research paper in home schooling

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The research on homeschooling, the academic, social, and long-term outcomes for children in home schools..

Posted September 1, 2021 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

About 4 to 5 million children in the United States (or approximately 8 to 9% of school-age children) were homeschooled in March 2021. This statistic increased dramatically during the pandemic: Only 2.5 million (or 3 to 4% of school-age children) were homeschooled in spring 2019.

The most common reason cited for homeschooling (before the pandemic) was concern about the local school environment, including safety and negative peer pressure . Many parents also choose to homeschool due to dissatisfaction with the educational quality of local schools, or for religious reasons.

However, many parents and caregivers considering homeschooling may be especially concerned about how homeschooling might impact their child’s academic progress and social development. Does the research find any differences between children who were homeschooled versus children in conventional school?

Academic Performance

Homeschooled students tend to score higher on tests of academic skills when compared to children in public schools across most studies. However, it is difficult to draw any conclusions from these studies since most do not control for important family demographic factors and compare self-selected homeschooling families’ test scores (from tests proctored by parents) to national averages. Interestingly, children in a “structured” homeschool program — that is, a homeschool program with organized lesson plans — tend to score higher on academic tests than children from conventional schools, while children in “unstructured” homeschool environments without organized lesson plans tend to score lower than children in conventional schools.

Social Skills

The findings on social skills seem to be more mixed. Some studies have found no difference in social skills between children in homeschool environments versus conventional schools, some studies have found that homeschooled children score higher on measures of social ability, and some have found that homeschooled children score lower on overall social skills. Not surprisingly, homeschooled students who have had more opportunities for peer interactions tend to show improved social skills.

Long-Term Success

Most studies find that homeschooled children tend to have higher college GPAs than children from conventional schools. In addition, most studies have found no difference between homeschooled and conventional students in college graduation rates. However, most homeschooled students do not attend competitive four-year colleges and one study found that homeschooled students may have lower math GPAs in college than children from conventional schools. Children who are homeschooled may also be more likely to work in a lower-paying job.

Limitations of this Research

It is important to note that this research is difficult to interpret because families that choose to homeschool are different from families who do not in many other ways — for example, they may have parents with higher income or educational levels — and these factors likely contribute to the results as well. For instance, we cannot conclude that homeschooling will improve your child’s test scores since homeschooled children may have more educated mothers and it may be the mother’s educational level that drives the higher test scores, not homeschooling itself.

Almasoud, S., & Fowler, S. R. (2016). The difference in the academic achievements of homeschooled and non-homeschooled students. Home School Researcher, 32(1), 1-4.

Cogan, M. F. (2010). Exploring academic outcomes of homeschooled students. Journal of College Admission, 208, 18-25.

Coleman, R. E. (2014). The homeschool math gap: The data. Coalition for Responsible Home Education.

Drenovsky, C. K., & Cohen, I. (2012). The impact of homeschooling on the adjustment of college students. International Social Science Review, 87(1/2), 19-34.

Kunzman, R., & Gaither, M. (2020). Homeschooling: An updated comprehensive survey of the research. Other Education, 9(1), 253-336.

Martin-Chang, S., Gould, O. N., & Meuse, R. E. (2011). The impact of schooling on academic achievement: Evidence from homeschooled and traditionally schooled students. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue Canadienne Des Sciences du Comportement, 43(3), 195.

McKinley, M. J., Asaro, J. N., Bergin, J., D'Auria, N., & Gagnon, K. E. (2007). Social Skills and Satisfaction with Social Relationships in Home-Schooled, Private-Schooled, and Public-Schooled Children. Online Submission, 17(3), 1-6.

Medlin, R. G. (2006). Homeschooled Children's Social Skills. Online Submission, 17(1), 1-8.

Montes, G. (2006). Do Parental Reasons to Homeschool Vary by Grade? Evidence from the National Household Education Survey, 2001. Online Submission, 16(4), 11-17.

Montes, G. (2015). The social and emotional health of homeschooled students in the United States: A population-based comparison with publicly schooled students based on the national survey of children’s health, 2007. Home School Researcher, 31(1), 1-9.

Pearlman-Avnion, S., & Grayevsky, M. (2019). Homeschooling, civics, and socialization: The case of Israel. Education and Urban Society, 51(7), 970-988.

Ray, B. D. (2017). A systematic review of the empirical research on selected aspects of homeschooling as a school choice. Journal of School Choice, 11(4), 604-621.

