A look at homeschooling in the U.S.

Some 3.4% of K-12 students in the United States were homeschooled during the 2022-23 academic year, according to recently released data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). That was roughly on par with the 2.8% of students who were homeschooled during the 2018-19 academic year, before the coronavirus pandemic.

How we did this

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to examine homeschooling patterns in the United States. This analysis relies on data from the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey (PFI) by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

The PFI collects data on family engagement in education, including parent involvement at school, family activities and homeschooling. This analysis exclusively uses the survey’s data on homeschooled students and their families.

The nationally representative PFI survey is conducted every three to four years. The latest survey was fielded between January and August 2023 by the U.S. Census Bureau. Questionnaires were completed for 19,562 students and weighted to represent approximately 53 million students in the U.S. between kindergarten and 12th grade – or in homeschool equivalents – during the 2022-23 school year. The questionnaires were completed by a parent or guardian about a selected child.

Find the complete methodology, data tables and appendices here.

How is homeschooling defined?

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provides the official federal estimate of the homeschooling rate in the United States, based on a survey of American parents. Each parent responds to questions about the schooling of one selected child in their household.

The NCES homeschooling rate is the share of sampled children ages 5 to 17 with a grade equivalent of kindergarten through grade 12 whose parents say they are homeschooled for all or some classes. It excludes students with temporary illnesses and those who attend a public or private school for more than 25 hours per week.

Learn more about the survey methodology here. Here are the questions used for this analysis.

Another 1.8% of K-12 students were enrolled in full-time virtual public or private schools in 2022-23, but their parents did not consider them to be homeschooled. In 2018-19, fewer than 1% of students (0.86%) were in this virtual schooling group.

Why do parents choose to homeschool?

Parents of homeschooled children cite multiple factors as reasons for doing so, according to NCES.

The most common reason given by parents of homeschooled children is concern about the school environment – such as safety, drugs or negative peer pressure (83% of parents of homeschooled children cite this as a reason).

About seven-in-ten (72%) say dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools is a reason.

Large majorities of parents of homeschooling kids also cite the preference to provide moral instruction (75%) and the desire to emphasize family life together (72%).

About half of parents of homeschooling students say a reason to homeschool is the desire to provide religious instruction (53%) or to provide a nontraditional approach to their child’s education (50%).

Other, less common reasons cited by parents have to do with their child’s special needs or health issues. For 15% of parents of homeschooling children, a reason for homeschooling is a physical or mental health problem that has lasted six months or more. Another health-related reason these parents give is that their child has a temporary illness that prevents them from going to school (2%). And 21% of homeschooled children’s parents say they choose to homeschool because their child has other special needs that they feel the school cannot or will not meet.