Homeschooling in the 21st Century

Research and Prospects

Robert Maranto, Debra A. Bell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351386067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Education began on the most intimate levels: the family and the community. With industrialization, education became professionalized and bureaucratized, typically conducted in schools rather than homes. Over the past half century, however, schooling has increasingly returned home, both in the United States and across the globe. This reflects several trends, including greater affluence and smaller family size leading parents to focus more on child well-being; declining faith in professionals (including educators); and the Internet, whose resources facilitate home education. In the United States, students who are homeschooled for at least part of their childhood outnumber those in charter schools. Yet remarkably little research addresses homeschooling.

This book brings together work from 20 researchers, addressing a range of homeschooling topics, including the evolving legal and institutional frameworks behind home education; why some parents make this choice; home education educational environments; special education; and outcomes regarding both academic achievement and political tolerance. In short, this book offers the most up-to-date research to guide policy makers and home educators, a matter of great importance given the agenda of the current presidential administration.

The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in the Journal of School Choice.

The Fall and Rise of Home Education

Angela Watson, Robert Maranto and Debra A. Bell

Introduction

Originally, schooling occurred chiefly in the home, within families or, for the relatively wealthy, through paid tutors. Gradually, American schooling came to take place largely in the dominant local religious congregations, reflecting that churches were the primary local institutions and that learning to read the Protestant Bible was then the key goal of schooling (Berner, 2017; Glenn, 2012; Peterson, 2010; Ravitch, 2000). From these highly personal, parent-controlled beginnings, over the past century and a half, formal schooling in the United States grew in size and magnitude, with ever-expanding public bureaucracies educating and caring for more children for increasing portions of their lives. Compulsory attendance laws and education by certified professionals gradually became the norm in the United States (Dumas, Gates, & Schwarzer, 2010), and the West generally (Dixon, 2014). Although most Western nations had mixed educational systems, in which public schools operated alongside publicly subsidized faith-based schools of various kinds, in the United States, traditional public schools became the dominant mode of schooling in most localities attaining nearmonopoly status (Berner, 2017; Glenn, 2012). This bureaucratization of education reflected trust in Progressive era ideals, which from clean water and sanitation to civil service systems, certainly offered more than a few victories for humankind. Yet by the late twentieth century, the industrial model of schooling reached its zenith (Hess, 2010). Smaller family size and greater wealth led parents, particularly the better educated, to invest more in each child, creating demand for individualized instruction that traditional public bureaucracies were and are ill-suited to provide (Lareau, 2003; Petrilli, 2012; Stevens, 2001). Declining trust in experts and in authority generally led some parents to conclude that they could educate their own children as competently as credentialed instructors. Home education entrepreneurs, often themselves homeschoolers, arose to meet the curricular and social needs of homeschooled students and their parents. Concurrently, organized political groups arose to safeguard homeschooling (Stevens, 2001). By the early twenty-first century, burgeoning information technologies enabled these parent-educators to receive help as needed to teach their children a wide range of courses (Hanna, 2012; Martin-Chang, Gould, & Meuse, 2011; Vander Ark, 2012).

Outlawed in many states until the middle 1990s, homeschooling, the original American method of schooling, has made a comeback in the past four decades (Lines, 2000a; see the Aaron Saiger chapter and the Bell, Kaplan and Thurman chapter in this volume). In the 1960s, a growing, individualistic counterculture proved fertile ground for writers such as Ivan Illich, John Taylor Gatto, and John Holt to develop conceptual terms like deschooling and unschooling, justifying a return to homeschooling. By the late 1980s, homeschooling had grown from the fringe to a significant social and political movement (Knowles, Marlow, & Muchmore, 1992; Kunzman & Gaither, 2013; Stevens, 2001). By 2000, homeschooling had by and large gained political and social acceptance (Anthony & Burroughs, 2010) and a certain diversity, practiced by traditional Christian parents, counterculture parents, and parents (including parents of special education students, as shown in Cheng, Tuchman and Wolf chapter in this volume) seeking to shelter their children from concerns ranging from bullying to bureaucratic standardization and testing. As noted below, though traditional public schools are on the whole quite safe physically (e.g., Petrilli, 2012), bullying is not uncommon, and rare but widely publicized incidents of violence seemingly led some parents to seek the safety of home education. Whatever their distinct motives, one thing nearly all homeschool parents have in common is prioritizing their children’s educational needs over their own material gain, as noted in the title of Mitchell Stevens’ (2001) pioneering study Kingdom of Children. As we discuss below at length, homeschooling parents sacrifice considerable income for the well-being of their children. For the most part, they are very dedicated parents. Though systematic research has not addressed the question, we suspect that many homeschool parents themselves had less than satisfactory experiences in traditional public schools, in sharp contrast to traditional public school educators, most of whom loved their schooling enough to choose careers in public education (Maranto, 2017).

