Percentage of Homeschoolers Has Doubled

The percentage of homeschoolers in the United States has officially doubled according to the latest research from the National Center for Education Statistics.

The report indicated that in 2012, the homeschooling rate was 3.4%, up from 1.7% in 1999 when estimates were first reported. The actual number of homeschooled students between the ages of 5-17 in the United States was estimated at 1.8 million.

The executive summary also provided the following statements regarding the learning context of homeschooled students:

* Approximately 25% of homeschooled students had parents who took a course to prepare for their child’s home instruction.

* The percentage of high school and middle school students who took online courses was right around 35%.

* The most frequently cited sources of curriculum included websites, public libraries, and homeschooling catalogs.

Why parents are homeschooling today was less clear in the study; however, religious or moral instruction was still cited as a very important reason.

“In 2007…it was the top-ranked ‘most important’ reason for home-schooling that year,” wrote Emma Brown in The Washington Post. “In 2012, that share appeared to fall…but the question was asked differently, with religious and moral instruction as two separate reasons instead of one combined reason, so it was not immediately clear whether the numbers represented a real change in parents’ motivations.”