I know that it can be intimidating for folks to go through the Hschooler registration process without really knowing what they’re signing up for. So, I’ve started working on a “tour” that folks can take to get a sense for what the service provides. I need to figure out the best way to do it, for now, it’s just a series of screen shots. I plan to keep adding to it, so I’m not yet prominently featuring the tour - it’s just a text link at the bottom of the home page (before you log in to Hschooler.net).

Let me know what you think!

The Homeschool Legal Defense Association has commissioned an extensive study of the performance of homeschooled students on standardized tests, as compared to the performance of all students from all types of schooling who took the same tests.

“Drawing from 15 independent testing services, the Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics included 11,739 homeschooled students from all 50 states who took three well-known tests—California Achievement Test, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and Stanford Achievement Test for the 2007–08 academic year.”

Consistent with previous studies, the homeschooled students scored well above average:

• Reading 89 (50 is average for all students)
• Language 84 (50 is average)
• Math 84 (50 is average)
• Science 86 (50 is average)
• Social Studies 84 (50 is average)
• Composite 86 (50 is average)

“In short, the results found in the new study are consistent with 25 years of research, which show that as a group homeschoolers consistently perform above average academically. The Progress Report also shows that, even as the numbers and diversity of homeschoolers have grown tremendously over the past 10 years, homeschoolers have actually increased the already sizeable gap in academic achievement between themselves and their public school counterparts-moving from about 30 percentile points higher in the Rudner study (1998) to 37 percentile points higher in the Progress Report (2009).”

The study also provides interesting breakdowns in the performance of homeschooled students broken down by gender, family income, parental education, level of state regulation, etc. “[T]he achievement gaps that are well-documented in public school between boys and girls, parents with lower incomes, and parents with lower levels of education are not found among homeschoolers. While it is not possible to draw a definitive conclusion, it does appear from all the existing research that homeschooling equalizes every student upwards. Homeschoolers are actually achieving every day what the public schools claim are their goals—to narrow achievement gaps and to educate each child to a high level… at a fraction of the cost—the average spent by participants in the Progress Report was about $500 per child per year as opposed to the public school average of nearly $10,000 per child per year…”

The “Activities” widget and tool are now much more interactive.

When you look in the Activities list, you’ll see the image for the person who took the action (updated their profile, said “what’s up”, posted one of their favorite Bible verses, wrote a book review, etc.).

You’ll also see a button to “comment.” Clicking this button will display a field where you can type in your comment and “submit” it.

If there are any comments on an item, they will be listed. If there are more than 3 comments, only the first one and the most recent two will be listed, although you can push a button to display all the comments.

And when a new comment is submitted, a notification is sent to the person who posted the original item and anyone who has commented on that item.

There’s still a bit of flakiness - such as some items not having meaningful names and for some reason some items not being “commentable.” I’ll keep an eye on these issues and keep trying to improve how it all works.

But, I think this is a key step in making Hschooler much more of an engaging and interactive service.

Please let me know if you have any issues or concerns with this new functionality (or anything on the site…).