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- More parents are choosing to homeschool their kids.Seventeen states have so far reported increases in homeschooling in the 2024-25 school year.The trend comes amid a growth in school voucher programs and declining enrollment in public schools.
Eating breakfast in the kitchen at 8 am; learning math at the dining room table at 8:30 am.
That schedule is becoming increasingly prominent for America's kids as more parents are opting to have them homeschooled.
Seventeen states have so far reported increases in homeschooling in the 2024-25 school year, according to state data compiled by Johns Hopkins' Homeschool Research Lab, which tracks homeschooling trends in the US. One of the latest states to report is Virginia, which saw just over 56,000 students enrolled in homeschooling in the previous academic year — up from 53,680 a year prior.
North Carolina and Georgia are among the states with the largest homeschool populations to have reported data so far, with 165,243 students and 89,510 students being homeschooled, respectively.
It follows 19 states reporting increases in homeschooling in the 2023-24 school year, with just two states reporting decreases. Twenty states do not collect or provide homeschooling data, per the lab, and the remaining states are expected to report their data in the coming months.
Homeschooling surged during the pandemic as many parents were dissatisfied with the remote learning options that their local public schools provided and chose to take their kids' education into their own hands.
However, the growth in homeschooling today can't be primarily attributed to the pandemic, Angela Watson, creator of the research lab and senior research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, told Business Insider.
"I think now we see that people who choose to homeschool their children are slightly younger than their private school or public schooling parent peers," Watson said. "And so it could be that this is kind of a younger generation thing where it's not stigmatized for them in the same way."
That's not to say that homeschooling is dominating all forms of schooling. Virginia, for example, had 1.2 million students enrolled full-time in public school in the 2024-25 academic year.
Education in the US is shifting. President Donald Trump and his administration have pushed to expand school vouchers to allow more parents to receive federal funds to send their kids to schools of their choice, whether it be a private school or homeschooling. Meanwhile, enrollment in public schools is declining, causing some of them to consolidate or shut down, partly spurred by the growth of school vouchers, along with declining birth rates and lack of federal funds.
Watson said that as educational options grow, she expects to see more parents choosing how they want their kids to learn.
"A variety of people are exiting traditional settings for reasons that are diverse, but all fit around their needs not being met in these one-size-fits-all schooling environments," Watson said. "And so they're exiting, and they're exiting into homeschooling."
How US education is changing
Trump has signed a series of executive orders since he took office aimed at reshaping the way US public schools function. One of them called for expanding school voucher programs, primarily by determining whether agencies could redirect federal funds meant for public education toward voucher programs.
Changing how funding is allocated cannot be done without congressional approval. Still, the administration has withheld some funding for public schools meant for programs including migrant education and after-school programs before releasing it in late July with guardrails, meant to ensure that schools are using the funding in ways that align with the administration's political views.
"I'm looking at best practices throughout all states. We want to develop a toolkit for states to say, 'This is how it's being done in some states that are having great success,'" Linda McMahon, Trump's education secretary, said at a charter school visit in Michigan. "We don't set curriculum, we don't hire teachers, we don't buy books, we don't do any of that. We're primarily a pass-through."
While homeschool enrollment is growing, public school enrollment continues to decline, and some public schools are adapting to the increase in homeschoolers. Watson pointed to the Mesa Public Schools in Arizona, which created a program to allow homeschool students to enroll in classes part-time at local public schools, and the schools would receive voucher funds.
"As people make one choice in the future or with other children, then they're likely to continue to make choices," Watson said. She added that there's a variety of choices beyond homeschooling, like microschooling or part-time public school options, and families might increasingly "cobble together an education out of all of these different options."
