What a Difference a Bubble Makes
Every Fall the Belin-Blank Center receives over 3,000 registrations from elementary school students to
take the EXPLORE test.
It takes a massive effort by our staff to get all of the information processed in a timely and acurate
fashion. Thankfully, we are assisted in this process by technology in the form of an optical scanner which
converts the dots on paper to the equivalent series of bits and bytes in our server's database.
Last autumn my interest was piqued by the addition of a single bubble to the school information section of
the form. The bubble simply asked whether the child was homeschooled. I become curious about how many of
our talent search participants are homeschooled and I was really curious about how they would score compared
with everyone else.
The Belin-Blank Center is housed within the College of Education at The University of Iowa and therefore I
get to see first hand how much time, effort, and research is put into developing curriculum and training
teachers. So I wondered why a parent would choose to take a child out of the school system and teach them at
home. I hypothesized that because homeschooled students probably aren't exposed to the curriculum presented
in traditional schools, they would not perform as well on the EXPLORE test as the other BESTS participants.
For 1998 we had 20 homeschooled students sit for the EXPLORE test. In percentage terms, 20 out of 3,000 works
out to 0.7%, which is comparable to the reported national average of 1%. Seventeen of the 20 were from Iowa
with the others coming from Florida and Texas. There were 13 boys and 7 girls representing 17 different
families.
Overall the average homeschooled student in our sample outperformed the average traditionally schooled BESTS
participant in every subtest. The average 6th grade homeschooler (8 of them) significantly outperformed the
average BESTS student in all 5 categories (English, Math, Reading, Science Reasoning, and Composite). The
5th grade homeschoolers (7 of them) scored better on average in every subtest except Math. The 3rd and 4th
grade homeschoolers (5 total) performed at about the same level as the average BESTS student except in
science where the homeschoolers did significantly better.
With such a small sample it's difficult to make any significant conclusions, but the data from these 20
students is nonetheless suggestive. The results from this data set don't support my hypothesis that
homeschooled students do worse on a stardardized test when compared to students from more traditional
schools. According to this group of homeschooled students, they perform as well, if not a little better,
than the average BESTS participant.
We'd like to do more with this information here at the Belin-Blank Center and are asking for your input. If
you took the EXPLORE test between 1993-1997 and were homeschooled at the time, please send me a note at the
B-BC explaining who you are, how long you've been homeschooled, and what year you took the test.
By Brian Sponcil