The Hoover Institution misses a point

Today's Chronicle op-ed page prints (for a change!) a view from the Hoover Institution extolling homeschooling, citing the recent National Spelling Bee winner, a homeschooled 13-year-old from Danville with an amazing command of detailed knowledge in many areas.

(An aside — regular Chronicle readers complain that the op-ed page seems to specialize in espousing the views of the Hoover Institution and would run its grocery list. There should be a disclaimer every time that Hoover is not a research institution, as it vaguely makes itself out to be, but an advocacy organization espousing its own views — which is fine as long as it's up front.) From the article:

The number of students who are homeschooled is a matter of some dispute; but it is clear that their numbers are increasing and that the performance of homeschooled children is outstanding.

Because Hoover is not doing the kind of scholarly research that would require it to consider all factors, it can ignore issues like reverse causation. So, what about taking into account the reasons families may choose homeschooling? For example, anecdotally I understand that quite a few homeschooled children have differences such as Asperger's syndrome — a high-functioning form of autism that may cause difficulties functioning socially in a classroom environment but is often linked with extremely high academic performance and "savant" characteristics. We don't know how many homeschooled kids that's true of, but it's an example of factors that influence decisions to homeschool, which confound the notion that homeschooling is working miracles.

In other words, if I chose to homeschool my kids, they would not be likely to turn into one of these miracle-memory supergeniuses. Hoover and other public-education opponents like Caroline Hoxby are glomming onto homeschooling as part of their crusade to crush public schools, but it's not always that simple.

— Caroline