read the GP I thought "oh that's cool", without thinking. Then parent's reply brought the reality of the situation back to me (that it's more complicated).

I didn't intend to get the parent's comment downvoted to hell—two anecdotes is fine for illustrating the complexity, but these threads usually devolve from there into enormous flame wars nested tens of comments deep. I was just trying to preempt that after one round of anecdotes.

It's OK :) This place became a cesspool quite a while ago. I switched to using throwaways so I'm unphased by karma.

Then you're contributing to the decline. Most of the negative, off-putting or outright insane comments I read come from <6mo old accounts. It's easy to troll when you can just make a new account and continue, without factoring in the long term reputation at all.

contrary O....during WI defense hired people that came up with the first IQ test for soldiers...that data shows home schooled people at less IQ than those who went through public schools at the time...actual real data...

And for every study that shows that there's another on the other side. Homeschool outcomes are incredibly diverse by nature and the numbers involved are so small that it's hard to have a study with any reasonable amount of power.

Public education outcomes are pretty diverse as well, although there are good and bad schools (and home life status plays a lot in the results, which I assume is also true with homeschooling).

True, but each individual school is big enough to have actual data associated with it. Conclusions about the system as a whole might not work, but you can make a reasonable guess about whether you want to send your kids to a specific school.

Individual schools but we already know different schools vary greatly. As a form of selection bias, I bought my home in an area with schools where most kids go to college. The house was more expensive, so also needed to be richer, and it’s a two parent home, my neighbors are the same. It is t necessarily the school that’s good, it’s just selection bias all the way down.

The same IQ test that we now call the SATs?

You mean the SATs that you can study for and doesn't attempt to measure base level intelligence?

The thread started with a public school flaming. Why only step in when someone takes the other side? I agree these flame wars are silly, but this thread was lost from the start.

I already explained my reasoning for where I put the comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39069617

I was completely unschooled prior to college and while I did fine in school I was generally very poorly adjusted. I actually don't know a single homeschooled person who came of age nearly as prepared for the world as anyone I know who went to primary school.

Can you expand on how you felt unprepared? My experience doesn't mirror yours.

My observatiom has been that a lot of unschooling families have parents who do it because of their own neuroses and are otherwise ill equipped as parents. Conspiracy theories and fringe religions are common. Emotional manipulation and abuse is common. Isolation and poor social skill development is common. Important childhood experiences are restricted. Often these parents don't want their children to succeed and leave the nest.

I'm glad you had a good experience, and I am sure there are a lot of people who do when their relatively well adjusted parents commit to homeschooling their children. I just suspect most homeschooling experiences aren't like yours. I've met several families from very different backgrounds with a similar outcome to mine.

Prior generations had more of that, but the more recent trends have lots of support groups for home schoolers, where you get more socialization and support from other families.

Parents are increasingly opting for home schooling to get away from bad or ineffective schools, rather than for purely religious or psychological syndromes.

It is also a lot easier than it used to be. The internet hugely improves access to materials. There is a vibrant online community to discuss and get help.

Speaking from first-hand experience, the positive and negative experiences aren't mutually exclusive.

I might be a college-educated autodidact who made an entire career out of self-taught tech skills but that was despite a parent trying to raise me as a young earth creationist and despite all kinds of still un- and underdiagnosed trauma and disorders. Didn't get my ADHD diagnosis until my late thirties and still haven't been diagnosed as autistic, among other things, all of which likely would have been glaringly obvious to public school staff.

Do you have any studies or sources to show outcomes of homeschooled children? I've since met many outside of college, they all seem far better off than the average high schooler I knew as a kid.

Is the average high schooler you knew as a kid representative of the types of people you now meet in your circles? Each stage of our lives is its own sort of selection bias.

Presumably there is a similar difference between the average non-homeschooled student and the population that made it to college.

as there is between the average high school student and those who make it to college?

Probably a bimodal distribution here in terms of homeschool education.

Though the entire set is probably more useful and practical.

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