Homeschooling in America Grows to Record Numbers
“After COVID-19 public health measures were suspended, there was a brief drop in homeschooling as parents and families returned to old habits. That didn’t last long.”
This is partially because of the Covid pandemic but also because of what people have learned about their kids’ schools.
Reason reports:
Homeschooling Hits Record Numbers
Whether called homeschooling or DIY education, family-directed learning has been growing in popularity for years in the U.S. alongside disappointment in the rigidity, politicization, and flat-out poor results of traditional public schools. That growth was supercharged during the COVID-19 pandemic when extended closures and bumbled remote learning drove many families to experiment with teaching their own kids. The big question was whether the end of public health controls would also curtail interest in homeschooling. We know now that it didn’t. Americans’ taste for DIY education is on the rise.
Homeschooling Grows at Triple the Pre-Pandemic Rate
“In the 2024-2025 school year, homeschooling continued to grow across the United States, increasing at an average rate of 5.4%,” Angela Watson of the Johns Hopkins University School of Education’s Homeschool Hub wrote earlier this month. “This is nearly three times the pre-pandemic homeschooling growth rate of around 2%.” She added that more than a third of the states from which data is available report their highest homeschooling numbers ever, even exceeding the peaks reached when many public and private schools were closed during the pandemic.
After COVID-19 public health measures were suspended, there was a brief drop in homeschooling as parents and families returned to old habits. That didn’t last long. Homeschooling began surging again in the 2023-2024 school year, with that growth continuing last year. Based on numbers from 22 states (not all states have released data, and many don’t track homeschoolers), four report declines in the ranks of homeschooled children—Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, and Tennessee—while the others report growth from around 1 percent (Florida and Louisiana) to as high as 21.5 percent (South Carolina).
The latest figures likely underestimate growth in homeschooling since not all DIY families abide by registration requirements where they exist, and because families who use the portable funding available through increasingly popular Education Savings Accounts to pay for homeschooling costs are not counted as homeschoolers in several states, Florida included. As a result, adds Watson, “we consider these counts as the minimum number of homeschooled students in each state.”
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Comments
“Bout time.
I’d be willing to lay 10:1 odds that not one in ten children “graduating” 6th grade can recite The Pledge of Allegiance.
Hell!!! I’d be willing to lay 100:1 odds that not one in ten men around the age of 50 can recite it either.
In elementary school and junior high (late 60s and into the 70s) we always started the day off with the Pledge of Allegiance. Didn’t recite the Pledge in high school (late 70s), but the national anthem was played over the PA system every morning.
state legislatures will just concoct a newer scheme to get our money when “too many” seats are vacant in their indoctrination centers
but this is good news nonetheless
When I started homeschooling over 20 years ago, the stats were about
2.2% homeschooled
2.2% private school
the other 95% of kids were in their local public schools.
That held steady, more or less until covid.
I think the last stat I heard was around 20% now homeschool. But it is hard to count homeschoolers now, so many options other than the brick-and-mortar schools of the past. Before we moved, my kids attended a once a week in person charter school, the other 3 days it was online (barely even half days at that). And yet, I still called myself a homeschooler.
My neighbor has her oldest at home doing online public school classes. They are not homeschooling him, but he has a lot of the same freedoms that my homeschool kids have to set his own schedule for classes and to work at the family business.
Interestingly, this contributes to the increase in percentages of regular school kids who can’t read or do simple math. How? Which kids do you suppose are getting home schooled? The smart ones or the not so smart ones? Smart, caring parents are the ones who saw the bullshit schools were feeding their kids and decided to intervene. Those are the kids who were going to learn come hell or high water. Some left behind aren’t going to learn anyway because they simply lack the brainpower those skills require.
Not everyone can read or do even simple math, regardless of how much, or even how well they are taught. And these aren’t the ones getting home schooled.
Think a out it.