Why would anyone Homeschool?

FYI: This is my last preachy/opinionated post of the summer :)

Homeschooling your kids is hard. A mom needs to be "converted" to the idea for it to last.  But the good news is, statistically speaking, homeschool in general is undeniably a great choice.  I found the study to prove it.

Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. shared his study of adults who were home schooled in his book "Home Educated and Now Adults."

He interviewed 5,254 people who were home schooled for 7 or more years, ranging in age from 16-69 with 74% of them being age 18-24.
He got his data for the general U.S. population statistics from the National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey, filtering it by ages 16-29.

These were the results (click on table to enlarge):

More statistics for adults who were homeschooled:

96% Agree with the religious beliefs of their parents.
95% Were glad that they were homeschooled.
92% Say homeschooling was an advantage to them as an adult.
88% Say homeschooling did not limit educational opportunities.
94% Say homeschooling did not limit career choices.
82% Would/are homeschooling own children.
3.2% Smoke cigarettes at all.
3.3% Had 5 or more alcoholic drinks in a row.
0.1% Ever convicted of a felony.
0.8% On welfare.
Homeschoolers score 15 to 30 percentile points above the national public school norm on standardized academic achievement test scores.

The odds seem to be in favour of homeschooled children!

However, I have one complaint about the study.  I think it's unfair to compare home educated children with the general public.  Home educated children, more often then not, come from two parent families where one parent is a stay-at-home parent.  These parents obviously care about their kids enough to try an unconventional education by sacrificing time and giving effort.  They come from larger families (around 4 children,) and the vast majority of these homes are religious.

That is not the case with the general public.  I have no idea how you would do a fair study, so I will appreciate this one as is.

Homeschooling is becoming more and more prevalent, in the past decade the number of homeschoolers has doubled from one million to two million in the U.S.  I look forward to this type of study being done again now that there is more diversity out there.

In the mean time, study or no study, I feel homeschooling is right for our family, and it's nice to see that others are succeeding at homeschooling as well.