Redford, J., Battle, D., & Bielick, S. (2017, April). Homeschooling in the United States: 2012. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved August 1, 2017, from. (NCES 2016-096.REV) https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2016096rev

Sikkink, D., & Skiles, S. (2015). Homeschooling and young adult outcomes: Evidence from the 2011 and 2014 Cardus Education Survey. The Cardus Religious Schools Initiative.

Cara Goodwin, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in translating scientific research into information that is useful, accurate, and relevant for parents.

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The Academic and Social Benefits of Homeschooling

Homeschooling works. The roughly 2 million children who currently learn at home join a millennia-old practice supported by many government officials, scholars, college officials, and employers.

While mainstream America has embraced homeschooling as a viable and positive educational option—and as 55 million K-12 students and their parents have been thrust into “crisis-teaching at home”—the angst of some academics over homeschooling has abruptly emerged.

Professors Elizabeth Bartholet of Harvard University and James Dwyer of William and Mary School of Law organized a summer meeting to “focus on problems of educational deprivation and child maltreatment that too often occur under the guise of homeschooling, in a legal environment of minimal or no oversight.” In a highly controversial article in Harvard Magazine , Erin O’Donnell advanced Bartholet’s arguments in favor of a homeschooling ban.

Yet, what does the evidence tell us about homeschool educational and social outcomes? Is there any sound corpus of evidence that homeschooled children are actually educationally deprived or maltreated? And what worldview drives anti-homeschoolers such as Bartholet and Dwyer?

Most reviews of homeschooling research reveal generally positive learning outcomes for children.

Joseph Murphy and Brian Ray provide quite optimistic reviews, while other appraisals present positive, albeit more tentative , conclusions. A one-of-its-kind review of only peer-reviewed research by Ray revealed that 11 of the 14 peer-reviewed studies on academic achievement found that homeschool students significantly outperformed conventionally schooled children. Both of the publicly available state-provided data sets showed higher-than-average test scores for homeschooled children.

A similar pattern emerges for the social, emotional, and psychological development of the homeschooled.

The clear majority of peer-reviewed studies show that homeschoolers often have better parent-child relationships and friendships than conventionally schooled children. Homeschoolers are happy, satisfied, and civically engaged .

A growing body of research indicates that graduates of home-based education excel. Eleven of the 16 peer-reviewed studies on success into adulthood (including college) showed that homeschoolers had better results for political tolerance, college GPA, and college retention than students in conventional schools. After reviewing the relevant literature, Gloeckner and Jones concluded that the “comparative results of the studies reported in this review, combined with the data collected from college admission officers provide evidence that homeschooling is an effective alternative path to college for the children of many families.”

Homeschoolers are not being educationally deprived, maltreated, or abused. On the contrary, the research literature suggests that rates of abuse (e.g., physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect) are lower among homeschoolers than institutionally schooled children.

Although there are certainly cases when homeschoolers are abused (and such cases should be prosecuted), banning homeschooling is not the answer, nor will it improve education or make children safer.

As a society we do not, for example, close public schools when a child is abused there. When scholars like Bartholet, Fineman and Worthington, and Dwyer and Peters advocate for a total or presumptive ban on homeschooling, they do so without solid support from the empirical literature. When Bartholet and others advocate for forcing children to enter the public school system, they are ignoring evidence that only approximately 40 percent of conventionally schooled students are at, or above, proficiency in reading and mathematics.

Certainly, many public educators are engaged in terrific efforts to provide high-quality education, but it is also clear that the public school system has significant limitations.

Why, then, do some academics want more government control and restrictions on homeschooling? We think it is not hard to perceive: They do not approve of the values and beliefs of the parents who choose to homeschool.

One of us partially addressed the answer in a scholarly journal some years ago. Ray identified four classes of negativity toward parent-led home-based education. Some scholars make theoretical arguments that government schools are the gold standard of education that advances the common good, while private schooling is bad for society. A second group argues that homeschooling is an attempt to “cocoon” one’s children from ideas and people that the parents disdain. Another category holds that homeschooling harms children philosophically, psychologically, religiously, physically, and educationally. And the fourth group goes against homeschooling by theorizing why the state should have more domination over children and their parents.

In the end, however, all of those categories of opposition are founded on different values, beliefs, and presuppositions than those at the core of parent-led homeschooling. Dwyer and Peters , for example, presuppose that “[t]he state must have the ultimate authority to determine what children’s interests are” and that the state is the entity that shall decide over what aspects of a child’s life his parents have authority.

In a similar vein, Bartholet argues that the state, not the parent, shall have the ultimate authority to decide what and how children shall be taught. Parents, in her world, must prove to the state that they deserve permission to educate their children outside of the government’s control. Fineman’s philosophical zeal is so clear that anything other than state-funded and state-controlled education must be banned by the government.

