Homeschooling is on the rise.
The United States Census Bureau reports that “the global COVID-19 pandemic has sparked new interest in homeschooling and the appeal of alternative school arrangements has suddenly exploded.”
The numbers
The Census Bureau’s findings come as a result of its Household Pulse Survey.
What this survey found was that, in the fall of 2020, “11.1% of households with school-age children reported homeschooling.” The survey was conducted from September 30th to October 12th, 2020.
To provide some perspective, the same survey was taken during a period from April 23rd to May 5th, 2020, and that survey found that “about 5.4% of U.S. households with school-aged children reported homeschooling.” In other words, the percentage of those homeschooling more than doubled in about four months.
And, to provide more perspective, the Census Bureau reports that, before the coronavirus pandemic, the percentage of Americans who homeschooled was consistently around 3.3 percent.
It ought to be noted that the Census Bureau did make sure to distinguish between actual homeschooling and the remote learning that has become commonplace in many parts of the country as a result of the pandemic.
“Using a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. households, the survey shows homeschooling is notably higher than the national benchmarks and offers a glimpse of changes in homeschooling patterns during the pandemic,” the Census Bureau concluded.
It has been confirmed
Breitbart reports that these findings of the Census Bureau are in line with a number of other surveys that have been taken since the pandemic disrupted traditional schooling.
The outlet, for example, points to a Gallup poll, taken towards the end of August 2020, that found that homeschooling was up by about five percentage points from August 2019. Education Week, according to Breitbart, also conducted a survey that found that the percentage of those homeschooling had doubled since the coronavirus hit America.
The question now is whether this is going to be the new normal going forward – whether these homeschooling numbers will stay where they are, or whether they may even continue to rise?
Breitbart reports Kerry McDonald, a senior education fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), as opining that there will be “‘sustained elevation of homeschooling numbers going forward,’ primarily because parents’ views of directing their own children’s education have grown more positive.”
The post Census Bureau finds “signifiant” increase in homeschooling as a result of the coronavirus pandemic first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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