New Report: Homeschooling in the United States

The National Center for Education Statistics has released a new report: Homeschooling in the United States: 2012.  The full report can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016096.pdf.  Although statistics on Catholic homeschoolers may be different, this is a good primer on the nation as a whole.

Some highlights from the report:

• The percentage of students ages 5–17 with a grade equivalent of kindergarten through grade 12 who are homeschooled—the homeschooling rate—has increased over time. The homeschooling rate increased from 1.7 percent in 1999 to 3.4 percent in 2012.
• In 2012, there were an estimated 1.8 million homeschooled students in the United States, which is an increase from 850,000 in 1999, when estimates were first reported.
• Most homeschooled students were White (83 percent) and nonpoor (89 percent), lived in cities or suburban areas and rural areas. Homeschooled students spanned all grade equivalents.
• Nine in 10 homeschooled students’ parents reported that concern about schools’ environments was an important reason for their decision to homeschool.
• Websites, homeschooling catalogs, public libraries, and bookstores were the more frequently cited sources of curriculum for homeschooled students in 2012. Curricula from public and private schools were among the least cited. 
• About a quarter of homeschooled students had parents who took a course to prepare for their child’s home instruction.
• About a third of middle school-level homeschooled students (35 percent) and a third of high school level (34 percent) homeschooled students took online courses.
• Most high-school level homeschooled students had home instruction that included basic algebra (88 percent), earth sciences or geology and biology (69 percent each).