This post will eventually put together data on number of homeschooling children from every State that has it, providing links to the sources. The figures here given no doubt underreport the number of children being homeschooled, but even so they provide a good measure of enrollment trends over time. In the future I will repost this until it is complete, but for now here’s what I’ve got:
In each case the first row is the school year and the second the number of reported homeschoolers for that year. Thanks to Tim Bierne my excellent work study student for helping put this data together.
Connecticut:
|
00-01 |
01-02 |
02-03 |
03-04 |
04-05 |
|
2,193 |
2,266 |
2,418 |
2,269 |
2,166 |
[This information is provided by the Connecticut State Department of Education here.]
Montana:
|
04-05 |
05-06 |
06-07 |
07-08 |
|
3,971 |
3,987 |
4,183 |
4,098 |
[This information is provided by the Montana Office of Public Instruction here.]
New Hampshire:
|
02-03 |
03-04 |
04-05 |
05-06 |
06-07 |
07-08 |
|
3,621 |
3,597 |
3,710 |
3,790 |
3,958 |
4,039 |
The information is provided by the New Hampshire Department of Education here.]
Pennsylvania:
|
97-98 |
98-98 |
99-00 |
00-01 |
01-02 |
02-03 |
03-04 |
04-05 |
05-06 |
06-07 |
|
19,717 |
21,459 |
23,313 |
24,019 |
23,903 |
24,415 |
24,076 |
23,287 |
22,412 |
22,136 |
[This information is provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Education here.]
Vermont:
|
02-02 |
03-04 |
04-05 |
05-06 |
06-07 |
07-08 |
|
2,064 |
2,023 |
2,094 |
2,063 |
2,190 |
2,092 |
[This information was provided by Sharon Vivian, Administrative Assistant at the Vermont Department of Education on 12/1/08. She may be contacted by phone at (802) 828-3352.]
Wisconsin:
|
02-03 |
03-04 |
04-05 |
05-06 |
06-07 |
07-08 |
|
21,288 |
21,034 |
20,743 |
20,323 |
20,157 |
19,725 |
[This information is provided by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction here.]
From even so small a sample of States we can already see important patterns. In no state is homeschooling growing at anything like the pace it did during the 1980s and 1990s. Except for New Hampshire numbers have either been stagnant in recent years or have even declined a bit. Why?
The short answer is that I don’t know. Here are a few untested hypotheses:
1. In some states it may be the case that competition from publicly funded cybercharters has reduced the number of independent homeschoolers. This seems to be the case in Pennsylvania where I live.
2. But that can’t be the whole story, for states (e.g. Montana and Vermont) that don’t even have charter school laws are either not growing or even declining a bit.
3. Another possibility is that homeschooling may have appealed especially to a certain type of “baby boomer” parent, and the children of that type of parent are now for the most part beyond school age. I have no evidence for this claim, but I’ve long wondered if once the children of the boomers are grown homeschooling rates would decline.
4. Another related possibility is that homeschooling is more popular when “culture war” issues are more prominent in the national consciousness. The Clinton years, thanks to their economic prosperity and international peace, gave Americans the leisure to focus on cultural flashpoints like the politics of sexuality, abortion, and education-related issues. The Bush years, with their focus on anti-terrorism conflicts and more recently the economic downturn, have shifted national attention away from the issues that tend to galvanize opposition against public education. Moreover, for conservatives, Bush’s leadership of the nation and, symbolically, of the nation’s public schools, may have made opposition to public education a bit less intense of late. Again, I have no evidence for any of this. I’m just speculating.
I will add more State data to this list as I have the time. I would love to get comments from visitors to this site on this issue. What other factors might be contributing to the stagnation and even slight decline of homeschooling rates across the country?
is the first scholarly book-length treatment of its theme. It is available for purchase
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I’m curious to know how public school enrollment numbers have changed in recent years? Could it be there are fewer children among the demographics that are inclined to homeschool? From my own observations I’m guessing a larger percentage of children are from hispanic families, and they do not seem to make up a significant percentage of homeschoolers…
I am in California and the independant study charter schools (not just the cyber variety) definitely contribute to few independent homeschoolers.
Paula,
That’s a great question. Nationwide, enrollment has increased every year since 1990 and is projected to increase until 2016, according to the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/
Interestingly, though private school enrollment has also increased, it has not done so at the same pace, so that whereas 12.4 percent of American children attended private school in 1985, only 11 percent did in 2007. I’m inclined to see a possible parallel between a slow down of private school enrollment and of homeschooling.
Now this national data doesn’t account for population shifts that could lead to declining enrollments in some states. To cite just one example from the states I mentioned above, in Wisconsin public school enrollments have declined a bit from their 2002 high of 881,231 to only 874,663 for 2007. For this data see: http://www.dpi.wi.gov/lbstat/statewid.html
So it may be the case that in some states stagnant or declining numbers of homeschoolers are resulting simply from a smaller cohort of children.
Finally, your speculation about population shifts, especially immigration, might be on the mark. To use the Wisconsin data again, 79.5% of students in public schools were white in 2003. By 2008 the percentage of whites had dropped to 76.8%.
