A small fraction of California students do not attend school at all, in a conventional sense.

What is homeschooling?

Homeschooled children participate in an educational program that is coordinated by their parents.

School attendance is compulsory, so families must meet some requirements to legally pull their children out of school. The Homeschooling Association of California advises families about how to establish their own private school or how to affiliate with a Private Satellite Program (PSP). Some paperwork is required.

Why do families choose homeschool?

For decades, data about homeschooling was pretty thin. The US Department of Education reduced this gap in 2023 with a massive national study coordinated by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

In the 2022-23 school year, about 5.2% of students in the U.S. aged 5 through 17 received instruction at home in a way that 3.4% of parents regarded as “homeschooled” and the other 2.5% regarded as “virtual education.” These rates were significantly higher than a survey finding in 2018-19 (3.7%).

Among other topics, the survey investigated why parents choose not to enroll their child in a regular school.

For about 11% of respondents, religion was the main reason to opt out. This was a decrease from past findings; in 2011-12, religion was the top factor for 17% of respondents.

The top reason that parents cited for choosing homeschooling was "a concern about the environment" of other schools (83%). Other frequently-cited reasons include a desire to provide moral instruction (75%), a desire to emphasize family life together (72%) and a dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools (72%).

Does homeschool work?

Skeptics of homeschooling usually raise two big questions: Are kids in homeschools getting a good academic education, and are they socially competent?

Neither question can be answered meaningfully, because the circumstances of homeschooling are so varied. There are plenty of self-serving studies about the purported positive or negative effects of homeschool education. They are largely junk science, with poor controls and tiny sample sizes.

Long-term analyses of life outcomes of homeschool kids tend to imply that they perform better than the national average on all kinds of measures, but this comparison doesn't mean much. Homeschooling is difficult and time consuming. Families that can afford to homeschool their kids by definition have more resources than other families. As for social skills and interaction, homeschool families tend to react to the question with amusement. Many of them chose to homeschool specifically to avoid the kind of social environment their public school provided.

Social media networks have provided ways for homeschooled children to interact with others remotely, and many homeschool families are avid participants in community activities.

What are virtual schools and are they good?

Even prior to the pandemic, a significant number of homeschool students were enrolling in virtual schools organized under the California charter school law. Among other advantages, this approach tends to be inexpensive. According to a report by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder, in 2017-2018 there were 297,712 students enrolled in 501 virtual schools in the US. These pre-pandemic virtual schools enrolled significantly fewer minority, low-income, and English learning students than the national average.

There are some indications that virtual schools have continued to grow through the pandemic. According to the 2023 University of Colorado Boulder report, 726 virtual schools served about 578,930 students across the country in 2021-2022.

Virtual schools have struggled to show their effectiveness, but comparisons are difficult. Some virtual schools serve students that might otherwise drop out, so low scores make some sense. Students attending them performed worse academically than ther national average in the 2021-22 school year. About 60% of high school students attending virtual schools graduated on time, compared to the national average of 86.5% across all schools.

Virtual school scandals

Schools involve a lot of money, and virtual school operations have had at least their share of scandals. In 2016, the largest operator of virtual schools settled a multi-year case brought by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris. Run for profit, the virtual school was accused of aggressive marketing, weak instruction, and fraudulent attendance recording. Partly in response to the case, California outlawed for-profit charter management companies in 2018. Like all charter schools in California, virtual charter schools may not be run as for-profit businesses.

The next lesson steps away from anything remotely "virtual." What does it take to hold a class together, in terms of discipline?

Updated December 2024