Chapter 1: Introduction to Recent Changes and Research in us Homeschooling

Homeschooling of children exploded from a population of about 13,000 students in the 1970s to about 2.2 million now in 2015 in the United States (Ray, 2013, 2015c). It went from being a practice of families that some observers opined were the fringe of society to being commonly considered a viable educational option by mainstream American families. Homeschooling was comprised of close to 100 percent White families two decades ago, and is now 32 percent Black, Asian, Hispanic, and others (not White, non-Hispanic) (Noel, Stark, & Redford, 2013).

Now more students are home schooled in grades Kindergarten through 12 in this form of education than in Roman Catholic schools (National Catholic Educational Association, 2014) and almost as many as in public charter schools (United States Department of Education, 2014). The phenomenon is called homeschooling. Its renascence after about a century of quiescence has surprised many educators, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and theologians, and has captured the imagination and engagement of hundreds of thousands of families.