By Warner Todd Huston ——Bio and Archives--May 21, 2008
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Home school students did quite well in 1998 on the ACT college entrance examination. They had an average ACT composite score of 22.8 which is .38 standard deviations above the national ACT average of 21.0 (ACT,1998).This places the average home school student in the 65th percentile of all ACT test takers.(See full report HERE) Ken Marrero also points out some more interesting results in the 1998 data.
"What was the ACT composite score for Tennessee students for 1998? In the year home schoolers averaged 22.8 and the national average was 21.0, Tennessee’s students scored just 19.8, a full 3 points below home schoolers. This put Tennessee ahead of only North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and Washington DC. The composite home school score places them FIRST among the 51 jurisdictions represented in the study."That study aside, there are also data concerning the ACT test score results for the home-schooled students of Tennessee. The data covers the 2005 school season (page 17). This report shows home-schooled Tennessee students realizing a 20.7 average against the government schooled kids' 20.5 effort. It is also interesting that the 2005 stats are the only such data available. It seems the ACT organization stopped delineating the differences between the home-schooled and the government indoctrinated students. One has to wonder if ACT has realized that governments all across the country are gearing up to destroy home-schools and religious schools and they didn't want to help the home-schoolers out by showing the too obvious excellence that home-schoolers achieve compared to their less educated government indoctrinated contemporaries. So, after seeing these interesting statistics, one has to wonder why the State of Tennessee would rather accept the least educated kids of the State to become policemen, firemen and daycare workers? Does Tennessee really want to promote the more stupid above its best and brightest? Apparently it does. But, is the State of Tennessee much different than the rest of the nation excluding their being some of the first to make such an overt attack against home-schools? Not really. After all, to sanction home-schooling means the powermongers and indoctrinators in the State would have to give up some level of power to control the minds of our students. Our schools nation wide from top universities to the lowest grade level are becoming the laughing stock of the civilized world and instead of looking to give our kids the best advantage possible to compete with an ever growing world our governments are dumbing down our curricula, tossing out standards, hiring teachers unqualified for their positions -- and then being stuck with them forever due to overweening and anti-education unions -- and generally making our schools useless. So, good job Tennessee. Now that you’ve cut out the best and brightest of your own student population, from this point forward, the citizens of Tennessee are going to have to wonder about the competency and intelligence of every policeman and every daycare worker in the State. They will also be forced to realize that their wonderful state government in Nashville has set up a situation where the best and brightest of the Volunteer State will be leaving in droves for opportunity elsewhere. Not too smart, Tennessee. Not too smart at all.
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.
He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.