Homeschooling Is Growing Ever Faster — Article in The Economist

Because of the holidays I missed this article about homeschooling in The Economist until today. The article explains that homeschooling has increased dramatically over the past thirty years. One thing I didn’t realize is that there are about as many homeschooled students now (estimated to be about 2 million) as there are students who attend charter schools.

Another interesting statistic I hadn’t heard was, ” In 2007 a report found that Muslim children were one of the fastest-growing groups; black-home schoolers are around 4% of the total and comprised 61,000 children.”

Again, if you’d like to read that article, you’ll find it here: Keep It in the Family, Homeschooling is Growing Ever Faster.

The article reminds me of a graphic made by Peter and his team that I shared here on the blog last May.   It celebrates many of the positives of homeschooling.  As I said back in May, I have WAY too many friends whose (brilliant, wonderful, motivated, amazing) kids attend public school to agree that mine will “dominate” or “take them down” but I do like how this graphic presents many of the statistics about the successes of homeschooling:

Homeschool Domination
Created by: CollegeAtHome.com

7 Responses

  1. Kim says:

    I have also noticed that the rising trend has a lot to do with home schooled children, as adults, decide to home school their own children. Many home school families started that way due to children with medical issues, in the circles I`m familiar with. The siblings grow up understanding that this is healthier for the one, and it starts them thinking maybe there is more to it being `better for them` than just health.
    I may have resented being home schooled around high school, but looking back now I would not have made any different decision in my parents shoes.

    • Liesl Den says:

      That’s really interesting! I wonder if ‘anyone’ will start tracking that kind of information. I know there was a recent article about how well homeschoolers have done/are doing in college (in fact, I’ve had it on my ‘to-do’ list for a long time to read through the article and share that info/link here, but haven’t gotten around to it yet). Anyway, since homeschoolers seem to be coming out well adjusted and very successful academically it makes sense that many would choose that for their own kids.

  2. Jenny says:

    That was an interesting article- it’s amazing how quickly homeschooling is growing. It would be interesting to know where the statistic for the number of religious homeschoolers came from- that seems awfully high to me.

    • Liesl Den says:

      I’m not sure where they got their statistics. The main source of educational statistics that I know of is the “National Center for Educational Statistics.” They have charts about all aspects of education in the US including homeschooling. This is a link to the statistics for 1999, 2003 and 2007 http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_040.asp This includes information about the gender and race of homeschooled children, number of kids in the household, number of parents working in the household, household income, where they live (urban, suburban, rural) and the highest education of the parents. It doesn’t address whether homeschoolers claim a particular religion.

      Another person who researches homeschool statistics is Dr. Brian Ray over at the National Home Education Research Institute — http://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschooling.html. He points out that most parents start home educating their children for more than one reason. You can read more over at the link!

      Great question, that sure got me thinking!

  3. Jenny says:

    That was an interesting article- it’s amazing how quickly homeschooling is growing. It would be interesting to know where the statistic for the number of religious homeschoolers came from- that seems awfully high to me.

    • Liesl Den says:

      I’m not sure where they got their statistics. The main source of educational statistics that I know of is the “National Center for Educational Statistics.” They have charts about all aspects of education in the US including homeschooling. This is a link to the statistics for 1999, 2003 and 2007 http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_040.asp This includes information about the gender and race of homeschooled children, number of kids in the household, number of parents working in the household, household income, where they live (urban, suburban, rural) and the highest education of the parents. It doesn’t address whether homeschoolers claim a particular religion.

      Another person who researches homeschool statistics is Dr. Brian Ray over at the National Home Education Research Institute — http://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschooling.html. He points out that most parents start home educating their children for more than one reason. You can read more over at the link!

      Great question, that sure got me thinking!

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