SPOKANE, Wash. — A new school year is approaching, and more families nationwide are turning to home education for their children.
In the United States, 3.1 million kids from kindergarten to 12th grade were homeschooled from 2021 to 2022. Nationally, more parents are choosing to homeschool their kids. According to the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), home education is popular among a demographically wide variety of people of all races, religions, political views, and incomes.
According to the Johns Hopkins School of Education (JHU), 32,000 students in Washington were homeschooled in the 2021-2022 school year. This comes after the peak of homeschooled kids in 2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The number in Washington has slightly decreased, with less than 30,000 homeschooled students in 2023-2024.
The requirements for homeschooling your children vary by state. According to JHU, in Washington, parents must be supervised by a certified person who helps them plan and set a goal of a minimum of one hour a week.
Parents can only homeschool their own children. They must also have at least 45 hours of college credit and have completed a home instruction course at a post-secondary institution.
According to JHU, Washington requires a minimum of 180 days of instruction in broad subjects such as Math, English and Grammar, Science, Social Studies, Health, History, Arts and Music. As long as parents meet the basic requirements, they determine how and what their children learn. To learn more about the requirements for homeschooling, visit the Washington page of JHU.
What once was something abnormal is now starting to trend amongst families, according to NHERI.
“Home education – is an age-old traditional educational practice that a decade ago appeared to be cutting-edge and “alternative” but is now bordering on “mainstream” in the United States. It may be the fastest-growing form of education in the United States,” said NHERI on their website.
This trend is now being researched, and positive outcomes are being shown, debunking stereotypes of children who are homeschooled. In 78% of peer-reviewed studies, it was found that the majority of homeschoolers had positive outcomes on their academic cores compared to those in the same grades who went to a public school.
According to NHERI, 13 out of 15 studies on social skills also showed positive results for homeschoolers compared to public school students. In some cases, home education helped develop better social cues and skills than those who attended public school.
Research shows that home education not only benefits students but also impacts the economy.
“Taxpayers spend an average of $16,446 per pupil annually in public schools, plus capital expenditures (National Education Association, 2023),” said NHERI. “The roughly 3.1 million homeschool students of 2021-22 represented a savings of over $51 billion for taxpayers. This is $51 billion that American taxpayers did not have to spend.”
