By Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.
National Home Education Research Institute
July 23, 2026
When podcasters Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan recently attacked home-educating parents and their children as stupid and selfish, they offered prejudice in place of evidence (see here). Their claims amount to an ad-hominem and bigoted assault on millions of families—atheist, Christian, Muslim, secular, every other background, and every ethnicity and color of skin. Some wondered if they would later reverse course but they did not.
Claims Without Basis versus Research Evidence
A new systematic review of only peer-reviewed, representative-sample studies (Ray, Hoelzle & Pietersma, 2026) reaches the opposite conclusion. Sixty-two percent of those studies find homeschooled students significantly outperforming others academically. Sixty-four percent find better social-emotional outcomes, such as lower depression, higher social competencies. Fifty-four percent find stronger adult outcomes—greater political tolerance, higher conscientiousness and agreeableness, lower neuroticism and divorce rates. In the large majority of the remaining studies the homeschooled perform at parity, not worse.
Are some homeschooled children and adults who were home educated doing poorly in one of the three areas noted above? Of course some are, as are some students in (or graduates of) public and private schools. The large majority of studies show, however, statistically significantly more positive outcomes associated with homeschooling than with non-homeschooling.
An Historical Perspective
Welch and Sullivan were implying that institutional schooling with government-certified and university-trained teachers and more state control would necessarily improve all children’s academic education and lives overall, and society’s good. But consider history.
After six generations of over 99% of Americans being taught, trained, and indoctrinated in institutional schools, 21% of adults are functionally illiterate, 15.4% are on psychotropic drugs, 20% of adults have an STD and over half will have one during their lifetime, 42% of U.S. adults are obese, and about 21% of 12th graders got high on pot or used alcohol during the past month. Meanwhile, adults watch TV or video 21 hours per week, only 15% read at least one book per month and 25% read none, 40% do not vote in national elections, 25% of U.S. children grow up without a father in the home, an estimated 5.7 million of today’s public-school children will be sexually maltreated by public-school employees, and 72% of public-school 8th graders are below proficient in math while 70% are below proficient in reading.
It would be scientifically and empirically difficult to conclude that 125 years of institutional schooling has caused the aforementioned problems and conditions. After six generations of near-universal institutional schooling, however, the outcomes listed above are what we have. The claim that still more institutional schooling and less parent-led education would improve matters for children and society is an empirical claim. The evidence runs the other way.
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The National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit think tank organization specializing in research, facts, statistics, scholarly articles, and information on home education. NHERI was founded in 1990 by Dr. Brian Ray and others and Ray/NHERI have published the academic journal Home School Researcher since 1985. Dr. Ray holds a Ph.D. in science education from Oregon State University.