News
By Emma Camp, Reason
11-01-23
Homeschooling has ballooned since the advent of the pandemic, growing by more than 100 percent in some states, according to new data from The Washington Post. While the number of children being homeschooled has declined slightly from its pandemic-era peak, the growth in the educational option has proven stable—and dramatic.
The Post collected data from 32 states, as well as the District of Columbia, and 7,000 school districts—a dataset comprising around two-thirds of the nation’s schoolchildren.
Nationally, since the 2017-2018 school year, homeschooling has increased by 51 percent—while private schooling has only increased by 7 percent. Based on the available data, the Post estimated that there are now between 1.9 and 2.7 million homeschooled children in the United States.
But many states and districts saw truly staggering growth in their homeschooling population. Notably, many of these places had schools that were closed the longest during the pandemic. D.C. and New York both saw homeschooling increases of more than 100 percent, while California saw an increase of 78 percent. In Brooklyn, homeschooling in the borough’s school districts saw increases that ranged from 197 percent to a whopping 492 percent (though the total number of homeschoolers remained under 1,000 students per district.)
This growth has helped transform homeschooling into a racially and ideologically diverse movement. According to data analyzed by the Post, homeschooled students were three-quarters white in 2019. By summer 2023, less than half were white. Homeschool parents are now roughly evenly split between conservatives and liberals, while those homeschooling before the pandemic overwhelmingly identified as Republicans.
Such a rapid growth in the number and diversity of homeschooling families indicates that more and more American parents are dissatisfied with their children’s education in traditional public schools—and deciding to take matters into their own hands.
Read the full article here: Homeschooling Has Increased by Over 50 Percent Since 2018 (reason.com)
