Education Next – Daniel Hamlin and Paul E. Peterson
As folk wisdom has it, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And research shows that children are generally shaped more by life at home than by studies at school. College enrollment, for instance, is better predicted by family-background characteristics than the amount of money a school district spends on a child’s education. Some parents have a specific vision for their child’s schooling that leads them to keep it entirely under their own direction. Even Horace Mann, the father of the American public school, who favored compulsory schooling for others, had his own children educated at home.