The Patriot Post® · Homeschooling Is Still Trending Up
Where homeschooling is concerned, one thing for certain: The pandemic is no longer the reason for its growth.
According to a recent report from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy’s Homeschool Research Lab, data from 21 states show that all but two of them saw growth in the number of homeschooled students for the 2023-24 school year. The report did note that nine states had yet to report their homeschooling data, and the remaining states don’t collect or report such data.
Two states saw a decrease in total homeschooling numbers, New Hampshire and Vermont, but a significant caveat applies to New Hampshire. Due to the state’s Education Freedom Account, a program launched in 2021 that allows homeschooling students to receive public funds, those homeschooled students participating in the EFA program are not included in the state’s homeschool data. Therefore, it is probable that the number of homeschooled students is higher than what is being reported.
As the report states, “This decline may not truly reflect a decrease in actual homeschool participation, but may be just a change in how students are counted in this state. Indeed, the EFA program was launched in 2021 and reported homeschool participation in the state has been declining since then.”
The report observed that the COVID-19 pandemic school year of 2020 through 2021 saw a big jump in homeschooling numbers. However, the following year, homeschooling numbers decreased, but that trend has quickly reversed in almost every reporting state. The reason for that reversal, the report notes, is not known.
There may be no specific data, but given the sorry state of America’s public schools, it’s a good bet that parents are turned off by the indoctrination, the radical woke ideology, and the inability of the schools to provide a sound education for their kids.
Helping parents make this transition is the burgeoning homeschooling market. Everything from curriculum selections to specially tailored teaching methodologies to materials and supplies has expanded. Parents are increasingly finding that they can give their children a higher-quality education via homeschooling than with public schooling.
The likely biggest reason behind the growth of homeschooling has much to do with worldview. Parents want more control over what their children are being taught. With public schools pushing the Rainbow Mafia agenda, whether through library books or rainbow flags or “transgender” students using bathrooms and locker rooms opposite their biological sex, a growing number of parents are taking matters into their own hands.
Interestingly, the report also notes that it’s not the percentage of homeschoolers that is growing in relation to public schools but the total number. “The increase is even more interesting because the overall number of U.S. students is declining due in part to declining birth rates,” according to the report. "In other words, ultimately we see that the number of homeschooled students is going up as the total number of U.S. students is going down.“
That makes this growth in homeschooling even more impressive.