How Homeschooling Became the Fastest Growing Education Model

This May, in honor of National Homeschool Awareness Month, we’re taking a closer look at how homeschooling became the fastest-growing form of education in the country, what the data tells us about outcomes, and how a new wave of education freedom policies is finally giving every family the chance to customize their child’s education.

Every May, National Homeschool Awareness Month invites the public to take a fresh look at home-based education, its growth, its benefits, and the families making it work. The observance has been promoted for over a decade and was born out of a desire to move past stereotypes and shine a light on a community that, for multiple decades, has been doing something remarkable largely out of the spotlight.

And what does homeschooling actually look like? That’s kind of the point!

There is no single answer. Homeschooling can mean a parent-led curriculum at the kitchen table, a co-op of neighborhood families gathering at a church, a microschool blending in-person and online instruction, or a hybrid of all of the above. Some use flexibility for faith-based education; others use it to accommodate a child’s medical needs, giftedness, or learning differences. The throughline is customization and the freedom to build an education around a child rather than the other way around.

The old story that homeschooling is a single demographic with a single motivation using a single model no longer fits. Homeschooling in 2026 is Black families in Birmingham building co-ops. It is a professor in Arkansas teaching her daughters self-directed inquiry. It is a family in New Hampshire sending one kid to chemistry lab and another to welding camp. It is a gifted 9-year-old in West Virginia organizing river cleanups because no one told him he had to wait.

It is, increasingly, a choice that looks like America.

A new generation of Education Savings Account (ESA) programs is putting public education dollars directly into the hands of families, allowing them to spend those funds on homeschool curricula, tutoring, co-ops, online courses, dual enrollment, and more.

EdChoice tracks this shifting landscape of K–12 education types state by state and the pattern is clear: states with true universal education freedom programs, those that offer all students access to funding for a wide range of educational expenses with no income limits or enrollment caps, tend to show the highest rates of participation in non-traditional schooling options like homeschooling. Florida, Arizona, West Virginia, Arkansas, and New Hampshire are the five states that meet EdChoice’s true universal standard, and all five appear in the top 10 of the 2026 EdChoice Share, with Florida and Arizona occupying the top two spots.

So what do the numbers actually tell us about where homeschooling stands today?

Nearly 1 out of every 20 students in America is now homeschooled. The Washington Post has declared homeschooling the “fastest-growing form of education”  in the country and the data backs it up. . Before the pandemic, homeschool participation hovered around 3% of K–12 students. Since then, that share has roughly doubled to about 6%, putting homeschooling in the same league as charter schools (7%) and approaching private schools (9%) as a share of American K–12 education.

The story many observers expected was a temporary spike when families pulled their kids home out of necessity during COVID-19, then returned them to traditional schools when the doors reopened. That’s not really what happened.

Research from Dr. Angela Watson using data from the Johns Hopkins Homeschool Hub shows that the majority of states with available data report increased homeschool participation three years after the pandemic’s height. In the 2024–2025 school year, 80% of reporting states saw an increase in homeschooling. The growth in some states is dramatic: New Hampshire is up 14.5%, Ohio up 15%, Vermont up 17%, and South Carolina leads the nation with a 21.5% jump over the prior year.

The image of the homeschooling family that are overwhelmingly white, religious, and affluent has not kept pace with reality. According to EdChoice research, homeschooling today is racially, ideologically, and geographically diverse. An estimated 15% of homeschooling households are Hispanic, 10% are Black, and 5% are Asian, which reflects the broader U.S. population in meaningful ways.

The ideological diversity is equally striking. Research from EdChoice’s “Who Homeschools, Really?” shows “Homeschoolers represent a wide range of political ideologies and religious lifestyles. Forty-four percent of homeschooling parents identify as Republican (43% as politically conservative) while 29% identify with the Democratic party (25% politically liberal). Similarly, 44% of homeschooling parents report attending religious services at least weekly, though 31% say they never attend at all.

Critics of homeschooling have long raised concerns about socialization, higher education access, and academic outcomes. A growing body of rigorous research is systematically dismantling those claims.

The Cardus Education Survey analyzed outcomes for a nationally representative sample of adults aged 24–39 who were homeschooled, categorizing them by duration: short-term (1–2 years), medium-term (3–7 years), and long-term (8 or more years). The findings are striking. Adults who were homeschooled for eight or more years reported the lowest levels of symptoms associated with anxiety and depression and were the most likely to feel optimism and satisfaction with their lives. Despite persistent myths, the evidence does not support the idea that homeschooled students are less socialized, less civically engaged, or less likely to pursue higher education.

Tamra L. Chilver once said, “Homeschooling allows you the freedom to step off the highway of learning and take a more scenic route along a dirt road.”

This National Homeschool Awareness Month, the most important thing to be aware of is this: for millions of American families, homeschooling isn’t a last resort. It’s their first choice, and thanks to a new generation of education freedom policies, more families every year are finally getting the chance to take the scenic route along a dirt road.