3. Homeschooling Statistics
Quick summary: The homeschooling population is growing fast, led by minorities. Exceptional learning outcomes, better social experiences, a more flexible schedule, remote work, and a general trend towards decentralization are all contributing to the rise of homeschooling and greater parent involvement in education.
Homeschooling is on the Rise
Modular learning = Better learning
Families are getting more involved and spending more money on their children’s education.
Technology is paving the way for innovative learning models
Standardized education isn’t working for most students and teachers
The nuclear family is changing
There’s a global trend toward decentralization
21 statistics and trends that show modular learning is the future of school
It seems that a day doesn’t go by without a famous investor, blogger, or politician predicting that “homeschooling is the future of school.”
“It certainly feels like we’re on the front end of a pretty dramatic homeschooling boom.”-Marc Andreesen (Invest Like the Best)
Over the past decade, new tools and technologies have changed how we think about education and family life. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have expanded access to free learning opportunities. In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”, the most popular Ted Talk of all time, inspired many families and teachers to start rethinking their views on the effectiveness of the traditional school model. Founded in 2008, Khan Academy made it easier for any family to homeschool than ever before. Documentary films like Class Dismissed gave families an inside look at what secular homeschooling can look like at its best (academic, social, diverse, eclectic), inspiring a new generation of families to start secular homeschooling.
But, the trend toward modular learning was supercharged in March 2020 when 300 million families around the world were forced into homeschooling overnight. A plethora of edtech startups emerged to support the new wave of modular learners: marketplaces for learning pods, adaptive learning apps, and online classes.
While most families returned to school post-pandemic, many chose to keep going. They experienced that homeschooling gave their family greater flexibility and improved their children’s learning.
The internet is full of statistics and studies on homeschooling run by organizations with private interests on one side of the debate or the other. We decided to sift through all the research and take an in-depth look at scholarly, peer-reviewed statistics and forecasts on homeschooling to determine if there are key indicators that prove homeschooling is really on the rise, what research suggests homeschooling can impact learning for the better, and how trends in other industries such as remote work and travel might point to a global shift towards decentralized K12 education.
Here’s what we found.
Homeschooling is on the rise
1. Homeschooling has tripled since pre-pandemic levels
Homeschooling has gone through two big spurts in the last two decades, growing from 1.7 percent in 1999 to 3.4 percent in 2012 (then stabilizing) and from 5.4% to 11.1% from May to October 2020.
Learn more at Census.gov and NCES
2. Five times more Black families are homeschooling.
The Black homeschooling population has grown from 3.3% (pre-pandemic) to 16.1% homeschooling. Tired of “white-washed history” and being assigned to the public schools with the least resources, Black families are opting out and developing new educational models and resources to support their students.
“Homeschooling has become such a refuge for many families, Black families in particular, that they don’t have to go to the under-resourced school that they were assigned,” - Cheryl Fields-Smith, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s Mary Frances Early College of Education
Learn more at the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey and Time Magazine
3. In 2022, enrollment in public schools dropped to its lowest numbers in two decades,
leading LinkedIn to predict that “Teachers and Parents Will Say Goodbye to Public Schools” as one of its Big Ideas of 2022. In 2022, 49.5 million students were enrolled in PreK-12th grade public schools.
In the year 2000, total enrollment in public schools was 53.3 million. School leaders attribute this decline to violence, systemic racism, teacher attrition, and poor standardized test scores.
Learn more at NCES, LinkedIn, and The New York Times
Modular learning = Better Educational Outcomes
4. One-on-one tutoring using mastery learning leads to 2 sigma improvement in student performance
In 1968, an Educational psychologist from MIT, Benjamin Bloom, demonstrated that one-on-one tutoring with Mastery learning led to two sigma improvement in students’ academic achievement. Many, including Bloom, have attempted to achieve similar results in a group setting without success.
Students can learn much more, significantly faster than in a classroom environment, by drawing on one-on-one instruction, whether the teacher is their parent, tutor, sibling, or friend. Numerous non-profits have successfully trained community volunteers to perform 1-1 tutoring and seen similar results.
Learn more at Bloom 2 Sigma problem and Annenberg Institute
5. Parent involvement in education is the most significant predictor of academic achievement in students.
The most accurate predictors of student achievement in school are not family income or social status, but the extent to which the family creates a home environment that encourages learning” - National PTA. 2000. Building Successful Partnerships: A Guide for Developing Parent and Family Involvement Programs. Bloomington, Indiana: National Education Service, 11–12.
