The National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) reports that approximately 3.1 million K–12 students were homeschooled in the U.S. during the 2021–2022 academic year. This marks a dramatic rise from 2.5 million in spring 2019—a nearly 24% increase in just three years.

Homeschooling has been growing steadily at 2% to 8% per year, but the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that trend sharply. While many families initially turned to homeschooling out of necessity, a significant number have made the switch permanent. According to NHERI, parents cite a variety of reasons:

• Concerns about the school environment, including safety, peer pressure, and bullying;

• Desire to provide moral or religious instruction;

• Dissatisfaction with academic instruction in public schools;

• A preference for individualized, family-based learning.

Data also shows that homeschooling is diversifying, with growth among Black, Hispanic, and lower-income families outpacing historical norms. Many parents who never expected to homeschool are now organizing co-ops, swapping curriculum recommendations, and becoming part of a nationwide shift toward parent-led education.

This latest research also indicates that homeschoolers now represent nearly double the total number of Catholic school students , around 1.7 million, and are coming close to the total number of charter school students, which is estimated to be 3.7 million.

Sources like NHERI provide in-depth analysis and highlight what’s becoming clear: homeschooling is no longer a fringe movement. It’s a rapidly growing, resilient, and deeply personal alternative to institutional education.

OUR TAKE

Let’s be clear: we love this news, and we wouldn’t be surprised if even NHERI’s numbers are low!

Some states with the largest population of homeschoolers are not required to tell their school district that they are homeschooling, and NHERI accounts for that by giving those states a 20% bump in reported numbers, but even that might not capture all of them.

For example, Texas, Alaska, Idaho, Connecticut, Missouri, New Jersey don’t require families to notify the school district or anybody else that they’re homeschooling.

And current estimates of the number of homeschoolers in Texas alone put it right at 600,000.  What are the odds that Texas is only 8% of the United States population, but has 20% of the country’s homeschoolers?  (600,000 is 20% of 3,000,000 — we checked with our Mom.)

We love to think that the number of homeschoolers is a lot higher because of the wonderful laws in these states that don’t require homeschoolers to report to anybody.

But even if we thought there were only 3 million homeschoolers, this isn’t just a statistical bump. It’s a revolution in education—and it’s being led by parents with a backbone.

For decades, we were told homeschooling was fringe, irresponsible, or only for the elite. Now? It’s mainstream, effective, and an act of sanity from parents who see the train wreck that is happening in our education system and want to save their kids from it.

Two million families have decided they’d rather train up their children –at great expense and effort — than hand them over to bureaucrats pushing identity confusion and Marxist ideology wrapped in social-emotional learning.

These parents aren’t just opting out—they’re building something better. They’re forming co-ops. Starting classical academies. Joining churches where homeschooling is the norm, not the exception. They’re reclaiming the role that God gave them—not the state.