Record: Angela R. Watson (2018) Is homeschool cool? Current trends in American homeschooling in Journal of School Choice, 12:3, 401-425, DOI: 10.1080/15582159.2018.1490378
Summary: Watson, a distinguished doctoral fellow at the University of Arkansas, presents her analysis of recent trends in national home education enrollment in response to federal estimates indicating that homeschooling is declining; or to use her terminology, “cooling.”
This review will compare Watson’s findings with the recently released findings from ICHER. Our analysis can be found here.
Watson begins her analysis by first providing some background of home education. She claims that homeschooling was outlawed in many states up until 1996, but according to Watson’s findings, it has been steadily growing since then. Watson explains that historically, homeschooling was the favored choice of religious families; however, it appears that the rhetoric is changing. According to her findings, the most cited reason for opting for homeschooling was for the students’ safety. This is further expressed by homeschooling parents of color who cite protecting their students from racism and violence as the reason for choosing the homeschool option. This topic is further explored in a previous ICHER review found here.
Before presenting her data, Watson informs the reader that the current home education reporting system is flawed due to the various state standards (or lack thereof), as well as the possibility that some families do not report that they are choosing to homeschool. That being said, the data she collected comes from 22 state Departments of Education from the years 2000-2015.
After presenting her data by state, Watson provides an overall summary of all of the states included in her research. She concludes that homeschooling is, in fact, on the rise, citing a 45% increase in participation since the year 2000. This is contrary to national reports which claim that homeschooling is declining.
Appraisal: Though compelling, Watson does have a few flaws in her analysis. First a minor point: her claim that homeschooling was “outlawed in many states until 1996” is incorrect. In 1996 Michigan, the last state to require that homeschooling parents must be certified teachers to homeschool, passed a new homeschool law after a 1993 court decision had voided its earlier restrictive policy. In fact, homeschooling was never outlawed anywhere. A few states had restrictive policies limiting who could do it, but in most states prior to the 1970s it just wasn’t clear what the law really was. The journey to explicit legalization began in the mid-1900s through various legal and legislative battles at the state level, the end result being a far more permissive environment by 1996 than had been the case in, say, 1976. For a thorough history of the legal battles over homeschooling in various states see here
Watson’s data matches the data that ICHER has collected in our own reports, which you can access here. I find it peculiar, however, that she would only look at the years 2000-2015 when her report was published in 2018, especially considering the fact that she is attempting to refute claims made by federal estimates she cites as being released in the fall of 2017. The data up through 2015 does support her claim that homeschooling is on the rise; however, certain states she described as “hot” for homeschooling show a decline in enrollment during the span of 2015-2017.
Minnesota, for example, described by Watson as “homeschool hot” experienced a massive decrease in enrollment between 2015 and 2016, dropping from 18,772 to 12,927 students. The same can be said for Colorado (dropping from 8,606 in 2015 to 7,136 in 2017), Maine (dropping from 5,441 in 2015 to 5,275 in 2017) and Vermont (dropping from 2,408 in 2015 to 2,205 in 2017).
That being said, Watson’s conclusions are correct to an extent. Based on our analysis, it does appear that states with an increase in homeschooling outnumber states with a decrease in homeschooling almost 2:1.
Marissa Donlevie, Messiah College