Homeschooling in the United States is the practice of educating children at home, where students do not attend a formal school. As a form of alternative education, homeschooling normally takes the form of parents teaching their children through direct tutoring, religious teachings, experimental or unstructured learning methods.
The US has a long tradition of homeschooling, beginning in the colonial period, where families educated their children at home in absence of local schools. In the US today about 3.3% of K-12 age students are homeschooled.NCES Homeschooling Estimates, US Department of Education (2023). Accessible by PDF https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Taubman/PEPG/conference/homeschool-conference-slides-grady.pdf The number of homeschoolers in the US has recently increased in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2024 to 2025, homeschooling increased by 4.9%.
History Homeschooling in the US began during the colonial period; mass public education did not become popular until the middle of the 19th century.
On-going debate among historians have attributed the popularity of homeschooling to religious groups in the US, but it is unclear the magnitude of this driver on homeschooling activities in the early period of the US.
Resistance to laws mandating school attendance emerged as early as the end of the nineteenth century. Catholic groups in particular resisted the enforcement of Protestant ideals in public schools, as was observed in the 1844 Philadelphia nativist riots. Philadelphia's Roman Catholic bishop requested that Catholic schoolchildren be permitted to read the Catholic Douay bible in school rather than the Protestant King James Version, which was granted. This decision fanned anti-Catholic sentiment, sparking a rumor that Catholics were attempting to remove the Christian Bible from schools. Toledo, Ohio, minister Patrick Francis Quigley was put on trial in 1891 for resisting the requirement to report the names of students at his school, which he was principal of; he argued unsuccessfully that "the state has no right to control the education of the child." Resistance to mandatory schooling was sporadic throughout the 19th century as the state undertook more responsibility in protecting the rights of children.
Homeschooling, or home tutoring for wealthy children, was slowly replaced by mass public education in the 19th and 20th centuries, as universal schooling became a feature of the modern state.
In 1913, the US Bureau of Education established the Home Education Division, an organization that worked with the National Council of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations to provide home curriculum materials; these were meant to supplement, not substitute, for public schooling. In the early 20th century, the headmaster of Baltimore's Calvert School, Virgil Hillyer, recognized that various students at his school were unable to attend due to ill health and began to send out lesson plans to those students' parents. The Calvert method became a popular early home curriculum. Its advertising in periodicals such as McClure's admonished parents that the curriculum was necessary to provide a proper education. This form of homeschooling was targeted primarily at those who needed to educate their children at home due to ill health, and many of their materials were dispatched to hospitals. In 1940, remote education began to be delivered via telephone.
The mid-century interest in homeschooling was supported by a number of factors including the isolation of suburban geographies, the civil rights movement and resulting school desegregation, and reported government skepticism through the 1960s and 1970s. In 1979, the Wall Street Journal quoted an estimate that approximately 10,000 families how were teaching their children at home. The 1979 Wall Street Journal article cited "religious, political, and social convictions, or simply disgust at conditions in public or private schools" as reasons parents gave for homeschooling their children.
In the 1960s, theonomist Rousas John Rushdoony began to advocate homeschooling, which he saw as a way to combat the increasingly secular nature of the public school system in the United States. He vigorously attacked progressive school reformers such as Horace Mann and John Dewey and argued for the dismantling of the state's influence in education in three works: Intellectual Schizophrenia, The Messianic Character of American Education, and The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum. Rushdoony was frequently used as an expert witness by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in court cases. He often advocated the use of private schools. The HSLDA, founded in 1983, was highly successful in influencing the legal status of homeschooling in the United States. In the 1980s, homeschooling was illegal throughout much of the United States for parents who were not themselves trained educators. Today, the United States has some of the most lax laws around homeschooling, with most states requiring little to no oversight and no educational requirements for parents. Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states in the United States. Each state must follow regulations set by their states. In Ohio, it is sufficient for parents to have completed their secondary education and to report to the administration, whereas in California they must have received training.
Prominent right-wing evangelical pastor and activist Jerry Falwell sought to terminate sex education and discussions of evolutionary biology from American school curricula, instead recommending replacing both topics with prayer and Christian Bible study. The movement embraced claims by Christian parents who advocated for homeschooling, such as Raymond and Dorothy Moore. Another influential figure associated with the rise of the homeschooling movement was John Holt. Holt believed that informal education was better than compulsory education and expressed these views in his books How Children Fail and How Children Learn. Holt advocated for unschooling, whereby children learn without any formalized curricula or expectations. As homeschooling caught on in Evangelical Christian circles, the number of children being homeschooled increased massively, with some estimates suggesting the number went from under twenty thousand in the 1970s to nearly 500,000 by the end of the 1980s.
