Many home schooling families feel like they are alone in their choice to home school their children, but the reality is that they are in the company of millions of like thinking families. Home schooling has been on a dramatic rise in recent years.
It is difficult to obtain accurate measurements of exactly how many home-schooled students there are in America, but according to the United States Department of Education their estimate is 1,770,000 students are being home schooled. That figure represents approximately 3.4% of all students in grades K-12 in the United States.
To give you some idea of the growth rate, in 1999 the first USDE report counted 850,000 students, by 2007 there were 1,5000,000. The estimated growth rate is 2-7% a year, with California leading the nation.
Dave Bohon, writing in the New American, cites studies from the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) stating that their surveys indicate that there are 2,346,000 home-schooled students in the United States. NHERI sees home based education growing at nearly 8% per year.
While enrollment in traditional K-12 education has flat lined or lost ground, home based education is growing at a healthy rate. You are an important part of a growing trend. The choice to home school is multi faceted and includes distinct advantages and challenges. We will look at this topic in my October blog post.
Bob Ginther
IEM Education Consultant