How Many Homeschoolers?

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) estimated 1.1 million home-school students in 2003 and nearly 1.8 million (3.4% of school-aged children) in 2012 (Jeffrey, 2015; Redford, Battle, & Bielick, 2016). Similarly, the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), a homeschool advocacy group, estimated nearly 2 million homeschoolers in spring 2010 (Ray, 2011; see Figure 1.1). These are single point-in-time estimates, and some children may be homeschooled for limited portions of their childhood; thus some estimate that 6%–12% of American school-aged children will be homeschooled for one or more grades (Isenberg, 2007; Lines, 1999). No doubt many others considered the option. Early research indicated that most homeschool families do not persist into a second year (Isenberg, 2007). Homeschooling likely has a constant churn with new families choosing homeschooling as others drop out, alongside a stable core group of home educators, as may also characterize cyber charter student populations (Beck, Egalite, & Maranto, 2014; Watson, Beck, & Maranto, 2017). Many homeschool families shift in and out of homeschooling depending on the needs of their children, sometimes to avoid a particular school, grade, or even teacher. Commonly, a family will homeschool some children while sending others to more traditional schooling options (Isenberg, 2007).

Figure 1.1. Estimated growth of homeschooling in the United States (NHERI).

Some estimate that homeschooling grew 74% from 1999 to 2007 (Basham, Merrifield, & Hepburn, 2007; Grady & Bielick, 2010; Ray, 2005, 2009, 2011). As of 2007, this explosive growth appears to have slowed, with some estimates indicating stasis. Notably, NCES cautions against comparing later figures with those from 2007 or before, owing to changes in its methodology (Redford et al., 2016). Generally, the broad range of estimates in and of itself suggests how very little we know about this dynamic population, a point we develop later.

As homeschooling has expanded, it has also become more diverse. As many as 15% of homeschool families are from nonwhite, non-Hispanic minority groups (Ray, 2016). The reasons for choosing homeschooling have also grown more diverse (Lubienski, Puckett, & Brewer, 2013; see Bell et al. in this volume). Further, as the Aaron Saiger essay and the Eric Wearne study of hybrid homeschooling in this volume show, the very types of homeschooling and range of homeschooling options have grown over time. Increasingly, children may homeschool part-time, while also taking occasional classes at online schools (of all kinds, charter, private, and traditional public), colleges, blended charter schools, private schools, and even traditional public schools. Within home education even more than school choice generally, no one size fits all. Increasingly, traditional public schools allow homeschool children to take part in extracurricular activities and even take individual classes. Sometimes this occurs via state mandates or extra funding for courses taken by homeschoolers, sometimes when traditional public schools attempt to win back homeschoolers, and often for reasons of mutual advantage. As one public school superintendent we know quipped in a public meeting, traditional public schools eagerly welcome to their extracurricular activities any homeschooler who can dunk a basketball. More seriously, our fieldwork indicates that one Arkansas school district under threat of consolidation due to low enrollment now actively recruits homeschool families for its own hybrid program, paying for and helping with their home education curricula; in exchange parents formally enroll their children in the school district and agree to state-mandated testing. This provides resources for homeschool families, and additional enrollment and concomitant state funding for the school district.

Empirical Limitations of Home Education Research

With increased homeschooling has come increased research on homeschooling in all its forms. Yet as Hess (2017) notes of educational research generally, we experts probably know less than we think we know. A major limitation to research on the effects of homeschooling is that homeschoolers self-select into these education models for a variety of durations and reasons. Those might make homeschooled children different from their traditional public school peers in ways eluding large-scale measurement, making comparisons between the two populations problematic. The selection bias inherent to homeschooling makes empirical analyses seeking causal relationships difficult (Lubienski et al., 2013). The very thing that makes a family choose to homeschool could also be the thing that causes homeschool students to outperform their traditional public school peers. Relatedly, some parents choose homeschooling from a desire for less education and less oversight for their children: such parents may not voluntarily submit to reporting, testing, or surveys, and are thus likely under-represented in homeschool data. In short, much homeschool research is methodologically weak, undermining efforts to demonstrate causation (Kunzman & Gaither, 2013). Even more than for educational research generally, we should consider research findings tentative. To be clear, this includes the findings reported in this volume.

Further exacerbating this empirical dilemma is the combative political history of homeschooling (Dumas et al., 2010). Again, many homeschooling parents resist attempts to measure their children, including testing or reporting, thus complicating the efforts of empirical researchers (Collum, 2005; Kunzman, 2005; Kunzman & Gaither, 2013). Some families prefer to educate their children off the grid. Known as “homeschooling under your constitutional rights,” undeclared or underground homeschooling is legally considered truancy (Isenberg, 2007). Even calculating the actual numbers of homeschoolers in the United States is difficult because many states do not require homeschool parents to register, as we discuss later (Reich, 2005). Accordingly, available data on homeschool students come from parents who volunteer information, students who switch between homeschooling and public schooling for whom data are captured in public school settings, or students who later enter college and declare that they were homeschooled. None of these methods fully represent the population of homeschoolers, again complicating comparisons with brick-and-mortar school students.

