Just in time for Christmas, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has finally released its latest figures on homeschooling – the gift at the top of any homeschool researcher’s list! This is a big deal. If you’ve read much homeschooling literature you’ve seen NCES’ 2003 data used over and over, because it’s the best we’ve got for estimating the national population of homeschoolers. In 2003 NCES estimated that 1.1 million children were being homeschooled (2.2% of school-age children). The new estimate for 2007 is 1.5 million (2.9%). This is a 36% increase in four years.
The report is so brief everyone should just click on the link above and read it through rather than read a summary from me. But some of its findings are really surprising to me and challenge some of the assumptions I’ve been making of late, so let me mention them. I had begun to believe, based largely on the statistics reported by some states and on declining attendance at some of the biggest state homeschooling conventions, that homeschooling was not growing as fast in the last few years as it had in the past. If the NCES sample is an accurate representation of national trends, I was wrong. It must be noted that by the survey’s definition of homeschooling students enrolled in virtual schools are included in the tally, but nevertheless, this is big news.
A couple of other findings surprised me as well. The 2007 figures show a significant increase of parents who say they homeschool for religious reasons (from 72% in 2003 to 83% in 2007), and a decrease of parents who say they do so because of a child’s special needs (from 29% to 21%). But at the same time, the survey found a significant increase of parents who chose homeschooling for “other reasons,” (from 20% to 32%) confirming me in my belief that homeschooling is appealing to an increasingly heterogeneous group of people for a wide range of reasons. (Parents surveyed could give more than one reason for homeschooling)
Finally, it should be noted that there is a methodological margin of error that makes it possible that the figures NCES reports here are either too high or too low. We are dealing with extrapolations from a limited sample. But it is the best data we’ve got, and we’ll certainly be seeing it over and over for the next several years.
As you’ve noted, the new NCES report extrapolated data across a population of a million and a half people from interviews with parents of just 290 homeschooled students. While I’m a big fan of NCES reports as well, and value them above NHERI data for reasons which you’ve stated in the past, I’m not sure how much stock one can put in the smaller details of why people choose to homeschool from such a small survey population.
Our Tapestry of Homeschool survey with nearly 1000 homeschool participants came up with some different results, including the fact that 80% were homeschooling for nonreligious reasons. Our survey doesn’t purport to speak for the homeschool population at large, though, only for those participating in the survey. But I think that’s a significant figure.
I think the picture Tapestry participants present is a rich and varied one that goes far beyond the data points in an NCES report, and provides a far more textured and richly human look at who we are and why we do what we do. I’m not sure how accurate any statistical look at homeschooling can be with respect to “trends.” I think it continues to be a highly individualistic practice, among a richly diverse population.
Theresa Willingham
Learning is for Everyone
http://www.learningis4everyone.org
I’m confused here! What you said in your article, and what the 2003 data supports, was (quote): “70 percent of respondents cited a NON-religious reason as the top motivator in their decision to home school.” That’s also what the pie graph shows in that article.
But above, you write: “The 2007 figures show a significant increase of parents who say they homeschool for religious reasons (from 72% in 2003 to 83% in 2007).” Which is not what you said in Education Next.
On the other hand, it IS what the report on new data says … though, seemingly, NOT what the statistics within the report say. (While the text says that 83 percent are motivated mainly by religious reasons; I added up the figures, and it seems to show that some 65 percent are motivated by NON-religious reasons! A drop, yes, but a different kind of drop.)
I’m just a casual reader, homeschooling mom, and journalist. But it seems to me there’s a typo somewhere — either the original article (including a wrong pie graph), or the blog post above, or the recent research report. At any rate, it’s clearly a case of, “Let’s double-check!” So that’s what I’m doing. Clarification?
Dear curious,
It is confusing. Part of the problem is that NCES keeps changing how they ask the motivation question. This time around they didn’t ask for a “main” reason at all. Plus the way it was worded–conflating moral and religious reasons–I think probably led to an over-report of this variable. Who doesn’t have moral reasons for homeschooling? One need not be a conservative Christian to have a moral motive. I’m working on a longer, more thorough discussion of the NCES data and its fit/lack of fit with state data. I’ve got a lot more state data on a file now, but I’m not quite ready to post it yet. Stay tuned!
I should also note that NCES hasn’t released the full data yet. We’ll eventually get their stats on variables like minority homeschooling rates and so on. Hopefully in the fuller report we’ll get clarification on this religious/moral motivation question.
I agree on the conflation issue — it’s an oddly worded question — but I’m still stuck on the following two contradictory lines in the NCES winter 2008 issue brief you’ve linked to, eg:
“From 2003 to 2007, the percentage of students whose parents reported homeschooling to provide religious or moral instruction increased from 72 percent to 83 percent.
“The reason reported by the highest percentage of homeschoolers’ parents as being most important was to provide religious or moral instruction (36 percent).”
So, which is it? 83 percent or 36 percent? I’m tempted to make jokes about fuzzy math, but what I’m really suspecting is that the writer who put together the NCES issue brief just flubbed in crafting an accurate summary for laymen, the editor never caught it, and the error is now getting quoted.
If it’s 83 percent, then it’s really a stop-the-presses moment, since apparently in 2003, as you said in Education Next, “70 percent of respondents cited a non-religious reason as the top motivator in their decision to home school.” If 83 percent now DO cite a religious reason, then only 17 percent DON’T, which means the number of parents giving non-religious reasons as their primary motivation for homeschooling has dropped from 70 percent to 17 percent.
Things don’t usually work like that, at least not on this side of Alice’s looking glass. Curioser and curioser!
I think the key is the “most” part of “most important.” The 2007 study didn’t ask parents to rank their reasons like the 2003 study did. Since that decision was made, we just don’t know what the “top” motivator is this time around. Parents this time were allowed to report as many motivators as they wanted, and for 83% of homeschooling families surveyed, religion and morality play at least some role in their motivations for homeschooling. That doesn’t mean that it’s their top reason.
The NCES brief does note that their methodology changed on this issue and that it is therefore impossible to compare these results to those of 2003 or earlier. I do wish they had maintained continuity with earlier studies so we could make longitudinal comparisons. As your comments illustrate, lots of people are very interested in the percentage of homeschoolers who are and are not religious conservatives. Unfortunately this new data doesn’t help us very much on this question.
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