It started as an effort by several federal agencies to track how American families were faring during the COVID-19 pandemic—whether they had jobs, if they had enough to eat, and how their kids were being educated. But the United States Census Bureau (USCB) Household Pulse Survey seems to have uncovered one of the most exciting homeschool trends in recent memory: the number of homeschooling families in this country has doubled. And this remarkable trend that is just beginning to be studied and understood.
More specifically, early 2021 data indicate that at least 5 million American parents have decided to educate their children entirely at home. That’s up from about 3.2 million parents identified who reported that they had already been homeschooling in February 2020.