Prevalence Estimates for students currently being homeschooled are inaccurate, as a number of states do not require families to report that their child will not attend a formal education institute. While the figures for students in homeschooling are mixed, it was estimated homeschooling peaked in 2020, at about 5.4% of all American school-aged children. The survey defined homeschooled students where parents reported them as being schooled at home instead of at a public or private school for at least part of their education; and if their part-time enrollment in public or private school did not exceed 25 hours a week. This excluded students who were schooled at home primarily because of a temporary illness.1.5 Million Home-schooled Students in the United States in 2007 Issue Brief from Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. December 2008. NCES 2009–030
Around a fifth of homeschoolers are co-enrolled in public schools. Some students take one or two classes at traditional school campuses while others spend several days per week on campuses designed to educate part-time students.Hughes, Kristine. "https://web.archive.org/web/20070204021226/http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/carrollton/stories/DN-newschool_11met.ART0.North.Edition1.9055b49.html School offers new twist on classical education]." The Dallas Morning News. Monday June 12, 2006. Retrieved on October 12, 2011.
In August 2020, Gallup released a poll indicating that 10% of parents planned to homeschool in the coming year, reflecting a rise in alternative education alongside the shift to virtual schooling during the COVID-19 lockdown policies.
Only about 10% of homeschool families use homeschool from Kindergarten through the end of high school. For many families, homeschooling is a temporary situation, with traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools providing the main part of the student's education. About 30% of adults who had ever been homeschooled did so only for one or two years.
Motivation Motivations for homeschooling in the US (2025) Motivation Percentage of parents A concern about the school environment 83% A desire to provide moral instruction 75%A desire to emphasize family life72% A dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools 72%Prefer to provide religious instruction53% Interest in nontraditional approach 50% Child has special needs 21% Child has physical or mental problem 15%Other13% Parents give many different reasons for homeschooling their children. Parents continually rank concern about the school environment, to provide religious or moral instruction, and dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools, as the most important motivations for homeschooling.
From 2003 to 2007, the percentage of students whose parents reported homeschooling to provide religious or moral instruction increased from 72 percent to 83 percent, although this number has been declining. It is currently reported only 53% of cite religious instruction as a motivation. Typically the religious belief being represented is evangelical Christian.Sadker, D.M. & Zittleman, K.R. (2013). Teachers, schools, and society (10th ed.). New York, NY: Mc Graw Hill.p. 155.
Other reasons include more flexibility in educational practices and family core stability for children with learning disabilities or prolonged chronic illnesses, or for children of missionaries, military families, or families who move often.
Student outcomes
Academic performance In a review of existing studies on homeschooled students in the US population, the overall impact of this educational method indicates a near zero difference with publicly educated students, across a variety of metrics, included higher education outcomes. Despite these claims, studying the outcomes of students in homeschooling programs in the US is difficult due to a lack of transparency in reporting test scores by homeschooling parents, bias in grading, a lack of demographic information, and a non-randomized sample of students. There is limited evidence, from small samples, that homeschooled children perform better on the ACT or SAT, but these studies suffer from sample bias, a lack of external validity, self-selection bias, and a multitude of other study design flaws resulting in a lack of causality. One study finds that students who are homeschooled and non related to a religious affiliation may score lower compared to those with religious affiliation. In a small sample survey, students who were homeschooled scored lower than peers on positive social characteristics, indicating less socialization.
Higher education enrollment Homeschooled students may access higher education at the college or university level, some through dual enrollment while in high school and through standardized tests such as the College Level Examination Program (CLEP) and DANTES Subject Standard Tests (DSST).
US colleges and universities will admit homeschooled students who meet the institution's entry requirements. As of 2024, 75% of colleges and universities have an official policy for homeschool admissions and 95% have received applications from homeschoolers for admission. Documents that may be required for admission vary, but may include ACT/SAT scores, essays, high school transcript, letters of recommendation, SAT 2 scores, personal interviews, portfolio, and a GED.
Religious beliefs