This synopsis provides highlights of a national home schooling survey of 1,516 families in the United States. The study explored five fundamental questions: (1) What are home education families' demographic and educational characteristics? (2) To what extent have home-schooling families been engaged in legal matters regarding their involvement in home education? (3) What are the demographic, educational, and post-high school characteristics of home-educated students? (4) What are the academic achievement outcomes of these students? (5) Is the academic achievement of home-educated students related to variables such as education level of parents, teacher certification status of parents, or degree of home education regulation in the student's state? Initial conclusions revealed that, on average, home education families have parents with greater formal education, more children, and higher family income. Two-parent families were the norm and they were predominantly Christian in viewpoint. The average age of the children was just over eight years--a majority of the children had never attended public or private schools. There were equal numbers of male and female students. On standardized achievement tests, the home-schooled students performed at or above the 80th percentile on national norms in reading, listening, language, math, science, social studies, basic battery, and complete battery scores. (RJM)