Why America’s Homeschool Boom Keeps Growing

How a fringe choice became a mainstream alternative

Julie Bogart grew up in Malibu in the 1970s, attending public schools where ex-hippie teachers organized Renaissance fairs for the entire seventh grade, led archaeological digs in the canyon, and took students nature-journaling at creeks. School felt less like an institution and more like an adventure in learning.

Years later, working as a teaching assistant in a Brentwood junior high, Bogart watched students hunched over workbooks and preparing for standardized tests. “Nothing about the way that school was taught reminded me of my childhood,” she tells The Preamble. When she started reading about homeschooling before having kids of her own, something clicked: “I want my Seventies education for my children. I can do what I had when I was a kid.”

Bogart homeschooled all five of her children at various points. All are now successful adults. She wrote The Brave Learner, a guide to homeschooling, and founded Brave Writer, a homeschooling company that has reached over 300,000 families. More surprising than her personal journey: she found the homeschooling surge that began during Covid-19 never reversed. It accelerated.

Julie Bogart

The number of homeschooled children in America rose from 2.5 million before the pandemic to 3.1 million in 2022 — roughly 3 percent of school-age children. Experts predicted families would rush back to traditional schools once buildings reopened. They were wrong.

“What COVID did for two years was it made everybody turn to homeschool,” says Susan Wise Bauer, author of Rethinking School and founder of Well-Trained Mind Press, which publishes nonsectarian homeschool materials. “The third year, most thought they’d return to normal life. A year later, they thought — well, maybe there’s something better.”

Many families arrive at homeschooling exhausted, looking for education alternatives for their children who are struggling in school. “There was this immense frustration with the failure of every institution they’ve tried to help their kid be okay,” Bauer, who was homeschooled herself in the 1970s and homeschooled her own four children, tells The Preamble. Covid didn’t create that frustration — it exposed it. Children emerged with more trauma, learning difficulties, and general angst than before.

What’s happening isn’t a temporary disruption. It’s parents discovering they’re responsible for, and want to take more ownership of, their children’s education.

What schools forgot to teach

Bogart teaches writing at Xavier University as an adjunct professor. What she sees troubles her. “Most of my students are not prepared to manage the demands of a university-level education,” she says. “Students often struggle to communicate ideas effectively, demonstrate critical thought, and respond to the scheduling demands of college.” The students who consistently excel? Homeschoolers and international students.

The gap isn’t about test scores. It’s about learning how to learn. When Bogart noticed students increasingly using AI to write papers, she understood why. They’ve spent years guessing what teachers want, filling in bubbles on standardized tests, performing education rather than experiencing it. “The only reason students use AI is because they don’t know how to think,” she says.

At home, learning looks different. Students spend a few hours on academics, but much of the day is left for clubs, sports, volunteering, and the kind of exploration that builds curious minds. “If you actually value what they have to say, and you give them a space to say it without grades, they love being heard,” Bogart says.

The results show up in her own children. Her oldest son is a self-taught programmer. Her next child is a therapist with a graduate degree. Another is a human rights lawyer who attended Columbia Law School on a full scholarship. “They’re just consummate learners,” she says. “It’s really fun to see [them] as adults.”

This matters more than ever. Companies no longer fixate on GPAs or standardized test scores. They want critical thinkers, effective communicators, self-directed workers — exactly what homeschooling cultivates when it’s done well. Traditional schools, optimizing for metrics that matter less each year, accidentally created the conditions for their own disruption.

The alternatives being built

What makes the shift to homeschooling sustainable is infrastructure. Families aren’t simply keeping kids home. They’re building alternatives.

Homeschooling co-ops have exploded nationwide. These groups meet weekly, with parents teaching classes or hiring instructors. Some focus on academics, others on enrichment — art, marine biology, physical education. In Belfast, ME, Calvary Belfast Academy started during the pandemic with 60 students. Three years later, enrollment hit 120, with a waitlist. Haven Homeschool Collective, which welcomes both religious and secular families, now operates three Maine campuses serving over 200 students. Maine’s Homeschool Sports League has more than 1,000 participants. Ohio homeschoolers organize statewide conferences drawing 1,000 attendees.

“Homeschooling can be very isolating if you allow it to be,” Angelica Larrabee, who homeschools three children, told The Maine Monitor. “I think that it’s been really helpful to have those connections.” Her kids attend a Belfast co-op weekly. They’re not missing socialization, she insists. They’re swimming in it.

Around the country, hybrid schools have emerged where students attend class with teachers two days a week and are homeschooled three days. This model serves families who want structure without surrendering control.

Curriculum companies have also proliferated. Bogart’s Brave Writer serves 18,000 member families. Other companies offer complete programs, online classes, or à la carte resources. YouTube, Khan Academy, and specialized sites make expert instruction available to anyone with internet access. Some states now fund homeschooling through education savings accounts.

From religious movement to mainstream alternative

The stereotype of isolated religious families teaching creationism at kitchen tables is decades out of date. Today, 41 percent of homeschoolers are non-white or non-Hispanic. Parents cite concerns about school environment — including drugs, bullying, and safety amid a school shooting epidemic — as the top reason for homeschooling, followed by dissatisfaction with academic instruction. Only about half mention religious instruction as a factor.

