What if the student is never "ready" though? As part of a project for a small Christian liberal arts college, I had access to anonymized data on admissions and class schedules. They accepted a great deal of homeschooled students. Can you guess what how many of them placed in remedial math classes?
Many times more than their traditionally educated counterparts. The school was not big, these catch-up classes were full of kids home schooled by well meaning parents who never thought their kids were "ready" for basic mathematics. This is a colossal failure, when you get to college without knowing basic math, entire departments are simply closed to you.
Interestingly, they often placed in line with their peers in language, with many placing highly in foreign languages as well. Maybe that says something about the priorities of the average parent of a homeschooler?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/wh...
Math, math seems more like a side effect of our big old brains. Math can be learned, but it fades quickly. We are able to do it, but we aren't really built to do it.
Anyway, i guess i'm arguing language is hard to screw up.
It's a huge disservice to lump these students in with the others. The students that can actually do the work get held back (and I'm not talking about the high-level students, (who are usually brutally retarded in their development, unless they take matters into their own hands), this impacts the mediocre students as well).