Home Schooling Charter School Students and Traditional Public School Students: Comparisons of Standardized Academic Achievement Dat

School choice is more popular now than ever before. Charter schools have been in existence for approximately 20 years and homeschooling has been around since colonial times. However, despite the growth of charter schools and homeschooling in the United States, limited research has been done on the academic performance of students in homeschooling charter schools on state-mandated tests. By comparing test results of charter school students and traditional education students, researchers can draw conclusions as to whether charter schools and homeschooling are benefitting students. In this study, this problem was addressed by comparing STAR (Standardized Testing and Reporting) test results of subgroups of students with the results of similar public school students. Mean test scores for subgroups of students in two grade levels (9 and 11) at a homeschooling charter school were compared with subgroups of students at two traditional high schools in the surrounding district with similar populations. In addition to the descriptive comparative research, a chi-square test of independence was performed to examine the relation between the English-language arts tests scores of the homeschool charter school students and the scores of students attending the traditional public school. Grade 9 scores on English-language arts tests were higher for charter school students than for those from the traditional school. In contrast, subgroup means were comparable on the 2012 and 2013 grade 9 mathematics test. The grade 11 English-language arts mean scores and the grade 11 U.S. history mean scores both revealed large differences between the charter school subgroups and the traditional school subgroups for both 2012 and 2013. These mixed results reflect, to some extent, the conflicting findings in the literature.