These kinds of ideas simply stem from their philosophical and religious worldviews. It is “natural” for them to conclude that the civil government must control children’s teaching, training, and indoctrination. It is natural because their worldviews cannot comprehend or tolerate a worldview such as classical liberalism or Christianity that holds the state should not control boys’ and girls’ educational formation, unless parents are abusive.

While the relevant research has limitations , scholarly research shows that homeschooling has positive outcomes for children. There is certainly no body of clear evidence that homeschooling undermines children’s academic and social development and should be restricted. Certain academics’ agitation over homeschooling appears to be based on their perspective that the state—and not parents—should control the education of all children.

Compared to conventional students, homeschool graduates are more likely to

• have higher college GPAs,
• be politically tolerant,
• be agreeable and conscientious,
• have a more positive college experience, and
• be self-employed.

In summary, opponents of homeschooling lack empirical data for their arguments, and judges and governmental officials consistently hold that parents have the right to educate their children at home.

Those arguing for state domination lost their major battles in legislatures, courts, and the public mind in the 1980s and 1990s. Homeschooling advocates have strong support in protecting their freedom to educate outside state-run systems.

College personnel, employers, and independent business advocates should be glad about homeschooling. It is a form of free enterprise. It costs taxpayers less than public schooling and its graduates are well-equipped to be the next generation of entrepreneurs, leaders, parents, householders, creators, and everyday citizens. In summary, we agree with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s analysis of this issue: “The risk to children is not from homeschooling. The risk is from radical leftist scholars seeking to impose their values on our children.”

Brian D. Ray, Ph.D., is president of the National Home Education Research Institute and is internationally known for his research on homeschooling.

Carlos Valiente, Ph.D., is a Professor in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University.

May 13, 2020 › Academics , Politicization

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Research Facts on Homeschooling

Research facts on homeschooling, homeschooling: the research.

Research Facts on Homeschooling, Homeschool Fast Facts

Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. May 8, 2024    Copyright © 2024 National Home Education Research Institute

This article gives key research facts on homeschooling

General facts, statistics, and trends.

• There were about 3.1 million homeschool students in 2021-2022 in grades K-12 in the United States  (roughly 6% of school-age children). There were about 2.5 million homeschool students in spring 2019 (or 3% to 4% of school-age children) [note 1]. The homeschool population had been growing at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past several years, but it grew drastically from 2019-2020 to 2020-2021.

• Homeschooling – that is, parent-led home-based education; home education – is an age-old traditional educational practice that a decade ago appeared to be cutting-edge and “alternative” but is now bordering on “mainstream” in the United States. It may be the fastest-growing form of education in the United States. Home-based education has also been growing around the world in many other nations (e.g., Australia, Canada, France, Hungary, Japan, Kenya, Russia, Mexico, South Korea, Thailand, and the United Kingdom).
• A demographically wide variety of people homeschool – these are atheists, Christians, and Mormons; conservatives, libertarians, and liberals; low-, middle-, and high-income families; black, Hispanic, and white; parents with Ph.D.s, GEDs, and no high-school diplomas. One nationwide study shows that 41% of homeschool students are Black, Asian, Hispanic, and others (i.e., not White/non-Hispanic) (U.S. Department of Education, 2019).
• Taxpayers spend an average of $16,446 per pupil annually in public schools, plus capital expenditures (National Education Association, 2023). The roughly 3.1 million homeschool students of 2021-22 represented a savings of over $51 billion for taxpayers. This is $51 billion that American taxpayers did not have to spend.
• Taxpayers spend nothing on the vast majority of homeschool students, while homeschool families spend an average of $600 per student annually for their education. Families engaged in home-based education are not dependent on public, tax-funded resources for their children’s education.
• Homeschooling is quickly growing in popularity among minorities. About 41% of homeschool families are non-white/non-Hispanic (i.e., not white/Anglo).
• It is estimated that over 9 million Americans had experienced being homeschooled as of February of 2020.

Reasons and Motivations for Home Educating

Most parents and youth decide to homeschool for more than one reason. The most common reasons given for homeschooling are the following:

• customize or individualize the curriculum and learning environment for each child,
• accomplish more academically than in schools,
• use pedagogical approaches other than those typical in institutional schools,
• enhance family relationships between children and parents and among siblings,
• provide guided and reasoned social interactions with youthful peers and adults,
• provide a safer environment for children and youth, because of physical violence, drugs and alcohol, psychological abuse, racism, and improper and unhealthy sexuality associated with institutional schools, and
• as an alternative education approach when public or private institutional schools are closed due to acute health situations such as related to disease (e.g., Covid-19, Coronavirus)
• protect minority children from racism in public schools or lower expectations of children of color (e.g., black) (e.g., Fields-Smith, 2020; Mazama & Lundy, 2012).
• teach and impart a particular set of values, beliefs, and worldview to children and youth.