But beneath these statistics lies a tension. Homeschooling has split into two movements that share little beyond a name.

When homeschooling became legal state by state in the 1970s and 1980s, the groups fighting for that right were almost entirely evangelical organizations motivated by religious considerations. They built the infrastructure of the homeschooling movement that still dominates today. Google “homeschool association“ for any state, and conservative Christian groups appear first. The websites don’t always make this obvious, but dig deeper and you’ll find Tucker Carlson keynoting conventions.

“One of the directions is the parents saying, I’m not ideologically opposed to putting my kid in school. It’s just not working,” Bauer says. “But there is, and continues to be, a really strong and increasingly Christian nationalist” strain that views public schools — which they call “government schools” — as illegitimate.

She knows this world intimately. Despite her credentials and experience, she’s been banned from Virginia’s state homeschool convention. The reason: “I talked too much about psychology and not enough about the Bible.”

The divide isn’t just theological. It’s about whether the state has any legitimate interest in children’s education. “Part of their theology is that the family is the center of all culture, and so the family must have complete and total control over the children,” Bauer explains. “Yielding any control to the state over children is a moral failing.”

The regulation battle

Regulation of homeschooling varies wildly. Twelve states require no notification to the government that children are being homeschooled. Others, like North Dakota, require families to notify districts, teach specific subjects, and test at certain grade levels. Ohio requires annual notification and end-of-year assessments. Pennsylvania and New Jersey have much tighter regulations. Virginia requires almost nothing if parents have a college degree.

Some states are now considering stricter oversight amid concerns about educational neglect and abuse. The response reveals the fault line.

Groups that fought to legalize homeschooling in the 1970s and 1980s now organize against any accountability measures. “The people who start standing up and waving banners are the folks who are more on the Christian-nationalist spectrum,” Bauer says. They view oversight as government overreach into family sovereignty.

“I’ve taken quite a bit of heat for saying homeschool parents should be accountable,” Bauer says. She had her children tested annually and submitted paperwork to the state. For parents who simply want their children to succeed, oversight isn’t oppression — it’s reassurance.

“The core conflict is going to be between the parents who are looking for the best way to educate their kid and are willing to accept some oversight in order to do that well, and the parents who absolutely reject that their state, their county, their school board, the government has any say in what they do with their kids,” Bauer says. “That’s the big divide.”

Bogart agrees. “I do believe in accountability,” she says. “I do not think that’s unreasonable.” But she draws a line at state control over curriculum, which would eliminate homeschooling’s core advantage: the ability to tailor education to each child.

The result is a movement split between those who view homeschooling as the best educational option for their child and those who view it as an ideological imperative. The groups that built homeschooling’s infrastructure did not do it for the same reason many families choose homeschooling today.

The cost to public schools

Regional School Unit 22 in Maine serves four towns. Since 2019, its share of homeschooled students has nearly tripled. More than 200 students who live in the district were homeschooled last year. Each one costs the district between $8,500 and $9,000 in lost state funding.

“We have less students and less funding, but the needs are growing,” Superintendent Nicholas Raymond told the local press. He points to increased demands for safety, special education, and pre-K programs. “That puts a burden more on the local residents than anything else.”

The pattern repeats everywhere. In Virginia, homeschooling has grown 221 percent over 20 years. In Ohio, numbers have surpassed pandemic peaks, reaching 53,000 students last year. In Florida, homeschooling increased 46 percent since 2020, hitting 155,000 students. The trend mirrors what happened to American farms over the last decade. Just as economic pressure made small farm operations unsustainable, loss of resources and systemic dysfunction are making public schools unsustainable for families that have options.

Parents across the political spectrum arrive at the same conclusion through different doors. Some conservative families object to critical race theory, sex education, or discussions of gender identity. Some liberal families object to book bans and sanitized history. Black families cite persistent racism and low expectations. Families with special needs children find schools unable to provide adequate support.

The specifics differ. The outcome is the same: parents voting with their feet.

“This isn’t a pandemic hangover; it’s a fundamental shift in how American families are thinking about education,” Angela Watson of Johns Hopkins University’s Homeschool Hub, which tracks homeschool enrollment and research nationwide, told Reason magazine.

What comes next

Bogart never planned to homeschool all five children through graduation. She evaluated each child, each year, adjusting as needs changed. Some thrived entirely at home. Others needed different environments at different stages. All succeeded because their education was designed for them, not imposed on them.

The revolution isn’t homeschooling itself. It’s the realization spreading among American parents that education doesn’t have to look like school. That sitting in classrooms for seven hours a day, five days a week, isn’t the only way — or even the best way — to learn. That the system built to serve millions of students might not serve their particular child.

Public schools still educate the vast majority of American students. Many do it well. But the growth of homeschooling reveals what happens when parents catch a glimpse of alternatives: increasing numbers choose not to return. Not because they’re against public education, but because they’ve discovered an approach that works better for their families.

Bogart remembers those Malibu Canyon field trips, the ex-hippie teachers who made learning feel like discovery. That’s what she wanted for her kids. Two decades ago, she took the leap and discovered she could provide it herself. Today, hundreds of thousands of families are making the same discovery — not as a rejection of traditional schooling, but as an embrace of something different. For them, homeschooling isn’t the fringe anymore. It’s just school.