Perhaps the most well-researched and documented homeschool-related phenomenon around the world is the degree to which family involvement in a student’s learning impacts their success in school and life.
According to a peer-reviewed study published in MIT’s Review of Economics and Statistics, the degree to which parents invest energy and time in their child’s education (reading stories aloud, helping with homework, communicating with teachers, finding educational resources for them to use) makes a more significant impact on their academic achievement than the energy and time invested by their teachers (or even the students themselves).
Another study from the University of Hampshire found that “schools would need to increase per-pupil spending by more than $1,000 to achieve the same results that are gained with parental involvement.”
Learn more at Science Daily, National PTA, and Time Magazine
6. 78% of peer-reviewed studies show homeschoolers perform significantly better on standardized exams
“In studies of homeschoolers learning achievement, researchers found that unschoolers typically performed at the same grade level as (homeschoolers), homeschoolers scored 34–39 percentile points higher than the norm on standardized achievement tests. The homeschooled national average ranged from the 84th percentile for Language, Math, and Social Studies to the 89th percentile for Reading” - Brian Ray
While we believe there’s yet to be a truly comprehensive, neutral study that measures the relative academic outcomes of homeschoolers vs. traditional school students on standardized exams, most studies suggest that homeschoolers with some structure in their routine perform better than those with none whatsoever. The best research we’ve seen has come from Brian D. Ray, Ph.D. Much of his research is sponsored by the Home School Legal Defense Association, so it should be taken with a good grain of salt. Another important consideration to bear in mind is the wide variety of approaches families take to homeschooling (ranging from traditional to unschooling).
Ray’s 2007 study of 11,739 participants from all 50 states, Guam, and Puerto Rico revealed Homeschoolers score 15 to 30 percentile points higher than public school students on standardized academic achievement tests.
Another study in the Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science revealed, “Homeschool students possess higher ACT scores, grade point averages (GPAs) and graduation rates when compared to traditionally-educated students.” This study also confirmed that structured homeschoolers did better on exams than students with no structure to their homeschooling -Martin-Chang, Gould, and Meuse.
It’s intriguing that one of the advantages of homeschooling is that families can set their own goals and not gear learning toward the test. It’s intriguing that even though homeschoolers aren’t preparing for standardized tests, they are performing better on them.
Learn more at NHERI, Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, and HLSDA.
7. Black homeschoolers perform significantly higher than Black public school students on standardized tests.
The achievement gap in education is worse than ever. Black families are tired of their schools being under-resourced. They’re pulling their children out of school and finding that, in fact, they can do it much better themselves - and with the support of their community.
“Average reading, language, and math test scores of these Black homeschool students are significantly higher than those of Black public school students (with effect sizes of .60 to 1.13) and equal to or higher than all public school students” - Dr. Brian Ray
Learn more at Brian Ray (2015)
8. A Norwegian study demonstrated that learning increased during forced homeschooling during the pandemic
“Adaptation happened very quickly and that home-school was well received by pupils and parents. There was more creative learning, better progress, more useful feedback and greater student independence.”
This Norwegian study is in stark contrast to the NYTimes recent piece demonstrating that the pandemic results in two decades of loss in math and reading, suggesting that in some communities, with the right support systems in place, homeschooling is already organically working better as an option.
The study suggests that the reason homeschooling worked especially well in these communities was because they were more oriented toward grassroots innovation. And one of the key reasons Norwegian families and teachers cited was easy access to digital tools. It will be great for scholars can further explore what factors make a community ripe for innovation and how this can be replicated.
Learn more at Bubb, S., & Jones, M.-A. (2020)
Families are getting more involved and spending more money on their children’s education
9. The Global Tutoring market is growing 8.4% YoY and is predicted to reach 8 billion by 2025.
As families see deficits in the child’s education and the benefits of mastery learning through 1-1 tutoring, 1-1 instruction will continue to grow as a popular form of education, at first supplementing, then replacing school
Learn more at the Global News Wire
10. 20% of parents plan to spend $2000 on school and after-school activities this fall
Despite the threat of a recession, family spending on education continues to grow. This suggests families care deeply about giving their children the best educational opportunities available and that school is not enough. Other families are realizing that what they’re spending to supplement school is equivalent to or even more than what they’d spend on a high-quality homeschooling education.
Learn more at the Deloitte 2022 Back to School Survey
Technology is paving the way for innovative learning models.
11. 51% of families with children in K-12 grades have increased spending on virtual learning resources.
Technology has expanded access to teaching and information, making it possible for more families than ever to customize their children’s education. Recognizing the value of these tools, families are spending more to give their children access to the best resources for learning.