Academic Performance

• The home-educated typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests (Ray, 2010, 2015, 2017; Ray & Hoelzle, 2024). (The public school average is roughly the 50 th percentile; scores range from 1 to 99.) A 2015 study found Black homeschool students to be scoring 23 to 42 percentile points above Black public school students (Ray, 2015).
• 78% of peer-reviewed studies on academic achievement show homeschool students perform statistically significantly better than those in institutional schools ( Ray, 2017 ).
• Homeschool students score above average on achievement tests regardless of their parents’ level of formal education or their family’s household income.
• Whether homeschool parents were ever certified teachers is not notably related to their children’s academic achievement.
• Degree of state control and regulation of homeschooling is not related to academic achievement.
• Home-educated students typically score above average on the SAT and ACT tests that colleges consider for admissions.
• Homeschool students are increasingly being actively recruited by colleges.

Social, Emotional, and Psychological Development (Socialization)

• Research facts on homeschooling show that the home-educated are doing well, typically above average, on measures of social, emotional, and psychological development. Research measures include peer interaction, self-concept, leadership skills, family cohesion, participation in community service, and self-esteem.
• 87% of peer-reviewed studies on social, emotional, and psychological development show homeschool students perform statistically significantly better than those in conventional schools ( Ray, 2017 ).
• Homeschool students are regularly engaged in social and educational activities outside their homes and with people other than their nuclear-family members. They are commonly involved in activities such as field trips, scouting, 4-H, political drives, church ministry, sports teams, and community volunteer work.
• The balance of research to date suggests that homeschool students may suffer less harm (e.g., abuse, neglect, fatalities) than conventional school students.
• Adults who were home educated are more politically tolerant than the public schooled in the limited research done so far.

Gender Differences in Children and Youth Respected?

• One researcher finds that homeschooling gives young people an unusual chance to ask questions such as, “Who am I?” and “What do I really want?,” and through the process of such asking and gradually answering the questions home-educated girls develop the strengths and the resistance abilities that give them an unusually strong sense of self.
• Some think that boys’ energetic natures and tendency to physical expression can more easily be accommodated in home-based education. Many are concerned that a highly disproportionate number of public school special-education students are boys and that boys are 2.5 times as likely as girls in public schools to be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Success in the “Real World” of Adulthood

The research base on adults who were home educated is growing; thus far it indicates that:

• 69% of peer-reviewed studies on success into adulthood (including college) show adults who were home educated succeed and perform statistically significantly better than those who attended institutional schools ( Ray, 2017 ).
• they participate in local community service more frequently than does the general population (e.g., Seiver & Pope, 2022 ),
• these adults vote and attend public meetings more frequently than the general population
• they go to and succeed at college at an equal or higher rate than the general population
• by adulthood, they internalize the values and beliefs of their parents at a high rate

General Interpretation of Research on Homeschool Success or Failure

It is possible that homeschooling causes the positive traits reported above. However, the research designs to date do not conclusively “prove” or substantiate that homeschooling causes these things. One hypothesis is that the positive findings might be due to the demographics of the homeschool students and families in the studies. The “sources” (articles) below explain limitations and caveats regarding the studies. More methodologically stronger research needs to be done to find whether homeschooling is what leads to or causes better outcomes.  At the same time, there is no empirical evidence that homeschooling overall causes negative things compared to institutional schooling. Future research may better answer the question of causation.

1. For more detail, see How Many Homeschool Students Are There in the United States? The March of 2021 estimate is based on data from state governments (e.g., Delaware, Florida, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Virginia), the U.S. Census Bureau (2021), and the U.S. Department of Education (2019). See McDonald (2020). The spring 2019 estimate was based on an estimate of about 2.5% per annum growth from estimates of 2 million home-educated children during the spring of 2010 and 2.3 million spring of 2016 in the United States (Ray, 2011). The estimate of 2.3 million in 2016 was calculated by Brian D. Ray, the author of this fact sheet, on April 7, 2016. He based it on publicly available research findings.

