Research does not show that school affects long-term outcomes
Parents make all the difference. We should stop wasting funding trying to prove this is not true.
Read this post on my blog here.
The measurement for whether school is successful is -- drumroll -- if the kid does well in school. Think about it: You have never read research that says what kids do in school causes a person to have a good adult life. Neither the school nor the teacher has long-term impact on outcomes. So we make up stories about why school is important. Based on no data. To make ourselves feel better.
Here's an example of the circular logic that guides education research:
Children and adolescents spend a considerable amount of their time in school, and the school environment is therefore of importance for child outcomes. Research within the framework of “effective schools” has established that factors in the school environment play a part in pupil achievement.
Translated into normal English: "Kids are in school for a lot of their life so it must have some sort of impact on the child. Research shows that school environments correlate to school achievement." Notice that these two sentences are unrelated. Because no one is showing that school achievement has an impact on the child's long-term outcome.
We have long-term studies showing it does not have an impact (Harvard's 75-year study, twin studies).
We ignore those studies because it's inconvenient.
We have accepted this situation for decades. The pandemic laid bare why we accept that school has no long-term proven benefits: the short-term benefits to companies. The only way companies can pay low wages is to have children in school all day so parents don't have to pay for child care. School is universal, government-subsidized child care.
If parents stayed home the care and education would be better, because it would be customized for each child instead of the factory-style system we have now. We almost did that experiment during lockdown. And moms didn't want to leave their kids to go back to work. So they didn't.
The jobs are terrible and the school option is becoming visibly terrible as well. Also, parents are finding that as long as they don't have to be insanely stressed by balancing work and kids, taking care of kids is manageable including homeschooling them.
It turns out that school and low wages go together. School makes parents feel like they are not suitable teachers. And low wages make parents feel like they are not worth enough in society to be calm, stay-at-home parents. But if you give that same parent permission to be home with their kid and in charge of that kid's education, the parent will finally feel calm and in control.
When I started homeschooling I'd post pictures of my kids doing workbooks. Or reading. Now I post pictures of the kids basking in attention, because I know things in childhood that make a long-term difference have everything to do with relationships and nothing to do with school.
So how can society support parents in their quest for calm families rather than juggling impossible roles. We need to remind ourselves over and over again, collectively, that we never had evidence that school accomplished anything beyond keeping kids safe while their parents were at work. We can raise the bar on ourselves now. We can accomplish so much more if we put families back together again.
John Taylor Gatto's book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling makes similar observations about public education. Gatto argues that the goal of compulsory education is to provide a compliant and complacent workforce. If a parent feels ill equipped to home school the curriculum can be supplemented with apprenticeships, community college coursework etc.
My son spent a year at a Sudbury school which is a model for interest driven education. Students chose what they want to learn. The misperception is that students left to their own devices while lie around on the couch watching TV or playing computer games. I observed a five year old student reading CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia. Students built a computer from spare parts. They learned to use a sewing machine and create a budget. My son took an auto mechanics course at the local community college and built a potato launcher from PC pipe and an ignition system. His home school advisor had a lot of fun taking him out to the high school football field and using it 🥔 😂
I was bored out of my mind in high school. The only relief was participating in the track & field and cross country programs. I'm still running at age 66. I cobbled together a fine art program and went back to college in my 40's on a reentry scholarship. A lot of my coursework was independent study projects inc. a portraiture project in Afghanistan. I've currently been doing international running races & photography in countries adversely affected by conflict, such as, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus & Cuba.
So much opportunity for a rich & robust curriculum, as a result of, home schooling.
Why would you assume that all parents would be good (enough) teachers? And that all parents would want to put in that effort? It sounds very idealistic to me, not realistic. For so many kids school is a safe haven compared to home, and the place where they get a meal.
I for one am glad beyond belief that I wasn't home schooled.