Posted on 11/02/2023 10:23:13 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Home schooling has become — by a wide margin — America’s fastest-growing form of education, as families from Upper Manhattan to Eastern Kentucky embrace a largely unregulated practice once confined to the ideological fringe, a Washington Post analysis shows.
The analysis — based on data The Post collected for thousands of school districts across the country — reveals that a dramatic rise in home schooling at the onset of the pandemic has largely sustained itself through the 2022-23 academic year, defying predictions that most families would return to schools that have dispensed with mask mandates and other covid-19 restrictions.
The growth demonstrates home schooling’s arrival as a mainstay of the American educational system, with its impact — on society, on public schools and, above all, on hundreds of thousands of children now learning outside a conventional academic setting — only beginning to be felt.
Obtaining accurate information about the home-schooling population in the United States is challenging. In 11 states, including Texas, Michigan, Connecticut and Illinois, officials do not require notification when families decide to educate their children at home or monitor how those students are faring. Seven additional states have unreliable tallies of home-schooled kids, The Post found.
The Post was able to collect reliable data from 32 states and the District of Columbia, representing more than 60 percent of the country’s school-age population. In 18 of those states, private and public school enrollment figures were available for comparison.
The resulting analysis — which includes home-school registration figures for nearly 7,000 individual school districts — is the most detailed look to date at an unprecedented period of growth in American home schooling.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
* In states with comparable enrollment figures, the number of home-schooled students increased 51 percent over the past six school years, far outpacing the 7 percent growth in private school enrollment. Public school enrollment dropped 4 percent in those states over the same period, a decline partly attributable to home schooling.
* Home schooling’s surging popularity crosses every measurable line of politics, geography and demographics. The number of home-schooled kids has increased 373 percent over the past six years in the small city of Anderson, S.C.; it also increased 358 percent in a school district in the Bronx.
* In 390 districts included in The Post’s analysis, there was at least one home-schooled child for every 10 in public schools during the 2021-2022 academic year, the most recent for which district-level federal enrollment data are available. That’s roughly quadruple the number of districts that had rates that high in 2017-2018, signifying a sea change in how many communities educate their children and an urgent challenge for a public education system that faced dwindling enrollment even before the pandemic.
* Despite claims that the home-schooling boom is a result of failing public schools, The Post found no correlation between school district quality, as measured by standardized test scores, and home-schooling growth. In fact, high-scoring districts had some of the biggest spikes in home schooling early in the pandemic, though by the fall of 2022 increases were similar regardless of school performance.
I’ve been wondering when the state &/or progressive school industry, in all it’s various forms, will begin to fabricate “reasons” why and petition for laws mandating that home-schooling be monitored, regulated, standardized with “acceptable” curriculum and oversight, etc.
The left siimply can’t allow for future adults to continue to be fairly and sensibly educated.
Btw, I don’t see how they can fully stop home-schooling until when/if the gov’t. goes full totalitarian.
But they can try.
Leftists are terrified that parents will actually teach their kids something outside of their bubble. I see this independence as a strength, not a weakness.
Only public pressure prevented these thought criminals from being returned to a place where Home Schooling is state controlled.
Washington D.C. 108% increase in homeboy schooling. Subjects today are ,Gang thievery, Car Jacking, Drug identification and retail. Rape and learning how to be a Dead beat Dad. These are high on the curriculum.
I can tell you how Deep State will do it: It will fine/tax parents who homeschool into poverty.
Unless we restore pur republic.
...our republic...
The further left the left moves the more “ideologically fringe” the right seems to be. It’s a matter of perspective.
The Teacher’s union and the Left in general will be terrified of this. This both removes kids from their attempts at indoctrination and removes them entirely from Leftist control. As Public School enrollment falls it threatens the taxpayer money going to one of their key constituencies - public school teachers/administrators.
Home schooling in Washington D.C. went from 10 to 28 students.
Ping!.....
This is a real-world indictment against the schools, teachers unions and woke administrators. How many more parents would homeschool, if they could? I suspect, a lot.
When you see school districts in areas like Baltimore which don’t have a single student doing reading or math at their level, homeschooling is one answer.
Regulation of schooling is almost entirely a state matter. A majority of states have Republican run legislatures and even RINOs are not willing to oppose home schoolers. Deep blue states are a different matter. Most Democrats in public office are beholden to thwart teachers' unions. When home schoolers threaten the viability of public school funding, you can expect a crackdown.
Public schools are more accurately called Government Schools
Public School Enrollment Over Time
Keep in mind two things: They're likely low-balling the decline. And that there are probably a bleepload of ghost students padding the enrollment.
We were in the second wave. In Michigan home schooling was outlawed until the early 1990’s. We began in 1995. At first, my wife made sure to keep the curtains closed but generally loosened up.
Time for a proud home school dad moment. One of our sons decided to become a trucker. He decided the Over the Road thing wasn’t for him so he recently took a job for a large landscape supply. He normally drives a semi but the other day, he was running a fully laden dump truck.
He sacrificed his truck and potentially his life to save the lives of a busload of school children. The bus drive apparently thought it was OK to pull out in front of a 40,000 lb dump truck. My son swerved hard and witnesses said had the truck on two wheels for what seemed like a long time before he finally rolled it over. The passenger side of the cab hit a bridge rail, absolutely crushing it. He survived with just a few bumps and bruises. Of course, the government school bus driver just kept going.
He didn’t get a good look into the bus to see how many children’s lives he saved.
There are two things to keep in mind when looking at this (and not having read more than the excerpt, so I don’t know if they cover this).
Some states had looser homeschooling rules to start with, so had higher rates to start with. So a giant increase really might be from 100 to 200, versus 10,000 to 11,000.
Second, I wonder how much correlational there is between Covid school shutdowns and rate increases. The stricter the lockdown (which varied by state) the larger the increase.
In Alabama, if one can’t produce their school records the community colleges, colleges, and universities have placement test that one can take to determine their qualifications for further education.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.