Homeschooling: What do we know and what do we need to learn?

narrative review

US home-schooled children; academic and socioemotional outcomes

Review in Child Development Perspectives. Notable for its authorship — mainstream developmental psychologists writing jointly with the head of NHERI — and for landing on a cautious verdict despite that.

"Preliminary evidence suggests that homeschoolers perform equal to or better than their conventionally schooled peers on measures of achievement and socioemotional functioning, but methodological limitations, especially selection effects, make it premature to draw definitive conclusions." The review also documents the heterogeneity of the population (religious, secular, special-needs, gifted-acceleration) and of parental practice, and argues that pooled estimates across those groups are not interpretable.

High; the review names selection as the binding limitation without attempting to bound it.

Reaches the same bottom line as the independent Kunzman & Gaither surveys despite very different authorship, which is the closest thing this literature has to a cross-checked conclusion.