“According to a July Deloitte survey of 1,200 parents with children in grades K-12, 51 percent report spending more on internet-based learning resources such as virtual tutors, subscriptions to e-learning platforms, and online classes” -a16z
China is trailblazing this path, and its K12 online learning industry is expected to triple to $150 billion over the next couple of years. Online learning is the future, and we’ll undoubtedly start to see more and more innovative resources to support kids learning outside of traditional school and connect them to the best resources (online and in-person).
Learn more at Technavio, Forbes, Deloitte, and a16z
12. One third of parents allow children their children to watch educational youtube channels on a regular basis
Learning through youtube has become so popular in the homeschooling community that some families claim to practice “youtube schooling.” While we advise families to exercise caution and engage with their children on youtube as much as possible, it can be an invaluable tool to support self-directed learning. In addition to highly engaging content on channels such as Youtube kids and Wildkratts, youtube gives kids instant access to some of the best teachers in the world. This statistic reinforces the trend that families are increasingly drawing on virtual resources to supplement and support learning.
Learn more at the Pew Research Center
13. 1–1 tutoring with educational software leads to even higher outcomes than mastery learning.
An analysis on Nintil.com suggests that the best educational software can sometimes have similar results to 1-1 tutoring. Imagine then - the impact of educational software coupled with 1-1 tutoring. We’ve observed this first hand with our own students at Modulo, pairing adaptive learning apps with 1-1 online tutoring and watching them jump as many as six to eight grade levels in math in a year or less.
Learn more at Nintil.
Source: Ricón, José Luis, “On Bloom's two sigma problem: A systematic review of the effectiveness of mastery learning, tutoring, and direct instruction,” Nintil (2019-07-28), available at https://nintil.com/bloom-sigma/
Standardized education isn’t working for most students & teachers.
It’s abundantly clear that the standardized school model isn’t working for most learners, the cognitively diverse, the profoundly gifted, Black and Hispanic students, economically disadvantaged students, students with health concerns, LGBTQ families, transgender students, and most of all, teachers. As more families and teachers leave, who will be left?
14. According to the CDC, 1 in 6 children has been diagnosed with a developmental disability (including autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, blindness, cerebral palsy, and others).
That means over 15% of parents reading this guide are likely to have a child with a diagnosed learning difference that makes it difficult for them to learn using a standardized curriculum. Moreover, 20% of parents reading this guide have a child with a special healthcare need, which makes school a difficult environment for them.
This statistic may even be underestimated as a study by Translational Pediatrics suggests 10-30% of kids may have dysgraphia.
As school becomes increasingly standardized, it becomes more and more difficult for different types of minds and bodies to learn well.
The reality is that we live in a world with a wide diversity of thinking styles and a wide variety of professions that require different kinds of minds. Micro Credentialing is becoming increasingly popular because companies realize they need specialists just as much as generalists.
We have a lot more to say about cognitive diversity and whether learning differences should be categorized as disabilities. Still, the bottom line is that at least 20% of young thinkers are not being served well by a standardized schooling system.
Learn more at the CDC and National Library of Medicine
15. 22% of all children and 28% of children of two or more races reported being bullied at school in 2019.
With such a hostile school environment for over 20% of US children, it’s no wonder families are pulling their kids out of school and getting involved in caring and inclusive communities where their children will be safe and appreciated for who they are. Disagreements about the narrow way history and sex education are taught, as well as bullying around race, gender identity, and sexuality, are among the key drivers for parents choosing to withdraw their children from school.
Learn more at NCES and The Homeschool Choice
16. Students in majority-Black schools are a year behind students in majority-White schools in math courses, according to a McKinsey study released in March of 2022.
“This year, for the first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, began tracking student achievement in the 1970s, 9-year-olds lost ground in math, and scores in reading fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years” “The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading”
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, students in Black majority schools were 9 months behind students in White-majority schools in math. Covid-19 has amplified existing inequity in our education system. As we continue to try to fix a broken system, families are losing faith that it will ever happen and deciding to educate kids on their own.
Learn more at Mckinsey, Harvard Gazette, and Forbes
17. Private school tuition has risen by 46.5% in the last decade.
Families considering alternatives to public school may not see private school as an option. Homeschooling makes sense as an affordable alternative that can potentially provide a much better education than private school as well. While school choice may open up the option for more families to attend private school, it still doesn’t address the fundamental problem of unit economics that’s causing private school to be so expensive in the first place. It’s unlikely the government is going to be dolling out $60,000 a year to send every child to an elite private school.
