
Homeschooling Numbers Continue to Rise — But Why?
By Movieguide® Contributor
Homeschooling is still on the rise after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, a new report finds.
A study done by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy’s Homeschool Research Lab analyzed the homeschooling rate in 21 states over the course of the 2023-2024 school year.
“Of those twenty-one states [studied], nineteen reported an increase,” the report noted, adding, “Only two show a decline” — Vermont and New Hampshire.
The study reported “a clear growth trend in homeschooling” but concluded that “the reason for that growth is unknown.”
“What is clear is that this time, the growth is not driven by a global pandemic or sudden disruptions to traditional schooling. Something else is driving this growth,” they wrote.
Angela Watson, the director of the research lab that conducted the study, discussed the results with The Hill.
“I think everybody knows that homeschooling went up during the pandemic,” she said. “But people really thought that when schooling went back to normal, as the pandemic kind of waned, that everybody would go back to their normal way of educating. And so, every year, we keep thinking that the numbers are going to drop and the numbers are going to drop, and we keep not seeing that happening to the degree that we thought that it would in education circles.”
While the Johns Hopkins study came to no conclusions about the reason for the continued increase in homeschooling, other outlets have polled families who have decided to opt out of traditional school.
“32 percent of homeschooling families say they made that choice because their child has special needs that public schools can’t or won’t meet, and 28 percent say they homeschool because of a child’s psychological or behavioral issues,” Vox reported, adding that 34 percent homeschool for religious reasons.
Movieguide® previously reported on the increase in homeschooled students:
A new study reveals that homeschooling has continued to surge after over one million students left public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Homeschooling saw a 30% increase in 2021-2022 while public school enrollment fell by more than 1.2 million students within the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic,” The Christian Post reported.
The study from the Urban Institute found “private school enrollment increased by 4.3% between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2021. Data collected between the 2019-2020 school year and the 2021-2022 school year showed that homeschool enrollment rose by 30%.”
“[I]ncreased private school enrollment accounts for roughly 14 percent of the decline in public school enrollment, but increased homeschooling accounts for 26 percent,” Thoms S. Dee, the Barnett Family Professor of Education at Stanford University, explained.
“For every one-student increase in private schooling during the pandemic, homeschooling increased by nearly two students,” he added.