Homeschool Freedom Is Good for Children

W hile homeschooling has grown steadily from its beginnings in the late 1970s to spring 2020, the number of children being homeschooled exploded after Covid-19 led to widespread school closures and disruption of education. For many families, homeschooling proved to be an oasis for their children. As a social worker in Loudoun County, Va., reported, “for some kids, whose anxiety was high, it actually was a help to be home. Being home allowed [them] to have a calmer, less anxiety-provoking situation.” She concluded, “For them, it was a Godsend.”

It is easy today to take this freedom to homeschool for granted. But that has not always been the case. Forty years ago, many states prosecuted parents for teaching their children without a license. Since then, legal, social, and practical barriers to homeschooling have been removed. Today, a diverse homeschooling ecosystem, made up almost entirely of volunteers, has made homeschooling possible for millions of children and families. Innovative new ideas about how to privately educate children emerged, such as “pods” and micro-schools, even emerged out of the disruption of the pandemic.

This new awareness of homeschooling among the entire child-rearing population is a game-changer. While many families may return to conventional schooling as the crisis wanes, they’ve discovered that if things don’t work out in public schools, they can seek more-satisfying options.

But not everyone sees greater access to homeschooling as a good thing.

In an MSNBC opinion column, University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler claims that, through homeschooling, evangelical Christians are pursuing a “larger project about dismantling the public education system in the United States.” While evangelical Christians have been important in the rise of homeschooling, Professor Butler ignores two of the most influential early proponents of the modern homeschooling movement.

Far from being an Evangelical Christian, John Holt was a radical freethinker who began his career inside the public-school system, then became disillusioned with it, and began advocating homeschooling. “Growing Without Schooling,” his newsletter begun in 1977, and his book Teach Your Own, published in 1981, were extraordinarily influential.

Holt’s contemporary, Raymond Moore, was a child psychologist whose advocacy for a later start to formal education led to his embrace of homeschooling. His 1981 book Home Grown Kids complemented Holt’s Teach Your Own. Many homeschoolers from that era credit both Holt and Moore with introducing them to homeschooling and inspiring them to try it.

While the steady growth of homeschooling owes much to religious parents, religion is no longer the primary reason most parents begin homeschooling. According to the last pre-pandemic report of the National Center for Education Statistics in 2016, the “most important” reason parents began homeschooling was concern about the school environment (34 percent). Next, 17 percent cited dissatisfaction with academic instruction. Only 16 percent named a desire to provide religious instruction as their primary motivation.

And a market survey conducted for EdChoice in March 2021 found similar results well after public schools closed due to COVID-19:

For respondents who have homeschooled or are currently homeschooling their child(ren), the primary motivators are the pandemic, the flexibility to shape learning experiences, and increased one-on-one attention. Political and religious motivations are reported as relatively less important.

To be fair to Professor Butler, her column was triggered by Evangelical celebrity Kirk Cameron’s promotion for his new movie The Homeschool Awakening, in which he says, “Public education has become public enemy No. 1.” She characterizes this promotional hyperbole as “another salvo in the ongoing evangelical war against public schools” and asserts that “Cameron’s documentary furthers the long-term goal of America’s religious conservatives to dismantle the public school system by promoting homeschooling.”

I can’t speak to the motivations of Kirk Cameron or to the goals of “America’s religious conservatives,” who I suspect may hold more than one opinion about education. But I can say the long-term goal of my organization, Home School Legal Defense Association, of pursuing, attaining, and preserving homeschool freedom, has been about removing barriers and creating a safe space for parents to raise, nurture, and educate their children according to their own principles, religions (or not), and the unique needs of their own children.

To the extent that creating an island of freedom and choice in the sea of compulsory public education can be seen as “dismantling” the public schools’ monopoly, homeschool-freedom advocates may be guilty as charged. But that way of looking at the issue dismisses the needs of children and families. For a growing number of families, public schools are simply not a good fit. The opportunity that homeschooling offers parents at every income level to provide a more artisanal approach to their children’s unique gifts and challenges is a blessing. The diverse and endlessly innovative voluntary networks that continue to spring up to meet the needs of children are contributing to the flourishing of more and more children.

Professor Butler knows this to be true. She even links to an article in the New Yorker titled “The rise of Black homeschooling.” The article says, “Often underserved by traditional schools, Black families are banding together to educate their children, sometimes with an unexpected funding source: the Koch family and other conservative donors.”

Since the pandemic started, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that homeschooling in general rose from about 5 percent of school children to around 11 percent. The New Yorker article says, “For Black families, the growth has been sharper. Around three percent of Black students were homeschooled before the pandemic; by October, the number had risen to sixteen percent.”

And the Institute for Family Studies notes that the dramatic growth of homeschooling in the Hispanic community, which began before the pandemic, has continued. (See Figure 2.)

According to Cheryl Fields-Smith, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s Mary Frances Early College of Education who studies black homeschooling, the decision of many black families not to homeschool may have been influenced by the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and its promise of equality in public education — a promise that has yet to be fully realized. But parents want what’s best for their children. Many have recently discovered that the promise of a quality education in a safe learning environment is best kept when they personally take charge through homeschooling.

The choice to homeschool is a major, life-changing decision for any parent. To succeed, it requires determination, sacrifice, and a supportive community. It is not the purpose of homeschool-freedom advocates like me — and others across the ideological spectrum — to dismantle public schools.

Instead, our heartfelt purpose is to make homeschooling possible — creating and preserving this opportunity for families to chart the paths to learning that best help their children flourish.