« This Will Make Them Squirm
Cultural Decay »

I found these comparative data on homeschooling (1999 and 2003) at the NCES site. First, the national data for the two years (number and percentage of school-age children homeschooled):

 
N
%
1999 850,000 1.7
2003 1,096,000 2.2

It’s hardly surprising, given the nonsense paraded as education, that the percentage of homsechooled kids increased by 0.5% between 1999 and 2003. Nor is this:

Number of parents in household (2003)
 
N
%
2 886,000 80.8
1 196,000 17.9
Non-parental
 14,000 1.3

I’ve never done it, but I feel certain that homeschooling is a lot of work, far easier for two parents than one. As I said, not surprising, but the rest of the data are:

Number of children in the household (1999 and 2003)
N (1999)
% (1999)
N (2003)
% (2003)
1 120,000 14.1 110,000 10.1
2 207,000 24.4 306,000 28.0
3+
 523,000 61.6 679,000 62.0

Like I said, homeschooling has to be a lot of work, so I’d expect to see a higher percentage of homeschooling households with one, or even two chidren. Yet, by far the largest cohort have three or more children. This only appears surprising at first glance:

Household income (1999 and 2003)
 
N (1999)
% (1999)
N (2003)
% (2003)
  $25,000 or less 262,000 30.9 283,000 25.8
  $25,001–50,000 278,000 32.7 311,000 28.4
  $50,001–75,000 162,000 19.1 264,000 24.1
  $75,001 or more 148,000 17.4 238,000 21.7

The initial question is why there aren’t more households in the top two income brackets homeschooling. The answer is, of course, that they can afford expensive private schools. However, note that between 1999 and 2003, the number of households homeschooling increased in those top two brackets, by 5% and 4.3%, respectively. In 1999, homeschooling truly was a middle-class phenomenon. The data show that it is spreading.

This, however, is surprising:

Parents’ education
N (1999)
% (1999)
N (2003)
% (2003)
High school diploma or less 160,000 18.9 269,000 24.5
Some college or vocational/technical 287,000 33.7 338,000 30.8
Bachelor’s degree 213,000 25.1 274,000 25.0
Graduate/professional degree 190,000 22.3 215,000 19.6

The first surprising thing is that the more educated the parents are, the less likely they are to homeschool (there are possible reasons for this, but I’ll get to that in a minute). The second surprising thing is that between 1999 and 2003, parents who have a high school diploma or less form the only group that has increased (there are also possible reasons for this). The only educational group that has remained stable between the two years are the parents who have a Bachelor’s degree (25.1% and 25%).

The more educated the parents are, the less likely they are to homeschool their kids. So does this mean that more educated parents are less concerned about their childrens’ education? I doubt it. The more educated parents are, the more likely they are to have decent-paying jobs, and decent-paying jobs tend to require more work, both outside and inside the home. Therefore, part of this may be due to simple pragmatism. Also, a trip to any number of parent edublogs (most of whom represent the top two educational levels) shows that while they may not be homeschooling their children, they are working with their children and supplementing their education (the level of frustration with the local school system and educational system in general on these blogs tends to be quite high). Some, such as this parent blogger, are working their children through whole alternative curricula.

The increase in the number of parents with high school diplomas or less who are homeschooling their children also has a possible explanation. Where is the highest concentration of both parents with a high school education or less and the poorest (and most dangerous) schools? Unfortunately, the NCES does not include these data, so I cannot check if there was a similar increase in inner city families homeschooling their kids, so that will have to remain speculative.

Finally, here are the reasons parents homeschool (2003):

Important
Most important
Reason
N
%
N
%
A concern about environment of other schools
935,000
85.4
341,000
31.2
A dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools
748,000
68.2
180,000
16.5
A desire to provide religious or moral instruction
793,000
72.3
327,000
29.8
Child has a physical or mental health problem
174,000
15.9
71,000
6.5
Child has other special needs
316,000
28.9
79,000
7.2
Other reasons
221,000
20.1
97,000
8.8

The primary reason, then, is a concern about the environment of the schools (obviously, both the dissatisfaction of instruction and moral instruction are also important). Do you think it might be time for the schools (and state and federal governments) might reconsider all the "student rights and privacy" policies they’ve set in place? Perhaps it’s time for the schools to take discipline back, eh?

This entry was posted by rightwingprof on May 9, 2007 at 2:37 pm under Education. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Comments

  1. Robert says:

    In that last table, does a “concern about environment of other schools” refer basically just to the physical safety of children in those schools? Or does it refer to the social structure of the school? Or what?

    I could see a parent who has a generalized, can’t-put-my-finger-on-it dissatisfaction with schools choosing this as their most important issue, even though they may not know what they mean (and indeed may really mean something else, like the academic environment).

    So I suppose I’m wondering just how entangled the top three items in that last table really are. They all had high “Important” percentages but does it make sense to separate them out for “most important”?

    May 9, 2007, 3:32 pm

  2. Myrtle says:

    Prof, you are the stats expert and I’m probably confused, but if 47% of homeschooling parents have a bachelor’s or more wouldn’t that mean they are over represented?

    May 9, 2007, 6:57 pm

  3. weaver says:

    very interesting statistics. i have to wonder how/if they’d change if there were a more accurate measure of how many homeschooling families are out there. in indiana, we don’t have to register with the state and i know a bunch of families who are really trying to stay off the radar completely, so they don’t tell any official entity that they homeschool.

    registering means that you let the state know that you’ve got kids at home in school, and they issue you an official school ID number [which i promptly stuck in a file heaven-only-knows-where]. this does not entitle us to ANY privileges or breaks whatsoever. it does allow them to keep slightly more accurate statistics. i say slightly more accurate because i registered us when my first child started, but i did not have to report when my second child started. only 1/2 the children in my household show up in indiana statistics.

    Pennsylvania is over-the-top controlling of homeschooling, so their statistics are going to be a lot more accurate. [if i lived in PA, i’d move before trying to homeschool there - it’s a nightmare.]

    May 9, 2007, 7:59 pm

  4. joubertconlon says:

    The first surprising thing is that the more educated the parents are, the less likely they are to homeschool…

    The only educational group that has remained stable between the two years are the parents who have a Bachelor’s degree…

    The increase in the number of parents with high school diplomas or less who are homeschooling their children also has a possible explanation.

    Most of my neighbors homeschool their kids. They do so not because they live on isolated farms (a school bus comes to within a mile of my house) but because they are evangelicals. My closest neighbors have bachelors degrees and used to be teachers but most of my neighbors are not well-educated and they only homeschool because they do not want their kids to be exposed to “Godless evolutionism.” Yep, they teach their kids that there the world was created in six days and that there are still dinosaurs in Africa. That’s the down-side to homeschooling.

    May 9, 2007, 8:04 pm

  5. Peggy U says:

    I agree with Robert. One of the reasons we home school is that we can eliminate the PC BS from the academics. PC-ness may be part of what some people mean by “environment”.

    May 9, 2007, 9:52 pm