Christianity Today

This article is misleading and seems to want to promote private Christian schools. My husband and I have been married for twenty-five years. I'm a stay-at-home mom. We have four children ages 21, 17, 7, and 5. One is at a Christian Bible College, (he graduated from a Catholic high school and was previously homeschooled), one is in private school and also previously homeschooled, one is currently being homeschooled, and one is in public school. I don't think our seven year old homeschooled child is at a higher risk for divorce than any of our other children.

I have compared this “article” with the report on which it is based. In many cases CT has grossly misinterpreted the results, and offered a distorted, biased view that is at clear odds with the actual results of the study. Two examples: CT says public students are most likely to spend a lot of time volunteering. This is a fabrication. According to this study, all groups volunteer more in real life than public school students. The study shows that some types of volunteer work are done for reasons other than school, but no one does less actual volunteer work than public school students. CT says homeschooled kids are most likely to get a divorce. This way of reporting it is the opposite of the actual result of the survey. The survey shows, in fact, homeschooled children divorce less often than general population. CT based their comment on what the result would be, theoretically, if the only factor in a child's life was schooling.

This infographic pains me. I have read the entire research report and whoever did this particular extrapolation did not understand the data properly. Even aside from the small sample of many of the categories (which the researchers admit if you look closely in the appendix), some of the data interpretation is just plain inaccurate. Looking at the homeschooling data, for example, one discovers that the raw data shows greater volunteerism and missions activity than in many of other groups (contrary to what the writer says above!) The writer for this graphic focused on the data that was an attempt by the researchers to isolate the "school effect", which gives a skewed perspective. The bottom line is, you must read the actual report, not CT's flawed interpretation of the report, to understand what the research is all about. I deeply respect CT and those who work there, but in this particular case, someone did not take the time to truly understand the research and report accordingly.