As noted, even determining the numbers of homeschool students is difficult. Although homeschooling is legal in all states, state policies intended to track home-school students vary widely. Some states require parents to register students as homeschooled with the state, through local districts, or through private umbrella schools (Kunzman & Gaither, 2013). We cannot know the percentage of parents who comply with those requirements. As noted earlier, since 1991 the NCES has issued the National Household Education Surveys (NHES) program to survey a representative sample of American households (Bielick, Chandler, & Broughman, 2001). This dataset provides the official federal estimate of homeschool students (NCES, 2009), but some homeschool advocates view the estimate as low in part due to perceived survey question bias and low response rates (Ray, 2005). Even so, the 2.9% homeschool market share estimated for 2007 by Redford et al. (2016) equaled the number of students in charter schools and voucher programs at that time (Apple, 2007; Isenberg, 2007). Isenberg (2007) estimated approximately one homeschooled student for every five students enrolled in private schools.

Some researchers use data from Wisconsin as a potential higher bounds estimate of the homeschool population. Wisconsin has the least restrictive laws regarding parent registration of homeschool students, requiring only the completion of a simple one-page document informing the state that a student is homeschooled. Because of the ease of the process, Wisconsin may have the most accurate estimation of homeschool market share (Isenberg, 2007). Recent data representing all registered homeschoolers in Wisconsin indicate a drop in homeschool numbers around 2007, in accord with NCES findings (see Figure 1.2). However, Wisconsin homeschool numbers appear to rebound post-2012. Clearly, this deserves a deeper, multi-state inquiry.

Figure 1.2. Wisconsin homeschool data (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction).

Similarly, the American Community Survey collects data for homeschool status, but some feel that the emotional affect of the questions employed leads parents to under-report homeschooling; thus the results of this survey are considered a lower bound estimate of the homeschool market share (Isenberg, 2007). The true number of homeschooling families likely falls in the middle of these various estimates.

Further, as noted earlier and shown below in the chapters in this volume by Saiger and Wearne, respectively, homeschooling is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Many, if not most, homeschooling families, particularly those not stating their main impetus for homeschool choice as religious, move freely in and out of traditional schooling and homeschooling to meet the varying needs of their children over time, and occasionally even to avoid individual teachers seen as arrogant or ineffective (Isenberg, 2007; Lines, 1999; Stevens, 2001). Again, this increases the percentage of students who have ever been homeschooled over point-in-time estimates.

Who Homeschools?

Parents who choose to homeschool their children are diverse, but not representative of parents generally (Lines, 2000b; Ray, 2010). In 2009, the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) offered data indicating that 98% of home-school parents graduated from high school, compared to 82% nationally. Half hold a bachelor’s degree or more, compared to 42% of K-12 parents generally (Kunzman & Gaither, 2013). Between 89% and 97.9% of homeschool parents report being married, with 62.1% having three or more children (Basham et al., 2007; Bielick et al., 2001; HSLDA, 2009; Kunzman & Gaither, 2013). Nationally, only 73% of parents are married and in two-parent households, and families have a mean of 2.1 children (Kunzman & Gaither, 2013). Median family income for homeschool families resembled the national mean of $79,000 in 2009, though with relatively fewer rich and poor (Murphy, 2012). Possibly, low-income families lack the resources to homeschool, whereas the wealthy can afford premium private schools. Conversely, the wealthy may be less willing than middle-class families to suffer the economic costs of home education, a matter we discuss at length later. Relatedly, only 19.4% of homeschool mothers reported working for pay, with 85% only working part time (HSLDA, 2009). According to the NCES’s homeschooling in the United States 2012 report, 41% of homeschool students live in rural areas, 83% are white, with genders equally represented.

Advocacy Efforts

As noted earlier, legal threats led homeschoolers t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 The Fall and Rise of Home Education
• 2 The Human Right of Home Education
• 3 Homeschooling, Virtual Learning, and the Eroding Public/Private Binary
• 4 Types of Homeschool Environments and Need Support for Children’s Achievement Motivation
• 5 A Descriptive Survey of Why Parents Choose Hybrid Homeschools
• 6 African American Homeschool Parents’ Motivations for Homeschooling and Their Black Children’s Academic Achievement
• 7 Homeschooling Is Not Just About Education: Focuses of Meaning
• 8 Homeschool Parents and Satisfaction with Special Education Services
• 9 Are Homeschoolers Prepared for College Calculus?
• 10 Does Homeschooling or Private Schooling Promote Political Intolerance? Evidence From a Christian University
• Index