America is arguing about homeschooling. The data tells a different story.
The honest answer to who homeschools in America is a lot of different people, for a lot of different reasons, with a lot of different results.
Source excerpt
Lily Osgood, 7, corrects a math problem while studying at her family’s home, Tuesday, July 20, 2021, in Fairfax, Vt. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Last month, a viral podcast rant declared homeschooling a “huge problem” — the product of one kind of family, one kind of politics, one kind of faith.
As a researcher who has spent nearly a decade studying who actually homeschools in America, I’ve been watching all of this unfold with a familiar feeling: everyone is so certain, and almost no one is citing data.
Census Bureau survey data, roughly 6 percent of American K-12 students — about 3 million children — were reported as homeschooled in the 2023-24 school year, nearly double what it was before the pandemic.
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