The above findings are extensively documented in one or more of the following sources, and most are available from www.nheri.org:

• Cheng, Albert. (2014). Does homeschooling or private schooling promote political intolerance? Evidence from a Christian university. Journal of School Choice: International Research and Reform , 8(1), 49-68 [a peer-reviewed journal].
• Fields-Smith, Cheryl. (2020). Exploring single black mothers’ resistance through homeschooling . Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan Cham.
• Mazama, Ama; & Lundy, Garvey. (2012, August 26). African American homeschooling as racial protectionism. Journal of Black Studies, 43 (7) 723–748.
• McDonald, Kerry. (2020). Homeschooling more than doubles during the pandemic: State-level data show just how dramatic the surge in homeschooling has been. Retrieved December 29, 2020 from https://fee.org/articles/homeschooling-more-than-doubles-during-the-pandemic/
• Mead, Sara. (2006). The truth about boys and girls.
• Medlin, Richard G. (2013). Homeschooling and the question of socialization revisited. Peabody Journal of Education, 88 (3), 284-297 [a peer-reviewed journal].
• Murphy, Joseph. (2012). Homeschooling in America: Capturing and assessing the movement . Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, a Sage Company.
• National Education Association. (2023). Rankings of the States 2022 and Estimates of School Statistics 2023,  https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2023-04/2023-rankings-and-estimates-report.pdf
• Ray, Brian D. (2004). Home educated and now adults: Their community and civic involvement, views about homeschooling, and other traits. Salem, Oregon: NHERI.
• Ray, Brian D. (2004). Homeschoolers on to college: What research shows us. Ray, Journal of College Admission , No. 185, 5-11 [a peer-reviewed journal].
• Ray, Brian D. (2010). Academic achievement and demographic traits of homeschool students: A nationwide study. Academic Leadership Journal, 8, www.academicleadership.org [a peer-reviewed journal]. For a free copy, contact us .
• Ray, Brian D. (2013). Homeschooling associated with beneficial learner and societal outcomes but educators do not promote it. Peabody Journal of Education, 88 (3), 324-341 [a peer-reviewed journal].
• Ray, Brian D. (2015). African American homeschool parents’ motivations for homeschooling and their Black children’s academic achievement. Journal of School Choice, 9 :71–96 [a peer-reviewed journal]. For a free copy, contact us .
• Ray, Brian D. (2017). A systematic review of the empirical research on selected aspects of homeschooling as a school choice. Journal of School Choice , 11 (4), 604-621 [a peer-reviewed journal]
• Ray, Brian D.; & Hoelzle, Braden R. (2024). Reasons for homeschooling and the correlates of home-educated students’ academic achievement: A new U.S. nationwide study. Presented at International School Choice and Reform Conference, Madrid, Spain, January 6, 2024.
• Ray, Brian D.; & Shakeel, M. Danish. (2022). Demographics are predictive of child abuse and neglect but homeschool versus conventional school is a nonissue: Evidence from a nationally representative survey. Journal of School Choice, https://doi.org/10.1080/15582159.2022.2108879  [a peer-reviewed journal]
• Seiver, Jillene Grove; & Pope, Elisa A. (2022). The kids are alright II: social engagement in young adulthood as a function of k-12 schooling type, personality traits, and parental education level. Home School Researcher , 37 (2), 1-9.
• Sheffer, Susannah. (1995). A sense of self: Listening to homeschooled adolescent girls .
• United States Department of Education. (2019) Homeschooling in the United States: Results from the 2012 and 2016 Parent and Family Involvement Survey (PFINHES: 2012 and 2016). Retrieved November 3, 2020 from https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020001.pdf

About the Author

Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. is an internationally known researcher  (see Google Scholar Profile for many of his publications), educator, speaker, and expert witness, and serves as president of the nonprofit National Home Education Research Institute. He is a former certified teacher in public and private schools and served as a professor in the fields of science, research methods, and education at the graduate and undergraduate levels. He holds a Ph.D. in science education from Oregon State University, a M.S. in zoology from Ohio University, and a B.S. in biology from the University of Puget Sound. Dr. Ray has been studying the homeschool movement since about 1984.

For more homeschool research and more in-depth interpretation of research, media, journalists, and others please contact:

National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI)

PO Box 13939 Salem OR 97309 USA

tel. (503) 364‑1490 [email protected] www.nheri.org

Copyright © 2024 by National Home Education Research Institute

About nheri.

NHERI conducts homeschooling research, is a clearinghouse of research for the public, researchers, homeschoolers, the media, and policy makers, and educates the public concerning the findings of all related research. NHERI executes, evaluates, and disseminates studies and information (e.g., statistics, facts, data) on homeschooling (i.e., home schooling, home-based education, home education, home school, home-schooling, unschooling, deschooling, a form of alternative education), publishes reports and the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Home School Researcher, and serves in consulting, academic achievement tests, and expert witness (in courts and legislatures).

