The Homeschool Choice

The surprising reasons parents are opting out of the public school system and homeschooling their kids Homeschooling has skyrocketed in popularity in the United States: in 2019, a record-breaking 2.5 million children were being homeschooled. In The Homeschool Choice, Kate Henley Averett provides insight into this fascinating phenomenon, exploring the perspectives of parents who have chosen to homeschool their children. Drawing on in-depth interviews, Averett examines the reasons why these parents choose to homeschool, from those who disagree with sex education and LGBT content in schools, to others who want to protect their children’s sexual and gender identities. With eye-opening detail, she shows us how homeschooling is a trend being chosen by an increasingly diverse subset of American families, at times in order to empower—or constrain—children’s gender and sexuality. Ultimately, Averett explores how homeschooling, as a growing practice, has changed the roles that families, schools, and the state play in children’s lives. As teachers, parents, and policymakers debate the future of public education, The Homeschool Choice sheds light on the ongoing struggle over school choice.

Honorable Mention, Sex & Gender Section Distinguished Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association The surprising reasons parents are opting out of the public school system and homeschooling their kids Homeschooling has skyrocketed in popularity in the United States: in 2019, a record-breaking 2.5 million children were being homeschooled. In The Homeschool Choice, Kate Henley Averett provides insight into this fascinating phenomenon, exploring the perspectives of parents who have chosen to homeschool their children. Drawing on in-depth interviews, Averett examines the reasons why these parents choose to homeschool, from those who disagree with sex education and LGBT content in schools, to others who want to protect their children’s sexual and gender identities. With eye-opening detail, she shows us how homeschooling is a trend being chosen by an increasingly diverse subset of American families, at times in order to empower—or constrain—children’s gender and sexuality. Ultimately, Averett explores how homeschooling, as a growing practice, has changed the roles that families, schools, and the state play in children’s lives. As teachers, parents, and policymakers debate the future of public education, The Homeschool Choice sheds light on the ongoing struggle over school choice.

Correcting misconceptions through profiles of diverse families, Rivero uncovers the changing and complex needs of children today. This book addresses the major questions parents are bound to have as they consider the homeschooling option: socialization, curriculum, special needs arrangements, resources, and more.

This book expands the concept of homeplace with contemporary Black homeschooling positioned as a form of resistance among single Black mothers. Chapters explore each mother’s experience and unique context from their own perspectives in deciding to homeschool and developing their practice. It corroborates many of the issues that plague the education of Black children in America, including discipline disproportionality, frequent referrals to special education services, teachers’ low expectations, and the marginalization of Black parents as partners in traditional schools. This book demonstrates how single mothers experience the inequity in school choice policies and also provides an understanding of how single Black mothers experience home-school partnerships within traditional schools. Most importantly, this volume challenges stereotypical characterizations of who homeschools and why.

School choice is a hot topic in the United States. Private school vouchers, public charter schools, open enrollment, and homeschooling all regularly appear on the policy agenda as ways to improve the educational experience and outcomes for students, parents, and the broader society. Pundits often make claims about the various ways in which parents select schools and thus customize their child’s education. What claims about school choice are grounded in actual evidence? This book presents systematic reviews of the social science research regarding critical aspects of parental school choice. How do parents choose schools and what do they seek? What effects do their choices have on the racial integration of schools and the performance of the schools that serve non-choosing students? What features of public charter schools are related to higher student test scores? What effects does school choice have on important non-cognitive outcomes including parent satisfaction, student character traits, and how far students go in school? What do we know about homeschooling as a school choice? This book, originally published as a special issue of the Journal of School Choice, provides evidence-based answers to those vital questions.

Since the early 1990s when the nation’s first charter school was opened in Minneapolis, the scope and availability of school-based options to parents has steadily expanded. No longer can public education be characterized as a monopoly. Sponsored by the National Center on School Choice (NCSC), this handbook makes readily available the most rigorous and policy-relevant research on K-12 school choice. Coverage includes charters, vouchers, home schooling, magnet schools, cyber schools, and other forms of choice, with the ultimate goal of defining the current state of this evolving field of research, policy, and practice. Key Features include: Comprehensive – this is the first book to provide a comprehensive review of what is known about the major forms of school choice from multiple perspectives: historical, political, economic, legal, methodological, and international. It also includes work on the governance, structure, process, effectiveness, and costs of school choice. Readable – the editors and authors have taken care to translate rigorous research findings into comprehensible prose accessible to a broad range of readers. International – in addition to thorough coverage of domestic research, the volume also draws on international and comparative studies of choice in foreign countries. Expertise – the National Center on School Choice (NCSC) is a consortium that is headquartered at Vanderbilt University and includes the following partners: Brookings Institution, Brown University, Harvard University, National Bureau of Economic Research, Northwest Evaluation Association, and Stanford University. This book is suitable for researchers, faculty and graduate students in education policy studies, politics of education, and social foundations of education. It should also be of interest to inservice administrators and policy makers.

How race and racism shape middle-class families’ decisions to homeschool their children While families of color make up 41 percent of homeschoolers in America, little is known about the racial dimensions of this alternate form of education. In The Color of Homeschooling, Mahala Dyer Stewart explores why this percentage has grown exponentially in the past twenty years, and reveals how families’ schooling decisions are heavily shaped by race, class, and gender. Drawing from almost a hundred interviews with Black and white middle-class homeschooling and nonhomeschooling families, Stewart’s findings contradict many commonly held beliefs about the rationales for homeschooling. Rather than choosing to homeschool based on religious or political beliefs, many middle-class Black mothers explain their schooling choices as motivated by their concerns of racial discrimination in public schools and the school-to-prison pipeline. Indeed, these mothers often voiced concerns that their children would be mistreated by teachers, administrators, or students on account of their race, or that they would be excessively surveilled and policed. Conversely, middle-class white mothers had the privilege of not having to consider race in their decision-making process, opting for homeschooling because of concerns that traditional schools would not adequately cater to their child's behavioral or academic needs. While appearing nonracial, these same decisions often contributed to racial segregation. The Color of Homeschooling is a timely and much-needed study on how homeschooling serves as a canary in the coal mine, highlighting the perils of school choice policies for reproducing, rather than correcting, long-standing race, class, and gender inequalities in America.

All across the country, in traditional public, public charter, and private schools, entrepreneurial educators are experimenting with the school day and school week. Hybrid Homeschools have students attend traditional classes in a brick-and-mortar school for some part of the week and homeschool for the rest of the week. Some do two days at home and three days at school, others the inverse, and still others split between four days at home or school and one day at the other. This book dives deep into hybrid homeschooling. It describes the history of hybrid homeschooling, the different types of hybrid homeschools operating around the country, and the policies that can both promote and thwart it. At the heart of the book are the stories of hybrid homeschoolers themselves. Based on numerous in-depth interviews, the book tells the story of hybrid homeschooling from both the family and educator perspective.