A pandemic-era boom has fundamentally changed the face of American home schooling, transforming a group that has for decades been dominated by conservative Christians into one that is more racially and ideologically diverse, a Rather than religion, home-schoolers today are likely to be motivated by fear of school shootings, anxiety over bullying and anger with the perceived encroachment of politics into public schools, the poll finds.
In a 2012 federal survey, nearly 2 in 3 home-school parents listed a desire to provide religious instruction as a reason for home schooling. That dropped to about half of parents in 2016 and 2019 federal surveys. Pundits, policymakers and journalists have speculated about families’ motivations ever since the number of home-schooled children began to rise dramatically at the start of the pandemic. But that guessing game has largely taken place in a vacuum of credible data: The federal government’s last survey of home-school parents was in 2019.
- More open to public schooling. About 7 in 10 parents who began home schooling since the start of the pandemic say they would consider sending their child to a local public school in the future, compared to about half of those who started earlier. The post-covid group is also more likely to have another child in the family enrolled in public school.
Interviews with new home-school parents suggest many were intrigued by home schooling before the pandemic but wouldn’t have tried it absent the abrupt school closures in March 2020. While many parents were anxious to get their children back into school, some found they liked having their kids at home.
That sentiment stands in dramatic contrast to earlier generations of parents for whom home schooling signaled a philosophical commitment to protecting their children from what some derisively called “government schools.”Ashley Perisian helps her son Hendrix Perisian, 7, with a writing exercise during a home-schooling session in Buffalo, Minn. Hännah Woods’s son wasn’t even in school yet, but she was terrified that a gunman might walk into the building and terrorize his school.
And 58 percent of home-schoolers worry about bullying. About 1 in 10 home-school parents volunteered this as their main reason for home schooling.Tiffini Cavitt’s daughter was harassed on social media and at her middle school, where kids would try to find her and start fights, she said. It left the girl with crippling anxiety. Officials in her Baltimore County school, her mom added, weren’t helpful.
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