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An Introduction to Homeschooling

Homeschooling is an educational option that allows parents to teach their children at home instead of sending them to school. There are today a wealth of resources and opportunities available to homeschooling families, and in a landscape of increasing school choice homeschooling has become more and more accepted by the public at large. Parents choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons. Modern homeschooling began in the 1970s and 1980s, championed by progressive educational reformers hoping to free children’s inner creativity and conservative evangelical leaders concerned about the environment of public schools. There are now around two million children being homeschooled, and in the early twentieth century homeschooling has become increasingly diverse, both in terms of race and class and in terms terms of parental motivations. See Homeschooling Numbers and and Homeschool Demographics .

Parents choose homeschooling for a wide variety of reasons. Some parents have concerns about the social environment or academic quality of local public schools. Some want to ensure that their children are educated in accordance with their religious beliefs. Some believe their children will learn better through child-directed learning outside of a classroom setting. Some have children who were bullied in school or have health problems or demanding practice schedules. A growing number of families enjoy the flexibility homeschooling offers, and many children may find that homeschooling is a good fit for their natural learning styles or personalities. If there is one thing that can be said about parental motivations for homeschooling, it is that they are anything but monolithic. For more, see Reasons Parents Homeschool .

While homeschooling is legal throughout the United States, the level of oversight for homeschools varies from state to state. Most states require parents to notify state or local education officials of their intent to homeschool, and half of all states have some form of assessment requirement. Most states have days of instruction or subject requirements and a smaller number of states have parent qualification and bookkeeping requirements. Some states require none of the above. The patchwork and often woefully inadequate nature of homeschool oversight means that there are few protections in place safeguarding the interests of homeschooled children. For more, see  Current Policy .

Research has shown that children who are homeschooled can succeed academically, especially when given support and resources from their parents. Many homeschool parents are driven and motivated, and are extremely involved in their children’s education. They educate themselves as they go along and seek out resources, tutors, or classes for those subjects they may not be able to teach themselves. In many ways these parents are more facilitators or coordinators than teachers. However, while homeschooled children can succeed academically, that success is not guaranteed. In cases where homeschool parents are not driven and motivated or do not place as much importance on their children’s academic progress, homeschooled children may struggle academically or even not receive any education at all. For more, see Academic Achievement .

Homeschooled children are typically involved in an array of social activities, including homeschool cooperatives, dance and music lessons, church and Sunday school, field trip groups, and other classes, clubs, and groups outside of the home. With the networking potential of the internet and the greater social acceptance of homeschooling, the opportunities available to homeschool families have grown in recent years. If parents put in the effort to find social outlets for their children, homeschooled children can be well socialized and can integrate well into society. In contrast, if parents do not ensure that their children have adequate opportunities to meet their social needs, homeschooled children may be lonely, develop social phobias, or have difficulty integrating into society. For more, see Homeschooling & Socialization .

An increasing number of states allow homeschooled children to enroll in public school part time to take individual classes or to participate in public school athletics and other extracurricular activities. Some studies have found that as many as 20% of homeschooled students enroll in public school part-time.  Some states have public school at home or public or charter correspondence programs that allow children to be taught at home while receiving benefits from enrollment in public school. “Cybercharters” have become popular among some homeschoolers, and a number of charter schools have developed programs where children come to an actual school for classes once or twice a week and are otherwise educated at home. In an increasingly educationally diverse world, homeschooling offers a variety of flexible and creative options.

Feedback from the first generation of homeschooled students, now in their 20′s and 30′s, indicates that those who are homeschooled responsibly frequently do well in college and professional life while those who were neglected or subjected to an abusive homeschooling environment often face low-wage job prospects, poor integration and connection with their communities, and struggles with poverty and dependency that could have easily been prevented. For more, see Homeschool Outcomes and Abuse and Neglect . The quality of a child’s homeschool experience depends almost entirely on the parents’ dedication to providing a functional, nurturing environment with optimal conditions for education and healthy child development.

Read more about homeschooling:

• What Is Homeschooling?
• Homeschooling by the Numbers
• Who Homeschools?
• Motivations for Homeschooling
• Academic Achievement
• What about Socialization?
• Homeschool Outcomes
• What Scholars Say
• A History of Homeschooling
• Our Research
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• For Researchers
• Abuse & Neglect

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Janice ‘Wes’ Brown, infectious disease researcher and physician, dies at 63

Brown developed stem-cell therapies for patients who suffered infections after receiving blood or bone marrow transplants.

