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More Families Choose Homeschooling There were an estimated 2.04 million K-12 students educated at home in the United States in the spring of 2010, according to a new report from the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI). The report, which was authored by NHERI director Dr. Brian Ray and published January 3, is based on previous reports from the U.S. Department of Education, and recent surveys from national and state-level homeschool organizations, as well as Dr. Ray’s own research. The most recent report from the U.S. Department of Education, which was released in December 2008 by the National Center for Education Statistics, estimated that there were 1.5 million students being home educated in 2007. In the new NHERI report, Dr. Ray explains that his research shows that “the home-school population has grown in absolute terms during the past three to five years” by about seven percent or more between 2007 and 2010. He also writes that he and other home-school leaders expect “a notable surge in the number of children being home schooled in the next five to 10 years” in part “because of the reasonable possibility that a large number of those individuals who were home educated in the 1990s may begin to homeschool their own school-age children.” According to the State Division of Non-Public Education (DNPE), there were 43,316 registered home schools in North Carolina in the 2009-2010 school year with a total of 81,509 students. The majority of North Carolina home schools (65.6 percent) are designated as “religious,” while 34.4 percent are designated as “independent” home schools. Home schools have been legally recognized in North Carolina since the 1985-86 school year, when the State first began tracking the number of home schools. The General Assembly passed legislation in 1988 defining a home school as “a non-public school in which the student receives academic instruction from his/her parent, legal guardian, or a member of the household in which the student resides.” The law requires parents wishing to educate their children at home to file a notice of intent with the state, and authorizes the state to “annually inspect” the school’s attendance records and nationally standardized test score results. Related resources: Copyright © 2011. North Carolina Family Policy Council. All rights reserved.
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