It could be that nationwide, the percentage of people most likely to choose homeschooling (single income, two parent white families) is shrinking. Here’s a good chart representing the changing demographics of children in the United States: http://www.childstats.gov/AMERICASCHILDREN/demo.asp
Dr. Gaither,
Your blog is fascinating and I have only scratched the surface of your writing. You may see more comment from me in the future.
I would like to comment on this particular writing as I have some personal experience with homeschool student data collection here in my state.
I was personally involved in the collection of data regarding homeschooled students in my school district. Previous to my involvement I found that in 95% of the time that the data was handled in such a manner as to not give a true representation of the numbers of students being homeschooled at the October student count date.
More times then I can count the registration forms on file with the school district were destroyed at the end of the public school year inspite of the fact that families were still homeschooling. Our state law states that a family can file their form at any time of the year and that this form is good for one calendar year. They were throwing away from in May for families that had only filed in April. The one year that I was permitted to handle the data as per state statute it showed a 40% increase in homeschooled students on the October 1 count date.
I presented this to the administration and they just blew me off. I went on to research the numbers myself and call other districts in my state to find out about their numbers and we very disappointed with their attitudes. Some years they did not even report their number in spite of the fact that they may have had 600 students the year before, and I would question the accuracy of that number. One year you would see 600 students reported and the next year they would have none? This makes no sense.
My theory is that the manpower and $ that must be invested in maintaining an accurate homeschool count, that brings no revenue to the district, has no priority.
I hope this is making sense.
I homeschooled my kids for 18 years and am a very proud parent of two great adult kids.
I find this interesting, after looking at your Stats, and making a comparison to our local numbers, our community is definately not following the national trends. My wife and I are regional home school contact people in Montana. In the area that we live since 1989, the year we first became interested and involved in Home Education, we have gone from a dozen families notifying the County Superintendents office of public instruction of intent to Home Educate, to 52 families today. This growth has been steady, and we are at an all time record high, ten years ago we had 60% to 70% of our current numbers reporting. We also have a significant number of families who’s children are not yet reporting age, so in another few years we may see additional growth as well.
keep up the good work!
Kaya,
You make a great point. The most important article I’ve reviewed on this blog (Eric Isenberg’s “What Have We Learned About Homeschooling?”) says this about the State data:
“Haphazard data collection occurs because the burden of reporting homeschooling generally falls on the families rather than school districts. Districts gain no reimbursement from homeschooled children in their district and generally have little incentive to collect accurate information.” (p. 391)
Isenberg lists as exceptions to this California, Washington, and Wisconsin. He especially praises the Wisconsin data collection process and uses it extensively in his article.
Your story is very valuable. I notice from your website that you’re in Colorado. I’ll remember this when I get to that state’s data
Trevis,
Montana’s Office of Public Instruction website is difficult to navigate so it might be hard to find the source for my data. Once you get to the website’s main page, click on the top left-hand corner on “Ed Data.” Then on the left side put your mouse over “Enrollment.” You’ll see a PDF entitled “Nonpublic School Enrollment by County, 2004-2007.” If you click on that you’ll get the data set. To get my numbers I simply added up the totals for kindergarten, 1-8, and 9-12 education for each school year. If you look through the data you’ll see that some counties, like yours evidently, are growing in enrollment while others are declining. The overall result statewide is that there has been very little change in the past four years.
Data are also available for NC. NC tracks the number of homeschools and estimates the number of homeschoolers.
Year # homeschools registered Year over year change
1990 2479
1991 3315 25%
1992 4138 20%
1993 5415 24%
1994 6683 19%
1995 8171 18%
1996 9381 13%
1997 10925 14%
1998 12733 14%
1999 16623 23%
2000 20113 17%
2001 23909 16%
2002 26422 10%
2003 28746 8%
2004 31530 9%
2005 33690 6%
2006 36068 7%
2007 38367 6%
Source: http://www.ncdnpe.org/hhh200.htm
We have no cyber charters in NC.
Thanks Daryl. I’ll add the NC data next time I update this post.
Milton
In my state they do not gather data on home educators state wide because homeschoolers notify their local district superintendent of their intent, not the ODE.
I agree that with the poster’s theory “that the manpower and $ that must be invested in maintaining an accurate homeschool count, that brings no revenue to the district, has no priority.”
Not only do they not have the dollars to track homeschoolers, a few districts don’t even bother to comply with the law to send homeschoolers their excuse from compulsory attendance. When asked why, they replied that it is an unfundeded mandate and they are having trouble enough keeping up with the funded requirements.
I prefer them leaving us out of data gathering all together as I think homeschooling is very hard to represent accurately.
One other possibility was pointed out to me by a homeschool graduate who is himself a new father. We may be between two waves. When I was homeschooled in New Hampshire between 1989 and 1991 (my graduation year), I knew very few homeschoolers, and I was the oldest one. My wife had the same experience in Mississippi. In the next 10 years, I saw many more.
My wife and I just started homeschooling our children 2 years ago. Thus, it seems possible to me that in about 6-7 years, there may be an explosion, as many homeschool graduates will be reporting for the first time.
[...] Milton Gaither Several months ago, just prior to the new NCES data that was released, I posted enrollment data from six states that suggested a levelling off of homeschool [...]