6 Reasons Why Homeschooling Is Growing So Rapidly

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Homeschooling has been growing since the 1980s and even more rapidly in the past couple of years. More and more families are stepping into the role of providing their children with essential intellectual, social, and moral education.

Here are 6 reasons why homeschooling is growing so rapidly:

Concerns about exposure to COVID-19 and other illnesses.
Schools are becoming dangerous places.
Parents provide a curriculum suited for their children.
Class sizes and school logistics make learning difficult.
Homeschooling is accepted as proper education.
Positive impacts of homeschooling show that it works.

This article will explore all of the reasons mentioned above in greater detail. To learn more about why homeschooling is growing so rapidly, read on.

1. Concerns About Exposure to COVID-19 and Other Illnesses

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 sent public and privately educated children home to learn virtually. This allowed parents to participate in their child’s learning process, giving them great insight into what and how their children were learning.

As children began to transition back to schools as they reopened, many parents started to explore the concept of withdrawing their children from public schooling and taking over their education with homeschooling. With parents on the verge of homeschooling anyways, this pandemic provided the tipping point and catalyst for them to transition to homeschooling.

Some concerns included parents that didn’t want their children to go back to school over the fears that they could contract COVID-19 themselves and bring it back into the household. Children with weakened immune systems, chronic illnesses, or family members with immunity issues could be at higher risk of severe health effects, including death.

And, some families were just not comfortable with the potential dangers of COVID-19 even if there were no family members with comorbidities.

Additionally, many states have increasingly required that children attending school are vaccinated against certain diseases and have taken their children out of the public schools to avert these requirements. Schools also mandated that children and teachers wear masks during the day to protect the children who were not vaccinated yet from the virus.

Today, with the potential of a mandated coronavirus vaccine added in, even more families are considering homeschooling.

2. Schools Are Becoming Dangerous Places

Safety is a top concern for homeschooling, as it seems as if there’s always something negative somewhere in the news that involves safety in a public school. An estimated 1.7% (2018) of students were victims of violent crimes in the United States, and 20.2% (2017) of students experienced school-related bullying.

These statistics indicate that these physically and emotionally unsafe environments led to parents withdrawing their children from schools. In addition, many families are experiencing anxiety over the coronavirus and protocols followed by school officials.

Homeschooling could reduce that anxiety significantly.

Increasing violence on school campuses makes parents want to protect their children physically and mentally from the stress and trauma of these events, which include:

Active shooters
Threats of guns and bombs
Physical altercations
Increased police presence
Bullying
Sexual misconduct from students and staff

Reducing a harmful and potentially volatile environment makes for a safe environment and less stress at home. This leads to an undistracted mind more open to learning.

3. Parents Provide a Curriculum Suited for Their Children

Parents have also been dissatisfied with school-based curricular offerings, a top reason for homeschooling in the past two decades. Many states require that homeschooled students work on math, reading, history, and so on.

However, there’s more parental control over precisely what these lessons look like.

The length and breadth of these lessons can be suited directly to their child’s needs and interests. There’s no waiting for other professionals to provide the mental or academic support children need now.

Due to the pandemic, children are on technological devices nearly all day. Regardless of device use or not, classes tend to follow the same daily structure and yearly courses offered to the general student population.

Increased focus on “passing the tests” and state testing mandates put undue pressure and expectations on students. Many parents feel that state testing emphasizes a canned curriculum that focuses on passing an exam rather than authentic learning.

It also allows children to have more options to explore their interests while learning. This can influence mentorship and internship possibilities for areas of interest and expanded education.

Morality and personal values that conflict with public school curricula have also arisen. Families that disagree with content or want more religious themes are a rationale for leaving the public school sector. Parents are also becoming increasingly intolerant of Critical Race Theory, transgender policies, degradation of the family unit, and racism in public schools.

These issues can potentially cause the development of a poor sense of national identity and cultural cohesiveness, resulting in a poor quality of education for students.

This, in turn, will affect the type of citizens these children will become and the societies that they’ll create. Homeschooling allows children to become free thinkers and innovators, which is incredibly important for future societies.

4. Class Sizes and School Logistics Make Learning Difficult

Families have found that homeschooling provides individual attention and efficient and practical lessons for their learners. Large class sizes have also led to much less support academically, poor management control, and distractions in the public school classroom.

Homeschooled children can work in a comfortable environment instead of a hard chair and desk. They don’t have to wait in lines for anything, including the bathroom or a drink of water. This gives students the opportunity and time to dive deeper into what they’re learning about.

They can have the emotional support to persevere through complex learning tasks without peer pressure or classroom structure that makes them stay quiet.

Homeschooling gives multiple learning alternatives for children, such as farm-schooling, homeschool pods, dual enrollment, and one-to-one attention. Students with learning or developmental disabilities or gifted needs can work through a curriculum in different ways specifically tailored to their needs, offering a new and beneficial way to learn.

Depending on your state, students can also still receive supportive services, such as speech therapy through the local school.

One-to-one attention provides homeschooled students opportunities for 1:1 tutoring for specific content needs instead of fighting for a teacher’s attention in a public school or being placed in an academic needs class with other students getting only a few minutes of individualized support.

Parental involvement and options for flexibility in educational lessons result in closer relationships essential for strong mental health.

5. Homeschooling Is Accepted As Proper Education

In 1998, laws were amended to ensure funding eligibility for homeschooled students going to college. As a result, higher institutions began to accept more homeschooled students, which spread to acceptance into other areas such as employment opportunities and the military.

While state laws and requirements vary on the logistics for homeschooling, this increased acceptance gave credibility to a homeschooled education, opening the door for more families to provide this to their children.

Homeschool was viewed as a place primarily for those wishing to include religious instruction, but after the amendment, more families began to view homeschooling exercised for various reasons.

6. Positive Impacts of Homeschooling Show That It Works

As a result of the reasons for homeschooling, the positive impacts and benefits are substantial for homeschooling.

These are:

Many children experience significant improvement in grades and learning attitudes in school and college. Homeschooled students have been found to have higher graduation rates and above-average scores on the SAT, ACT, and standardized tests.
Homeschooled children have above average emotional, social, and psychological development. This shows that homeschooling is a feasible approach for education. Children develop strong and positive relationships with their family members.
Due to technological advancement, many resources are readily available for homeschooling families to use, including textbooks, online courses, apps, and support groups. These resources are available from Pre-K through graduation, making high school level curriculum accessible and possible to implement.
Parents are more involved in their children’s learning curve as they interact daily.
Proper nutrition, physical activity, and sleep can be supported and encouraged to meet children’s needs. Illnesses can be managed well without the pressure of making up missed work and returning to schoolwork before they’re better.
Homeschooling provides more opportunities for volunteer work, service projects, athletics, and guidance in developing well-rounded citizens.
Families can develop life skills integrated into learning. This includes cooking, budgeting, and managing and organizing time. Often homeschool students will develop a strengthened sense of autonomy and independence since they’re part of what and how they learn.

Homeschool Statistics

Home School Legal Defense Association, known as HSLDA, is an organization that helps to protect the freedoms of homeschoolers and their families in legislatures and courts by providing affordable and legal advocacy.

HSLDA recently shared statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics showing that in 2017 3.3% of US school-aged children were homeschooled. In the Spring of 2020, the number grew to 5.4%, rapidly increasing to 11.1% in October. The growth continued to rise to a peak of 19.5% in May of 2021.