Furthermore, since many private schools operate on a non-profit model, this doesn’t even take into account additional funds wealthier families are contributing as donations on top of their tuition just to keep the school running and offer some scholarships.
Source: Bloomberg
18. 55% of teachers are considering leaving the profession
It’s no secret that teacher attrition is at an all-time high with 9% YoY turnover - leaving many of us to wonder how much longer we have until the entire school system collapses. Last Spring, the National Guard had to be called in to fill teacher vacancies, and many schools reported multiple closings due to teacher shortages, often related to mental and physical health. While it’s difficult to estimate the exact teacher shortage, one study estimates that there are over 36.5k teacher vacancies nationwide.
On the flip side, the growth of homeschooling and online learning offers some promising opportunities for retaining teachers in the profession by providing entrepreneurial opportunities for the best teachers where they can have more autonomy and creativity over their work.
“There is more depth and optionality to online marketplaces than ever before. Parents can seek out the best instructors for specific topics—tailored to the needs of each individual child. Kids get access to a wider variety of learning resources and teaching styles. And educators are less constrained in their curriculums (previously defined rigidly only by districts) and can share and monetize their talents with a wider audience.” -a16z
Homeschool may also attract and offer valuable experience to new teachers (namely homeschool parents).
Learn more at the NEA, Washington Post, K12 Dive, Forbes, Edweek and PBS,
The nuclear family is changing
The trend towards remote work and decentralization has paved the way for a whole new lifestyle for families. Many are embracing the opportunity to travel and curate a lifestyle that suits their rhythm. As more parents work from home, some are deciding to keep their kids with them.
19. 35% of Americans have the opportunity to work from home five days a week.
Our work culture is becoming more flexible and remote. According to Mckinsey, 58 percent of Americans reported having the opportunity to work from home at least one day a week, and thirty-five percent of respondents reported having the option to work from home five days a week.
“A remarkable 58 percent of employed respondents—which, extrapolated from the representative sample, is equivalent to 92 million people from a cross-section of jobs and employment types—report having the option to work from home for all or part of the week. After more than two years of observing remote work and predicting that flexible working would endure after the acute phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, we view these data as a confirmation that there has been a major shift in the working world and in society itself.” -McKinsey Opportunity Survey
While remote work has declined since its height during the pandemic, research suggests this trend will continue to grow. Data projections from Ladders, a career site, show that 25 percent of all jobs in North America will be remote by the end of 2022.
This dramatically changes options for families. No longer confined to a specific geographic location, families who have been thinking about homeschooling can relocate to areas with large populations of secular homeschoolers. Or move closer to extended family to support childcare needs.
Others may opt to travel the world as Worldschoolers. With a flexible schedule, it’s easier to fit in 1-2 hours a day for 1-1 mastery learning with kids. It’s worth noting that homeschooling tends to reflect many of the benefits of remote work, such as increased productivity, and provides good preparation for future remote careers.
Learn more at McKinsey, The Ladders, and Fast Company
20. The percentage of digital nomads has grown 112% from pre-pandemic, with 15.5 million Americans identifying as digital nomads.
In the MBO Partners® 2021 State of Independence research study, 15.5 million American workers described themselves as digital nomads. This is 42% from 2020 and 112% 2019 (pre-pandemic). Since most public and private schools are very strict about attendance, families who want to travel year-round can’t do this with a child enrolled in a traditional school. Homeschooling allows them to travel the world as a family, exposing children to different cultures, geography, and diverse points of view.
Learn more at MBO Partners
There’s a global trend towards decentralization
21. Harvard Business Review predicts that “the current economic situation around the virus will "hasten the progress to more decentralized global value chains.”
Airbnb has more rooms than the world’s largest hotel chain. Uber’s bigger than the largest taxi company. Decentralized education makes more sense for K12 education, too: those who care the most, parents and teachers, can quickly adapt to suit the needs of the individual child based on the context of their community, the time in history and their lives, and their future aspirations.
Learn more at the Harvard Business Review
So what’s so great about this trend that’s shaping the future of education?
Modular learning is highly effective approach for optimizing children’s learning and social-emotional development. Here are the primary four reasons we’ve distilled:
It makes it easier to do 1-1 Mastery Learning
Families are more involved in their children’s education and their life
Kids have more opportunity to direct their own learning
It provides more personalized learning for the many children who deviate from “the norm,” (whatever that means) and more personalized learning for everyone.
In the next four sections, we’ll explore each of these reasons in-depth, starting with 1-1 Mastery Learning. Read on to learn about 1-1 mastery learning and why a homeschool environment is so conducive to this highly effective form of learning.
