For four decades, the number of conservative parents who homeschool
their children has risen. But unlike others who teach at home,
conservative homeschool families and organizations have amassed an
...army of living-room educators ready to defend their right to
instruct their children as they wish, free from government
intrusion. Through intensive but often hidden organizing,
homeschoolers have struck fear into state legislators, laying the
foundations for Republican electoral success. In Homeschooling
the Right , the political scientist Heath Brown provides a
novel analysis of the homeschooling movement and its central role
in conservative efforts to shrink the public sector. He traces the
aftereffects of the passage of state homeschool policies in the
1980s and the results of ongoing conservative education activism on
the broader political landscape, including the campaigns of George
W. Bush and the rise of the Tea Party. Brown finds that by opting
out of public education services in favor of at-home provision,
homeschoolers have furthered conservative goals of reducing the
size and influence of government. He applies the theory of policy
feedback-how public-policy choices determine subsequent politics-to
demonstrate the effects of educational activism for other
conservative goals such as gun rights, which are similarly framed
as matters of liberty and freedom. Drawing on decades of county
data, dozens of original interviews, and original archives of
formal and informal homeschool organizations, this book is a
groundbreaking investigation of the politics of the conservative
homeschooling movement.
Home-School Learning Resources is a practical guide that will help teachers, parents, home educators and librarians to locate useful, quality-tested websites that offer resources for enhanced ...curriculum learning and related fun activities for children and young people aged 4-16.
•An additional year of schooling was induced by a large-scale compulsory schooling reform.•An additional year of schooling has zero detectable impact on later-life labor market outcomes, including ...earnings.•The additional schooling occurred in the lower-track schools within Britain’s elite education system.•Lower-track schools were characterized by, among other things, large classes and a focus on practical education.
What is the causal effect of schooling on subsequent labor market outcomes? In this paper I contribute evidence on this question by re-examining a British compulsory schooling reform that yields large-scale and quasi-experimental variation in schooling. First, I note that this reform was introduced in 1947, when British students attended higher-track (for the “top” 20%) or lower-track (for the rest) secondary schools. The reform increased the minimum school leaving age from 14 to 15 and I show that the vast majority (over 95%) of affected students attended lower-track schools. Second, I show that the additional schooling induced by the reform had close to zero impact on a range of labor market outcomes. Third, I attribute these findings to the quality of these lower-track schools, which I argue was low along several dimensions.
The association between parents’ and children’s schooling determines how schooling and socioeconomic inequality evolve over time. In China, schooling has become more equal over time. Using Chinese ...survey data we find that the estimated effects of fathers’ and mothers’ schooling on their children’s schooling have fallen significantly over time, with large differences across cohorts and gender. Our estimates suggest that the decline in the marginal effect of parents’ schooling on child schooling has accounted for roughly one-half of the reduction in schooling inequality in China over the last half century.
•Schooling became significantly more equal in China over the past half century.•The association between parents’ and children’s schooling has weakened over time.•Fathers’ and mothers’ schooling are complements in affecting children’s schooling.
Fish in schooling formations navigate complex flow fields replete with mechanical energy in the vortex wakes of their companions. Their schooling behavior has been associated with evolutionary ...advantages including energy savings, yet the underlying physical mechanisms remain unknown. We show that fish can improve their sustained propulsive efficiency by placing themselves in appropriate locations in the wake of other swimmers and intercepting judiciously their shed vortices. This swimming strategy leads to collective energy savings and is revealed through a combination of high-fidelity flow simulations with a deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm. The RL algorithm relies on a policy defined by deep, recurrent neural nets, with long–short-term memory cells, that are essential for capturing the unsteadiness of the two-way interactions between the fish and the vortical flow field. Surprisingly, we find that swimming in-line with a leader is not associated with energetic benefits for the follower. Instead, “smart swimmer(s)” place themselves at off-center positions, with respect to the axis of the leader(s) and deform their body to synchronize with the momentum of the oncoming vortices, thus enhancing their swimming efficiency at no cost to the leader(s). The results confirm that fish may harvest energy deposited in vortices and support the conjecture that swimming in formation is energetically advantageous. Moreover, this study demonstrates that deep RL can produce navigation algorithms for complex unsteady and vortical flow fields, with promising implications for energy savings in autonomous robotic swarms.
Considerable evidence demonstrates the importance of the cognitive home environment in supporting children's language, cognition, and school readiness more broadly. This is particularly important for ...children from low-income backgrounds, as cognitive stimulation is a key area of resilience that mediates the impact of poverty on child development. Researchers and clinicians have therefore highlighted the need to quantify cognitive stimulation; however existing methodological approaches frequently utilize home visits and/or labor-intensive observations and coding. Here, we examined the reliability and validity of the StimQ.sub.2, a parent-report measure of the cognitive home environment that can be delivered efficiently and at low cost. StimQ.sub.2 improves upon earlier versions of the instrument by removing outdated items, assessing additional domains of cognitive stimulation and providing new scoring systems. Findings suggest that the StimQ.sub.2 is a reliable and valid measure of the cognitive home environment for children from infancy through the preschool period.
This paper challenges the idea that schools can sufficiently address LGBT+ inequalities and makes a case for schools to forge alliances with non-governmental actors who provide advocacy and support. ...It draws on in-depth interviews with educational staff and NGO queer and trans activists to explore their agendas in responding to cisheteronormativity in schools. The paper argues that teachers and NGO interactions are underpinned by an ambivalent logic whereby the advocacy and support work by NGOs in schools is viewed as “matter out of place” on the one hand and as work that ultimately matters on the other.
•Challenges the idea that schools can sufficiently address LGBTIQ+ inequalities.•Makes a case for schools to forge alliances with NGO actors who provide advocacy and support.•Reveals the tensions that NGOs experience in their interactions with schools.•Most teachers uncertain about teaching an LGBTIQ+ inclusive curriculum.•Argues for schools, where possible, to encourage NGOs to take on gender and sexuality diversity issues more assertively.
In this paper, we examine whether longer compulsory schooling has a causal effect on mental health, exploiting a 1972 reform which raised the minimum school leaving age from age 15 to 16 in Great ...Britain. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the reform did not improve mental health. We provide evidence that extending the duration of compulsory schooling impacts mental health through channels other than increased educational attainment. We argue that these effects may mitigate or offset the health returns to increased educational attainment.
•The 1972 Raising of the School Leaving Age in Great Britain did not improve mental health in the long-run.•Longer compulsory schooling may affect mental health through channels other than increased educational attainment.•Using changes in compulsory schooling laws to estimate the causal effect of education on health may prove problematic.
Internationally, there has been a dramatic evolution in the numbers of parents choosing to home-school their children for some, or all, of their schooling. Research to date has mainly focussed on the ...characteristics and motivations of parents who home-school. Little is known about the practice and implementation of home-schooling, especially for learners with disability or additional learning needs. Where research exists, it is generally qualitative, location specific, and small in scale. To address this gap, this paper investigates research regarding previously identified reactive and proactive motivations, legal requirements, and implementation processes within home-schooling family demographics. These are then utilised to develop the Parents' Perceptions of Home-Schooling scale (PPHS), which seeks to clarify both motivations as well as implementation and practical issues associated with choosing to home-school. Discussion focuses on the design of the PPHS scale and an initial study with 21 home-schooling parents. Being created for distribution across geolocational, distinct, and international and national contexts, the PPHS will provide scope to gather large-scale quantitative data with a view to improving the supports available to home-schooling families and enhancing learner outcomes.
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