NIÑO'S CORNER: The Gigantic Surge in Homeschooling the Left Can’t Ignore

The population size of homeschooled students shows that the trust in government schooling is truly broken.

To fight the beast head-on is brave yet costly, but to starve the beast is the smartest move and path of least resistance. 

According to a piece from Kaelan Deese featured in Yahoo! News that caught my eye, “11% of U.S. households are now homeschooling.” This isn’t inconsequential, this is the impact equivalent of a tsunami on the education industrial complex. For comparison's sake, the percentage of homeschooled students in the United States was 1.7% in 2001 (roughly 1.1 million school-aged children at the time) according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That 11% now represents 5 million students out of the reach of “professional” educators throughout the nation.

Census data shows the dramatic rate that homeschooling families grew significantly from 1999 to 2012. The population plateaus around 3.3% of the American population during that range alone.

“The number of homeschooled students in the U.S. has nearly doubled during the pandemic,” said Deese. “As some parents have lost faith in traditional schools while others have opted out due to concerns over COVID-19.”

Working and middle class parents opting for homeschooling send a loud and clear message, that by opting out of the public education system they are announcing their vote-of-no-confidence in an establishment that has failed to educate, care for, and keep their children safe. More importantly, this is the ultimate sign that the COVID-19 pandemic has broken the back of the false image of competent public schools' ability to adapt.

COVID-19 can’t take all the credit for this surge, the movement to opt-out of government schooling has increased every time big government has attempted to get more and more control of student’s and their families. We saw this especially five years ago during the anti-Common Core movement throughout the nation, for example.

Deese’s piece points out a report from Bellwether Education Partners which was commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation. The report showed an estimated 2.6 million students left public education/tradition schooling in order to start home based education.

“Over the past 18 months, the parents of an estimated 11.3 million students, or nearly one in five of the nation’s schoolchildren, did not get what they wanted from their child’s school," the Bellwether report said.

While the current events of the past year and a half have certainly caused the surge in homeschooling, it has in a broader sense woken millions of parents up to questioning the way they view schooling and education outside of the beaten and broken standard K-12 model many of them broke up with.

Education activists such as Corey DeAngelis, who have been instrumental in highlighting horrible curricula such as Critical Race Theory, are also raising the flag in communities throughout the country making parents finally take some ownership in their children’s education.

It is a shame it takes situations such as the pandemic to get parents to finally get involved in their children’s education, but every student pulled out of government schools is a child with a better chance than the last generation to truly understand the meaning of freedom of choice.