May 9, 2024 - By Mark Conley

Janice “Wes” Brown, MD, a professor of blood and marrow transplantation who innovated stem-cell therapies for immunocompromised patients and helped put them into clinical use, died of endometrial cancer April 14. She was 63.

Brown’s research focused on patients who were at risk of life-threatening infections after a bone marrow transplant, solid organ transplant or other forms of cancer treatments leading to immunodeficiency. Her commitment, as both a scientist and clinician, to ease suffering and extend the lives of at-risk patients stood out to colleagues.

“Wes Brown epitomized the relentless initiative that makes Stanford Medicine a pillar of hope for so many,” said  Lloyd Minor , MD, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs at Stanford University. “In the lab, she was instrumental in developing vital therapies for some of our most vulnerable patients, and in the clinic, she showed her compassionate approach to administering these therapies.”

“Wes was a remarkable person,” said Irving Weissman , the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor in Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research. Brown had so impressed him as an inquisitive rookie researcher in his lab in the early 2000s that he came to her for assistance when his mother was recovering from uterine cancer surgery.

“She wasn’t doing well after surgery, so I called Wes,” Weissman said. “She caught on to what was happening immediately and set her on a new regimen.” Weissman’s mom returned to her home in Montana — and to good health — and lived another 20 years. “I owe my mom’s life to Wes,” he added. “She was just that brilliant of a puzzle solver.”

A nose for discovery

In her freshman dormitory as a Stanford University undergrad, someone told Brown that she looked like a Wes, and rather than arguing or taking offense, she ran with it. “Janice never really fit her anyway,” said her good friend Helen Benedetti.

Brown was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and grew up in suburban Washington, D.C.  Her parents were both physicians who immigrated from China for their post-doctoral training. Her husband, Andrew Hoffman , MD, professor of endocrinology, said that watching her parents live out lives in medicine likely provided the early inspiration that pulled her curious mind in a similar direction.

Wes Brown and Andrew Hoffman at the 2023 Big Game. Courtesy of Andrew Hoffman

Brown received her undergraduate degree at Stanford in 1981, then attended medical school at the University of Virginia. She returned to Stanford for her residency in internal medicine. After a stint as an infectious disease clinical fellow and a fellowship in virology in the lab of Ed Mocarski, then professor and chair of microbiology and immunology, she took notice of the work being done with blood-forming stem cells at Weissman’s lab. Soon she was part of it, and that fellowship forged an important path.

She focused on creating stem-cell therapies for three specific types of life-threatening infections faced by immunocompromised patients coming out of blood or bone marrow transplantation. She studied what Weissman’s lab had already established in mouse models and disentangled the mechanisms for skirting the three most lethal pathogens — one bacterial, one fungal, one viral — that faced immunocompromised human patients.

“She did it for three major kinds of infections — with definitive results,” Weissman said. “That hardly ever happens, especially with someone coming in from the world of infectious disease with no experience in blood-forming stem cells.”

Brown had immersed herself in the scientific literature on the three conditions, formed hypotheses on how to attack each, then published papers that turned out to be prescient. “How she predicted it would go is exactly how it went,” Weissman said.

She later joined Weissman at a commercial startup for attacking the dangerous infection cytomegalovirus with research on hematopoietic stem cells. She even continued her lab research after joining the faculty in the blood and marrow transplantation and cellular therapy division, pursuing clinical research dissecting the immune cells that control cytomegalovirus and other viral pathogens.

Hoffman recalled how Brown was able to patent a stem cell therapy and get the therapy through a phase 2 clinical trial. But part of her research passion stemmed from the practical applications she could take into action herself — and that’s where she turned next.

The puzzle solver

Brown volunteered to do clinical rounds with the blood and marrow transplantation program of the late Karl Blume , MD, and started to learn more about how infectious disease attacked the most critically ill patients. She continued that frontline work with immune deficient patients by joining the Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program faculty, and later helped co-found Stanford Medicine’s Immunocompromised Host Infectious Diseases Clinic .

But, ever the problem solver, Brown wanted to keep one eye on the bigger research needs, Hoffman said. While still making daily rounds with patients, she conducted clinical trials for antiviral drugs and antibiotics and set up protocols for treating immunocompromised patients.

“She had the perfect background of virology and cell biology to do this work,” Hoffman said. “And it was her passion. She looked at a patient’s illness as a puzzle that she had to solve. And she would do anything she could to make sure that she had the right diagnosis. She was tenacious.”

