Homeschooling Hits Record Numbers

An anonymous reader shares a report: '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).

The latest figures likely underestimate growth in homeschooling since not all DIY families abide by registration requirements where they exist, and because families who use the portable funding available through increasingly popular Education Savings Accounts to pay for homeschooling costs are not counted as homeschoolers in several states, Florida included. As a result, adds Watson, 'we consider these counts as the minimum number of homeschooled students in each state.'

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