2024 HSLDA Magazine, Issue 1
Part 1 of 7: Homeschool Freedom is a Team Sport
Part 2 of 7: HSLDA Protects Texas Family’sFourth Amendment Rights
Part 3 of 7: Invest in Freedom: Attend Your State’s Capitol Day
Part 4 of 7: Homeschoolers May Need Less Instructional Time than Traditional School Students
Part 5 of 7: Building Worlds with Freedom
Part 6 of 7: Our Son Was Born in the US. Can We Homeschool Him in France?
Part 7 of 7: Homeschooling Helps Family Adjust to New Normal
Article
Steven Duvall, PhD
Director of Research
Summary
A recent study by HSLDA’s Director of Research, Steven Duvall, PhD, found that the efficiency of the homeschool environment can allow for more learning in less time.
His findings suggest that 3rd and 4th grade homeschool students can spend as little as 2–3 hours daily in academic pursuits and make the same progress as public-school students do in a full school day. Of course, every child is different, and some states have minimum hour requirements for homeschoolers.
Many parents find homeschooling appealing because it gives them flexibility when designing their children’s learning experiences.[1] This often results in shortened school days, but these abbreviated days can conflict with state laws that require full-length school days, as well as the goals of well-meaning officials who want to ensure that students make enough progress. However, the instructional differences between traditional classrooms and homeschools show that homeschools can accomplish standard progress in smaller amounts of time. For example, in a well-known study by Stanley and Greenwood,[2] researchers directly observed 100 randomly selected 4th grade students in four schools in Kansas City over the course of the entire school day. They tracked how long individual students were engaged in strategic learning behaviors, which include actively reading, writing, or talking about the subject matter[3] (for more information relating to these behaviors, see Duvall, Fox, & Meeks, 2022; or Wallace, Reschly-Anderson, Bartholomay, & Huff, 2002). Out of a 400-minute day, the public schools in the study set aside 250 minutes for academic instruction, during which the students manifested the important learning behaviors for only 67.5 minutes, or about 16 minutes per hour. Undoubtedly, this represented a very inefficient use of classroom time. In contrast, two studies comparing the effectiveness of homeschool and public-school instruction across a variety of grades and demographics found that the same learning behaviors occurred between 2 and 2.5 times as often in homeschools as they did in public-school classrooms.[4] Because the homeschool students demonstrated significantly more learning behavior during instruction, it was unsurprising that they made more academic gains than the public-school students. A more recent study of 3rd and 4th graders by Duvall affirmed these findings.[5] Notably, the Duvall study, which compared students who had been homeschooled for a long time with first-time homeschoolers, found only small differences in the levels of important learning behaviors that occurred between the two groups, indicating that a lack of homeschooling experience had little effect on the parent’s ability to create an effective instructional environment.[6] Though the Duvall study was not specifically designed to make homeschool versus public school comparisons, Duvall employed the same methods Stanley and Greenwood[7] used to measure students’ learning behaviors, and substantiated the finding that homeschool students can be more frequently engaged in strategic learning behaviors than public-school students. More importantly, because increasing students’ engagement in these learning behaviors almost always results in more academic gains, we can infer that homeschool students can learn as much or even more than their public school counterparts in far less time. Research conducted to date makes it apparent that the level of student learning behaviors that occur in homeschools and traditional classrooms is very different. These studies have consistently found high levels of these strategic learning behaviors in every homeschool observed. The findings in the Duvall studies[8] suggest that, in as little as 2 hours, homeschoolers can engage in the same amount of strategic learning behavior as public-school students experience in an entire school day. Considering that a significant majority of homeschooling families extend their school day well beyond 2 instructional hours,[9] it helps explain why many homeschool students score well above average on year-end achievement tests.[10] It also stresses why lawmakers should examine data when considering legislation and avoid enacting unnecessary regulations on homeschooling families regarding hours of instruction. Considering the explosive growth of homeschooling since 2020, it is reasonable to expect that many officials will want assurances that homeschool students have the necessary opportunities to learn and may suggest requirements for minimum daily instructional hours. However, this sort of regulation is unnecessary and misguided because it fails to account for key differences between homeschool and public-school learning environments. Because homeschool students are academically engaged at much higher levels during instruction than traditional students, policy makers need to remember that homeschool students can make equal or greater progress in less time. Thus, it makes little sense to insist that homeschool students experience the same number of instructional hours as public-school students. [1]Hanover Research, “Homeschooling Market Survey Analysis,” EdChoice, June 8, 2021.https://www.edchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/EdChoice-Homeschooling-Market-Survey-2021-NEW.pdf. [2]Charles R. Greenwood and Sandra O. Stanley, “How Much ‘Opportunity to Respond’ Does the Minority Disadvantaged Student Receive in School?” Exceptional Children 49, no. 4 (1983): 370-373. https://doi.org/10.1177/001440298304900414. [3]Steven F. Duvall, Ashley M. Fox, and Courtney G. Meeks, “Interobserver Reliability of Remote Observations,” American Journal of Distance Education 36, no. 4 (2022): 302-317. https://doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2022.2121108; Teri Wallace, Amy Reschly-Anderson, Tom Bartholomay, and Susan Hupp, “An Ecobehavioral Examination of High School Classrooms that Include Students with Disabilities,” Exceptional Children 68, no. 3 (2002): 345-359. https://doi.org/10.1177/001440290206800304. [4]Steven F. Duvall, Lawrence D. Ward, Joseph C. Delquadri, and Charles R. Greenwood, “An Exploratory Study of Home School Instructional Environments and their Effects on the Basic Skills of Students with Learning Disabilities,” Education and Treatment of Children 20, no. 2 (1997): 150-172. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42899486.; Steven, F. Duvall, Joseph C. Delguadri, and Lawrence D. Ward, “A Preliminary Investigation of the Effectiveness of Homeschool Instructional Environments for Students with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder,” School Psychology Review 33, no. 1 (2004): 140-158. https://doi.org/10.1080/02796015.2004.12086238. [5]Steven F Duvall, “Unpublished Raw Data,” 2023. [6]Ibid. [7] Duvall, “Raw Data”; Greenwood “Opportunity” 370-373. [8]Duvall, “Ecobehavoiral Examinations,” 345-359; Duvall, “Exploratory Study,” 150-172; Duval, “Raw Data.” [9] Jesse Thomas, “Learning from Homeschooling Routines,” Journal of Research on Christian Education 25, no. 3 (2016): 233-250, DOI: 10.1080/10656219.2016.1237910. [10]Brian Ray, “Academic Achievement and Demographic Traits of Homeschool Students: A Nationwide Study”Academic Leadership: The Online Journal8, no. 1 (2010):7; Lawrence M. Rudner, “The Scholastic Achievement of Home School Students,” ERIC/AE Digest, (1999) https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED435709.pdf.Endnotes
2024 HSLDA Magazine, Issue 1
- Homeschool Freedom is a Team Sport
- HSLDA Protects Texas Family’sFourth Amendment Rights
- Invest in Freedom: Attend Your State’s Capitol Day
- Homeschoolers May Need Less Instructional Time than Traditional School Students
- Building Worlds with Freedom
- Our Son Was Born in the US. Can We Homeschool Him in France?
- Homeschooling Helps Family Adjust to New Normal
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Steven Duvall, PhD
Director of Research
Dr. Steven Duvall brings extensive experience in both the public school and higher education arenas to his role at HSLDA. He is currently licensed or certified as a school psychologist inthree states and has his PhD in developmental and child psychology.
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