Posted on 06/01/2021 10:37:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
Since public schools are spectacularly successful leftist recruitment centers, weakening public attachment to them through lockdowns was a dangerous move for Democrats.
Between May and October 2020, homeschooling more than doubled among U.S. households with school-age children, from 5.4 percent that spring to 11.1 percent that fall, according to new Census Bureau data.
Black and Hispanic Americans were the most likely to switch to homeschooling, while white and Asian Americans were the least likely. This could be due to the fact that African-American children are the most likely to be financially locked into poor-quality school districts, or that black Americans have been the most likely to exhibit COVID caution, or some combination.
All demographics reported large increases in homeschooling between spring and fall 2020, but black Americans increased homeschooling the most, quintupling from 3.3. percent to 16.1 percent.
The data show wide differences among states in the 2020 homeschooling surge. Families in Alaska showed the largest homeschooling increase, from 9.6 percent to 27. 5 percent, a 17-point jump. Florida went from 5 percent to 18 percent homeschoolers, and Vermont went from 4 percent to 17 percent homeschoolers, in the second- and third-largest homeschooling jumps by states in 2020, respectively.
Other states that saw 10 percent or more increases in homeschooling were: Massachusetts (from 1.5 to 12.1 percent), Mississippi (from 3 to 14 percent), Montana (from 8 to 18 percent), Nevada (from 2.5 to 13.1 percent), Oklahoma (from 7.7 to 20 percent), Vermont (from 4 to 17 percent), and West Virginia (from 5.4 to 16.6 percent). Homeschooling in New York increased seven-fold, from 1.2 to 10.1 percent, quadrupled in Kansas, tripled in Connecticut and North Dakota, and more than doubled in Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.
It seems pretty clear that their experiences governors and local governments constantly changing the rules and expectations in spring 2020, plenty of parents decided they were not going through that insanity again in the fall. Even when schools did open in person, would you send your child to a place that looks like this photo from a February 2021 Wall Street Journal story about Chicago schools? It looks like some kind of a dystopian novel. Or a prison.
Researcher Nicholas Zill points out that, while homeschooling has been gradually increasing over time in the United States, the 2020 jump is “unprecedented.” Here’s his chart.
Since lockdowns and the great school unsettling began, however, Congress has been showering deficit-funded billions on public schools that were largely closed to in-person instruction and hemorrhaging students. “Congress has included more than $192 billion for K-12 schools — roughly six times the amount of the fiscal year 2021 base federal funding — in the three big Covid relief bills passed since last March,” notes a recent CNN story. “Each piece of legislation sent more money to K-12 schools than the last.”
While Congress sends more money to support institutions that have horribly mismanaged their response to the COVID outbreak, public support has grown for instead giving parents more control and flexibility over education spending instead of relegating families to one-size-fits-nobody institutions. One April poll found among its highest support ever for school choice via parental control of education tax dollars, at 71 percent of respondents. A different poll that has measured public opinion on schooling monthly since the beginning of the lockdowns shows similarly high support for parent-directed education in its latest results.
The latter poll, from the organization EdChoice, also found 64 percent of respondents saying their opinion of homeschooling has become more positive “as a result of the coronavirus,” with just 21 percent saying COVID has made them less positive about homeschooling.
A question ripe for speculation is whether the dramatic increase in homeschooling will continue or fade with the pandemic. It’s impossible to foretell, of course, but important to note that dissatisfaction with public schooling has grown along with homeschooling over the past several decades, and current conditions suggest that dissatisfaction will only grow. For example, the critical race curriculum battles are reaching even into conservative communities.
Zill also points out that many of the underlying reasons parents traditionally homeschool are only increasing: lack of moral instruction and presence of a negative peer environment in public schools, as well as the availability of one parent at home. A Gallup poll this February found that 20 percent of parents had either quit a job or reduced their hours to help their kids with online schooling, and mothers who quit or were laid off during COVID lockdowns are still largely not back in the workforce.
In addition, there is evidence that once parents switch from government to private education, they typically like it much better. Parents who privately direct their children’s education, either in a private school or through homeschooling, report massively higher satisfaction with that education than do public-school parents. Here are two examples of that from the latest EdChoice poll, and it’s a consistent finding across surveys:
Realities like this are why the anti-scientific school shutdowns Democrats pushed at the behest of their union donors may come back to bite their behinds. Since public schools are spectacularly successful leftist recruitment centers, weakening public attachment to them through lockdowns was a dangerous move for Democrats. In short, their hubris has raised a nemesis.
