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MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A Christian worldview. Life skills. Bible education. Safety. Flexibility.
These are some of the benefits homeschooling parents say they can offer their kids that are unavailable — or available to a much lesser degree — in public or even private Christian schools.
Sisters Rebecca Stewart and Jessica Dean — co-directors of Virtue Road Academy, a homeschooling tutorial based in Tennessee — have homeschooled their children for about a decade.
They’re part of an increasing number of parents choosing to educate their children at home.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 3.4 percent of school-age children — roughly 1.8 million, based on an estimated 53 million total school-age children — were homeschooled in the 2022-23 school year.
That’s up from 2.8 percent, roughly 1.5 million, in 2018-2019 — just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which Stewart and NCES say impacted homeschooling trends.
Previously, the rate of homeschooling had peaked at 3.4 percent in 2012 before beginning years of decline.
Stewart, 43, taught in public and private elementary schools for 12 years before she began homeschooling her oldest child, Carter, now 15.
She was concerned that her son might get bored academically, feeling he was already ahead of the kindergartners at her school. She also feared for his safety.
“I knew that every time they had a school shooting that technically it could be anywhere,” Stewart said.
She also homeschools her 10-year-old son, Weston, and 8-year-old daughter, Everly. They attend the South Gate Church of Christ in Columbia, Tennessee, with Stewart’s husband, Greg.
For Dean, 47, the first attempt at homeschooling came when her oldest child, Caitlin, now 25, was in elementary school.
But it took a few tries — going back and forth among public school, private school and homeschooling — before bullying and other social issues led the Deans to fully embrace homeschooling.
“I wasn’t educated enough about it,” Dean said of her difficulty getting started. “So we put her back in, and it just didn’t go well. And finally, at a certain point, the beginning of 10th grade, she’s like, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’ So we took her out. We said, ‘We’ll make this work.’ And by then, I had already educated myself.”
Dean has also homeschooled her daughter, Lydia, 22, and son, Corbin, 16. They attend the Highland Church of Christ in Columbia with Dean’s husband, Garrett.
Many parents similarly struggle to get started with homeschooling, Dean told a small crowd gathered at Faulkner University for a recent seminar she and Stewart presented.
“That first year can be kind of rough, and some people will give up right away because they’re like, ‘Oh, I just don’t have it together, like Susie Q over here,’” she said. “But Susie Q may have been doing it for like five years, and she’s already figured it out.”
Stewart said many homeschooling parents make the mistake of trying to imitate public or private school at home.
“If you try to … have your kid doing schoolwork sitting down somewhere for seven or eight hours at your home, that just doesn’t work,” she told The Christian Chronicle.
And while there are challenges associated with homeschooling, “it’s just a matter of choosing your hard,” she added.
Stewart said parents with children in public or private school often vent to her about their own difficulties, such as dealing with bad teachers and the logistics of getting kids to school every day.
Dean added that it’s easier to help a child work through a hard day at home than at school.
Still, parents have to make some sacrifices to homeschool their kids.
Some get remote, part-time or second-shift jobs. Many, like Stewart and Dean, give up their careers or education paths entirely.
Dean had already chosen to be a stay-at-home parent with the birth of her second daughter, Lydia, who has Down syndrome and nonverbal autism. At the time, Dean was studying at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee. Now she does artwork for real estate on the side. Stewart, the former teacher, tutors.
But while their husbands have supported them — financially and emotionally — they know even single parents who have made homeschooling work.
Dean was adamant that “anyone can do it” with the right support system of family, friends and church members.
Navigating schooling costs
Beyond the potential loss of income, homeschooling can carry other costs that, while much lower than for private school, can be more burdensome than those associated with public education.
According to TrustedCare, a national child care organization, homeschooling parents spend $700 to $2,800 per year on average. The cost of online homeschooling programs can vary more widely, from $500 to $5,000. Those costs include curriculum, supplies and extracurricular activities.
But they can be lessened significantly by using the right resources, Stewart said.
She recommends finding books from the library and Goodwill, buying used books and reselling them later and teaching subjects like math and reading through everyday objects and activities — particularly for younger children.
Controversial programs known as school vouchers or school choice can also help parents pay for homeschooling materials by reallocating taxpayer funds that would go to their local school system.
But Stewart and Dean caution that those programs may have unintended consequences.
“When you have the public funds from taxes that are going to pay for this private school over here or these homeschooling supplies over here,” Stewart said, “then the government’s going to want accountability.”
She said multiple friends have come from states that required a certified teacher to come into their home to ensure they were meeting certain requirements.
“And that’s just very invasive,” she added.
Homeschooling regulations vary by state, but they can include notification to the school district, degree requirements for the teaching parent, mandated subjects and regular reports and assessments.