Homeschooling is growing.

Since the COVID pandemic, our best estimates suggest that homeschoolers grew from 3% of the American K-12 student population to 6%. When we consider that 7% of students are enrolled in charter schools and 9-10% of students are enrolled in private schools, we can recognize the size of the homeschooling population. And the homeschooling sector isn’t just large. It is also incredibly diverse, especially when compared to longstanding—and often misleading—stereotypes.

Generally speaking, little is known about homeschooling. Homeschools don’t participate in data collection in the same way that traditional public schools do. Some federal data that offer insights into homeschooling are being discontinued. Data that can provide nationally-representative insights into educational sectors like homeschooling were already scarce and are getting scarcer.

We set out to fix this problem.

We surveyed a nationally representative sample of parents of school-aged children, providing rich insights into who homeschools.

Who they are will surprise you.