What It Means to Home-School |
In December of last year, the parenting team decided that we wanted to do a series of articles about home-schoolers. We wanted to take a closer look at this diverse, passionate and growing movement. |
Then the pandemic hit. Though distance learning isn’t the same as home-schooling, coronavirus-related school closures made millions of parents much more deeply acquainted with learning outside the confines of a classroom. And our look at families who educate their children at home felt even more urgent. |
Andrea Dennison, Ph.D., an assistant professor of school psychology at Texas State University who has studied why some parents choose to home-school, said that these families are motivated by a desire for control over their children’s education that probably seems very appealing in this moment; rather than waiting to hear about whether your kid’s school will be in-person, and fretting about the curriculum, you could take matters into your own hands. “Reclaiming that autonomy, that decision-making ability for your child and their needs, is at the forefront of every parent’s mind right now,” she said. |
Let’s first define our terms. The National Center for Education Statistics, or N.C.E.S., calls students “home-schooled” if they are in a traditional school setting less than 25 hours a week, if they are not being home-schooled because of a temporary illness or if their parents say they are home-schooled. |
Using that definition, the percentage of home-schooled children in the grades equivalent to kindergarten though 12th grade increased modestly over the past couple of decades: to 3.3 percent, or 1.7 million students, in 2016 from 1.7 percent, or 850,000 students, in 1999, per the latest data from the N.C.E.S. |
According to the survey, in 2016 the top three reasons parents chose to home-school were concerns about the school environment (whether because of negative peer interactions, drugs or general safety), a dissatisfaction with academics at their schools, and a desire to provide religious instruction. Even though the N.C.E.S. did not ask its questions exactly the same way between 1999 to 2016 to allow for a clean comparison, said Sarah Grady, the study director of the National Household Education Surveys Program, parents’ reasons for home-schooling have remained fairly consistent since the ’90s. |
Those findings jibe with the motivations cited by the families we profiled. Some like home-schooling because they were unhappy with mainstream school options they felt were culturally insensitive and even demeaning. Others felt their children were better served by “unschooling,” a method that encourages kids to learn through experience and exposure, rather than through traditional lessons. Yet others were deeply religious, and wanted to keep their children protected from the influences of the wider world for as long as they could. Read all their stories here. |
We also have a fascinating piece by Lyz Lenz, a writer who was home-schooled with her seven siblings as a child. She interviewed five of her brothers and sisters, along with her parents, about how they feel, decades later, about having been home-schooled. And we also write about the volunteers who are making sure that migrant children stuck at the border between the United States and Mexico get a quality education in difficult circumstances. |
The majority of the families we featured chose to home-school before the coronavirus pandemic. Considering the seismic effects the virus has had on education, we also wanted to know: Are more families interested in taking their children out of traditional schools this fall and beyond? |
Feelings around distance learning in the spring were decidedly mixed, and two-thirds of U.S. parents with kids in elementary, middle or high school were concerned about their children falling behind when schools were closed in April, according to the Pew Research Center. It’s worth noting that the pandemic has affected many home-schooling families, too — they were cut off from the educational trips and local home-schooling communities they may rely on for socializing. Many are also are dealing with financial and health concerns, as well. |
So we partnered with Morning Consult, a data intelligence and market research company, to survey 1,075 parents from across the United States. In open-ended responses, several families who didn’t home-school before the pandemic were surprised to find that, post-shutdown, their children seemed to do better outside a traditional school environment. |
Many cited unchecked bullying and special needs that were not supported appropriately as reasons for why their kids are happier learning at home. Others felt their children enjoyed academics more outside a traditional setting. One mother said that in a regular classroom her son was bored, and, as a result, he became disruptive. “He’s really blossomed with home-schooling!” |
It’s far too soon to know whether the desire to home-school will remain in these parents after the threat of a deadly virus no longer looms. (As one survey respondent lyrically put it, “There is absolutely no way I will be sending my children into the caldron of germs.”) It’s worth noting that the parents who have been able to home-school tend to be two-parent families who can survive on one income. It’s very difficult to educate young children and also work from home; it’s nearly impossible to do it if your paid work involves leaving the house. |
Still, even for parents like me, who will kiss the stone steps of our public elementary school when it’s safe for my children to return, the pandemic has made us think more intentionally about the kind of school experience we want for our kids. As Dr. Dennison, the school psychologist who studies home-schoolers, explained it, “I think this moment is an invitation for adults to think deeply about what they desire, truly, for their children in the future, and to ask critical questions that will lead them perhaps to some unexpected answers.” |
| Parenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories. |
After a particularly hard home-school day, when my daughter complained she didn’t want to home-school anymore, I decided to think about the most fun days at school and start doing those — we have invented a daily theme, e.g., crazy hair day, mismatched sock day, wear something blue. We keep a calendar in the kitchen for the month. It gave us all something to look forward to for the next day. — Misty Bennett, Mount Pleasant, MI |
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