Homeschooling Doubles in the United States During Government Pandemic Lockdowns

Published: Wed, 03/24/21

Hello, , from NHERI and Dr. Ray.

Homeschooling Doubles in the United States During Government Pandemic Lockdowns:

Evidence That State Policies Cause Homeschool Growth

The Context

More empirical evidence shows that homeschooling doubled in the United States during the government pandemic lockdowns. The growth occurred from the 2019-2020 institutional school year to the 2020-2021 year, to perhaps as many as 5 million school-age children. The latest data come from the United States Census Bureau.

Government restrictions and lockdowns forced most children around the world to stop attending institutional schools during at least a portion of the past year. Many called the new learning environment for school children things such as pandemic schooling at home and crisis homeschooling. All the while, many researchers and others wondered what impact government reactions to Covid-19 (or, Coronavirus, influenza-like-illness, reports of unusual numbers of certain age groups dying, et cetera) would have on the size of the homeschool population.

Within this conversation, it should be kept in mind that homeschooling is parent-directed, family- and home-based private education schooling (Ray, 2021a). “Parent-directed means the parents have deliberately chosen to take responsibility for the education of their children, controlling both the education process and the curriculum (course of study). Family-based means the center of educational gravity is the home, with other resources being secondary” (homeschoolingbackgrounder.com, 2020). Homeschooling is not public school or private school at home or public or private virtual or online schooling. Homeschooling is also not some version of the institutional school-directed education of children with them also spending two or three days per week at home.

Ray (2021b) estimated that there were an estimated 4.0 to 5.0 million homeschool students in grades K-12 in the United States (or 7% to 9% of school-age children) in January of 2021, while there were about 2.5 million homeschool students in the spring of 2019 (or 3% to 4% of school-age children). His estimates, however were built on a limited number of sources of data, such as the excellent forward-looking work of McDonald (2020) and sources such as those she cites. On March 22, 2021, the United States Census Bureau (2021a) provided another source of data and statistics.

Methods

The U.S. Census Bureau compared survey results from the spring of the 2019-20 school year to results in the fall of the 2020-21 school year “… to measure the pandemic’s impact on homeschooling.” They used the Household Pulse Survey to do this.

. . . . . [continue research article] And please see comments below.

--Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.

National Home Education Research Institute

P.S. Your donations help NHERI and Dr. Ray (1) keep up with new research to give you the facts on what is happening in the United States and around the world regarding homeschooling research, freedoms, and insights and (2) be ready to speak to scholars, journalists, courts, policymakers, and parents. NHERI is receiving no tax dollars to do its work and serve the public.

Two ways to help NHERI:

1. Send a check to: NHERI, PO Box 13939, Salem OR 97309 (using a check puts the largest percent of your gift to work at NHERI)

2. Donate online.

Keywords, Categories, Tags:

homeschooling, home education, home-based education, Covid-19, pandemic, growth, population size, research, statistics

NHERI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Contributions are tax-deductible per law.

NHERI, PO Box 13939, Salem OR 97309 USA www.nheri.org

# # #