As I wrote last summer, when two-thirds of Americans supported sending kids back to school in person yet most were denied that opportunity thanks to Democrats’ stranglehold on schools:
Once this exodus starts, it will be hard to stop. Parents have for years told pollsters that private education is their top choice, not public education. They haven’t left yet because it hasn’t gotten bad enough. Long-term coronavirus schooling is easily a tipping point towards ‘bad enough to finally leave.’ It will likely create a cascade effect of long-term parental divestment from public schooling.
Once this exodus starts, it will be hard to stop. Parents have for years told pollsters that private education is their top choice, not public education. They haven’t left yet because it hasn’t gotten bad enough. Long-term coronavirus schooling is easily a tipping point towards ‘bad enough to finally leave.’ It will likely create a cascade effect of long-term parental divestment from public schooling.
Excellent...
I don’t think you can say that’s because parents suddenly became pro-homeschooling or were protesting the woke curriculum in as much as the public schools just STOPPED. I’ve heard from lots of parents that thought the Zoom classes were just stupid.
Although I’ll be happy to see the trend continue.
The different levels of education between homeschooled and public school-educated students will become increasingly obvious at colleges.
In fact, with access to the academic training over the internet, homeschooled students may well be able to continue their homeschooling into the first two years of college.
Homeschooling is one of the remedies for government indoctrination centers. It’s good to see the number rise. Hopefully this will lead to wide spread unemployment of teachers and reduce tax burdens.
Gee. I wonder what occurred to push those rates so high?
/s
OUTSTANDING
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda.
unexpected...
Homeschooling is a great option, but not for everyone. We still need significant reforms as well as some sort of choice and competition.
Unionized public-sector government-school teachers have self-identified as non-essential.
Time to take them up on it.
Pay them to do it-vouchers. 3-4 hours in the morning. 2 hour recess in the afternoon on closed campuses. Then they watch educational movies while waiting for a ride home.
I agree here because a decent school with a normal curriculum (not the bat crazy methodology in use in some districts) should be demanding, something kids absolutely do need.
It also needs to be flexible, not all students will or should seek the same profession for many reasons.
It is unacceptable that homeschoolers pay for their kids education but are also asked to pay for the public schools other peoples children attend and theirs do not.
Covid is nothing new. Diseases like it have come and gone many times before. We are today merely able to see, test, and quantify the impact of a disease like Covid whereas in 1970 it would have been called a bad flu year. Likewise, child leukemia didn’t come about in the 1970s, we simple began seeing what has been going on all along.
That said, what Covid “should” teach us, is that packing kids into a confined space, with recirculating air, in a small lunchroom and cafeteria, might make sense industrially viewed (economy of scale, assembly line), but is a baaaaaaad idea if you’re talking about contagious diseases.
Maybe government that is of course in love with the idea of more government, and the teachers unions, should put an emphasis on homeschooling which has been delivering good results even when being sabotaged at times. You have two options, one is working well even with little help and delivering results, the other is plagued with issues and has a spotty record of success, and where does government put it’s money?
Reinforce success or reinforce failure?
Biden has a phone and a pen and a handler to tell him what to do. When he fails, he gets a timeout and no pudding.
Can we get a report on the number of school shootings in 2020?
I am not even joking. It would be interesting.
Some parents do nothing more than lie on the couch eating bonbons, drinking alcohol, shooting meth... whatever. Perhaps they have found that home schooling is easier for them. No more worries of having clean clothes for Johnny, No hair to brush at 6AM because the kids sleep till noon. Parking the kids in front of a computer and saying learn is the most effort needed. When the kids fail they can say “I really tried”.
Home schooling done well takes tremendous effort and time. I don’t have a lot of faith this is happening.
It depends on "how" you homeschool. I homeschooled my 2 younger kids from 6th/8th grade to graduation. Am now helping to homeschool 2 of my grandkids. If you do "Traditional" School at Home with timed tests, rote learning, set curriculum and dull textbooks it can be tough. But being imaginative, using all sorts of resources for learning, getting out in the real world and encouraging lots of reading, it just works! I let the kids discover their own paths to learning & it can be delightful. Yes, they need concrete math, language & science skills, but those fall into place easily.
I'm also thinking a lot of these parents are realizing just how much time is wasted in "typical" schools. 2 or maybe 3 hours a day is more than enough for elementary and Junior High... maybe add another hour for high school. Or send them to Community College early (they can test into some 1st term classes without an age requirement)
Many FREEPERS will be sadden by this. Just weeks ago they were demanding that the government indoctrination centers open immediately so their little munchkins could learn more about wokeness. If you missed the heavy demands that schools reopen, you would have been shocked. I certainly was stunned.
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