Homeschooling Is Booming, and the Pandemic Has Little to Do With It

[SVPete]

Homeschooling Is Booming, and the Pandemic Has Little to Do With It

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2025/11/20/homeschooling-is-booming-and-the-pandemic-has-little-to-do-with-it-n4946214

Homeschooling has gone mainstream. In less than a generation, teaching children in the home has gone from a choice made by religious parents to the fastest-growing segment of educational choice in America.

"In the 2024-2025 school year, homeschooling continued to grow across the United States, increasing at an average rate of 5.4%," writes Angela Watson in the Johns Hopkins University School of Education's Homeschool Hub. "This is nearly three times the pre-pandemic homeschooling growth rate of around 2%," she added.

A third of the states that report homeschooling figures claim the highest homeschooling numbers ever, surpassing even numbers reached during the pandemic. That's the most surprising aspect of the boom in homeschooling.

"This isn't a pandemic hangover; it's a fundamental shift in how American families are thinking about education," comments Watson.
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"Five years after the pandemic's onset, there has been a substantial shift away from public schools and toward non-public options," Boston University's Joshua Goodman and Abigail Francis wrote last summer for Education Next.
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According to the Johns Hopkins Institute, using census data, about 2.8% of children were homeschooled in 2019. That number is now close to 6% and continues to climb.

Pew Research surveyed parents about why they pulled their child out of public school and decided to homeschool.

Newsweek:

The most common reason cited was concern about the school environment, including safety, drug exposure, or negative peer pressure, with 83 percent of parents saying it was a factor. Dissatisfaction with academic instruction at schools was also a top concern, cited by 72 percent. About half of parents said the desire to provide religious instruction and to provide a nontraditional approach to their children’s education were factors.

I'm mildly surprised that homeschooling growth has persisted and increase post-Covid. I can think of two reasons (of probably several): parents saw daily what was being taught in the children's PS; parents realized, over the shutdown time, that they could be very good teachers for their children. Parents also probably saw the kinds of resources available to homeschoolers and the support available in the close-knit homeschooling community.

This webpage from HSLDA summaries of various states' laws relevant to Homeschooling, https://hslda.org/legal . FWIW, the states whose laws are most restrictive/onerous are NY, MA, PA, and RI.

Back in the mid 80s when we decided to homeschool, our main concern was the academic decline in public schools, which has worsened. The prospect of strengthening our family and bypassing peer dependence were also a couple of our main concerns. If the term "generation" in the article means ~40 years, we were part of a large surge of religious homeschooler. Before that homeschooling was a varied fabric of religious people and people not happy with PSs focus on academics (se, e.g. "unschooling") and the one-size-fits-all methods.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

I feel, in their own special way, the teachers unions are a big driver.

[SVPete]

Homeschooling Hits Record Numbers

https://reason.com/2025/11/19/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).

There's some uncertainty in the numbers, since it's based on just 22 states. One of the states in which homeschooling is strongest, California, doesn't count homeschoolers as such. Most California homeschoolers do so by enrolling in an ISP (Independent Study Program) - which is usually a private school or part of a private campus-based school - or file the same affidavit that all private schools file annually. The R4 Private School Affidavit is a single-page 8 1/2" x 14" form that asks very basic info. It isn't intrusive. California does not have a distinct category for homeschoolers.