State Homeschool Enrollment Data Trends, 2016

Here at ICHER, we try to annually compile all of the available data maintained by the states that keep records on homeschool enrollment. Some states make this information easily-accessible on state department of education websites, but many do not. If anyone reading this knows of a state we have missed and where its data can be found, please contact us, and we will add it. To access the complete enrollment data, please visit the ICHER site.

Before commenting on trends, let me make some caveats regarding this data. As noted many times before when presenting this information, the numbers here are unreliable for at least three reasons:

  1. Data collection is haphazard, varying widely by state, by district within a state, and from year-to-year based upon state budgets, which do not prioritize homeschooling data collection.
  2. The figures provided by some states don’t account for homeschoolers who may choose to do so by, say, registering as private schools.
  3. Some homeschoolers simply refuse to register with the state and hence are not included in these tallies.

These shortcomings mean that the enrollment figures cited here are in no way an accurate count of homeschoolers in a given state, but they can at least tell us something about trend lines if we look at how the figures are changing year by year. Of the 9 states that we have found updated enrollments for, 6 are up and 3 are down. Based on the data available, it appears that homeschooling is continuing to grow at a moderate rate, even though it has slowed-down and declined in some states. Here are the two most recent data points available for each state so that you can get a sense of the growth trends:

Arkansas

2015: 18,650

2016: 19,229

Trend: Up, Modestly

Florida

2014: 84,096

2015: 83,359

Trend: Down, Modestly

Georgia

2015: 35,127

2016: 31,527

Trend: Down, Significantly

Montana

2014: 4,954

2015: 5,003

Trend: Up, Modestly

North Carolina

2014: 106,853

2015: 118,268

Trend: Up, Significantly

South Dakota

2014: 3,467

2015: 3,858

Trend: Up, Modestly

Utah

2014: 10,438

2015: 13,033

Trend: Up, Significantly

 

Virginia

2014: 32,314

2015: 33,415

Trend: Up, Modestly

Wyoming

2014: 2,316

2015: 2,296

Trend: Down, Modestly

 

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