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| Parents & Teaching |  Objective investigations show that parents provide a superior form of education for their special needs children by teaching them at home. Parents do not have to be specially certified or have special qualifications to teach their handicapped children at home, unlike education elite.
Dr. Steven Duvall performed one of the most complete studies. Eight elementary and two junior high students with learning disabilities were involved in the study, which lasted a year. Dr. Steven Duvall compared one group of five homeschool students with a group of five students who attended public schools. He selected the public school students and the homeschool students very carefully and pay attention on grade level, sex, I.Q., and area of disability. With the help of a laptop computer, Dr. Duvall kept an eye on teaching sessions and took an observation every twenty seconds, producing tens of thousands of data points. He analyze the data by means of a statistical analysis package. Normally Dr. Duvall's has a second observer who double-checked his readings. During instructional periods Dr. Duvall recorded and analyzed academically engaged time by students. He also evaluated gains in reading, math and written language with the help of standardized achievement tests. His results demonstrate that the homeschool, special needs students were academically engaged about two and one-half times as often as public school special needs students! His results show that the children in the public school special education classrooms spent 74.9 percent of their time with no academic responses, while the homeschool children only spent 40.7 percent of their time with no academic responses. He also got to know that 43 percent of the time is spent by homeschool children and teachers sitting side-by-side or face-to-face, while special needs children who attend public education classrooms had such an arrangement for only 6 percent of the time. This was a great benefit for the homeschoolers.
Dr. Steven Duvall found out that the homeschool students averaged six months' gain in reading unlike special public school students who averaged only a one-half month gain. Even more, the homeschool special needs students gained eight months in written language skills during the year, but the public school students gained only two and one-half months
Dr. Duvall made a conclusion, "These results distinctly demonstrated that parents, even though they are not certified teachers, can make instructional environments at home that help students with learning disabilities to improve their academic skills. This study clearly demonstrates that homeschooling is advantageous for special needs students.
It is interesting to note that Thomas Edison was expelled from public school at age seven because he was considered "addled" by his public school teacher. He spent only three months in formal schooling. Over the next three years, his mother taught him the basics at home, and as Edison himself stated, "She instilled in me the love and purpose of learning."2 Without any special qualifications, Mrs. Edison helped her son overcome his disabilities to be come a great inventor.
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