Weissman marveled at the complete career puzzle Brown pieced together. “How often does someone get to make a discovery and then go put it to use?” he said. “To help people live who would’ve died? That’s what she did.”

The Hoffman-Brown family, at Sierra Family Camp (left to right): Andy, Jacob, Samantha, Wes and Zach.  Courtesy of Andrew Hoffman

Hoffman recalls his wife frequently making house calls for severely ill patients, knowing she could help extend their lives, or at least bring them comfort. “She was an iconoclast — she wasn’t afraid to make a bold diagnosis that others might not,” he said.

When her good friend and colleague Judith Shizuru , MD, professor of blood and marrow transplantation and cellular therapy, was struggling with a difficult case, Brown was always her first call.

“She would really dig into the details, think outside the box, and she could reach into her own understanding,” Shizuru said. “She could guide you as if she was a third eye. I’ve never encountered another clinician like her. It takes insights, smarts and a real sense of boldness.”

It also helped that she was fully grounded in life — whether inside the lab or clinic, or at home. Weissman remembers what she did for his mother during her recovery from cancer, and how she approached the life-threatening riddles facing so many others.

“She was the kind of doctor who considered the lives of others just as important as her own family,” he said. “And if they’re like your family, you’re not going to stop until you figure it out.”

The mom in the stands

Shizuru still doesn’t understand how Brown and Hoffman did what they did as full-time researchers and clinicians and as parents. “Two working physicians who somehow made it to every one of their kids’ events,” she said. “She was the mom always in the stands, the one who brought the Gatorade.”

Hoffman said his wife had a unique ability to apply multiple passions simultaneously. “From virology to immune cells to the clinical care and research — she loved them all,” Hoffman said. “But most of all she loved being a mother.”

At home on bed rest during her first pregnancy, Brown managed to work on her stem cell research papers. Then she homeschooled the twins until fourth grade while continuing her research.

“While she was bringing this incredibly important science to bear in my lab, she was also homeschooling her twins,” Weissman said. “I have no idea how she did all that — and did it so well. But that was Wes.”

She was in the stands even as the kids got older — at her son Jacob’s Stanford baseball games, at the lacrosse matches of her daughter Samantha and her son Zach, at every Stanford sporting event she could get to.

“She was a very enthusiastic and very loud Stanford fan,” Hoffman said. Jacob was able to get the whole family field passes for last November’s Big Game against Cal — exactly the type of gathering “that made her really happy,” Hoffman said.

Brown was treating patients during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic when a routine exam uncovered the cancer. She underwent surgery and numerous rounds of radiation and chemotherapy. She and Hoffman spent January through March in Boston at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, hunkered down and enduring a phase 1 clinical trial.

“We researched everything we could — she wasn’t going to give up,” Hoffman said. “Till the end, when she would be hospitalized, and she’d learn the life story of every nurse who took care of her.”

She was a unique person, and her loss is so tough to grieve. It leaves a big hole.

Benedetti was a blood and marrow transplant nurse who recalls bonding with Brown over their mutual commitment to work and family. She remembers her as a selfless nurturer who always made time to listen, never looking for the spotlight herself. That was saved for those closest to her. “Family was everything to her,” she said. “Wes was a brilliant, humble, loving, family-oriented person.”

Brown’s biggest disappointment was that she was too ill to return to work after the cancer diagnosis. But she wasn’t about to miss out on the landmark family moments that remained.

She was there for Samantha’s wedding in Los Gatos, California, in the spring and then at her PhD defense at Harvard University. Recently, the whole family spent a weekend at Sierra Family Camp at Fallen Leaf Lake in the Lake Tahoe basin — a Stanford tradition they had enjoyed for years when the kids were growing up. 

“That was so important to her — and she hung in there,” Shizuru said. “She was a unique person, and her loss is so tough to grieve. It leaves a big hole. It’s painful.”

Hoffman knows. He said he has a hard time accepting the death of his wife so early. “She was only 63 — she had so much more life to live,” he said. But he draws comfort in the immense legacy she leaves behind. It’s everywhere he looks.

“She was known and loved by so many people,” he said. “I never realized how many people she touched.”

Brown is survived by her husband, Andy Hoffman, and their children — Samantha, Jacob and Zachary Hoffman.

Gifts in memory of Brown can be made at memorial.stanford.edu or by sending a check payable to Stanford University and mailed to Medical Center Development, 485 Broadway, University Hall, 4th Floor, Redwood City, CA 94063. Please indicate on the online form or check that the gift is in memory of Dr. Wes Brown.

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu .

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