The Washington Post today is releasing exclusive, detailed school district-level and state-level data on home schooling enrollment for 32 states and D.C. following the publication of a story revealing that home schooling is now the fastest growing form of education in the country.
The database, compiled by hand by Post reporters in collaboration with students from the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, provides journalists and researchers the most up-to-date picture of home schooling in the nation. The last comprehensive federal estimates of home-school enrollment were in 2019 through the federal NHES Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey.
More information on the home schooling dataset:
- The dataset covers the 2017-18 through 2022-23 academic years and includes raw counts of the number of home-school students in each of nearly 7,000 school districts across the U.S. It also includes state totals, including for states where district-level data was unavailable.
- In all, The Post gathered data from states representing 61% of the American school-age population.
- A Post analysis found that a dramatic rise in home schooling at the onset of the covid pandemic in 2020 largely sustained itself through the 2022-23 academic year. In 18 states with comparable enrollment figures, the number of home-schooled students increased 51 percent over the past six school years, far outpacing the 7 percent growth in private school enrollment. Public school enrollment dropped 4 percent in those states over the same period, a decline partly attributable to home schooling.
- The Post also found that home schooling’s surging popularity crossed every measurable line of politics, geography and demographics – and that there was no correlation between school district quality, as measured by standardized test scores, and home-schooling’s rise.
The data analysis is part of an ongoing series of coverage called Home School Nation, where The Post explores how the rise is transforming the nation’s educational landscape — and the lives of hundreds of thousands of children who now learn at home rather than at a traditional school.
