11.21.22 – Texas Tribune
“More Texans Turn to Home Schooling After the Pandemic Showed Them What Learning Outside of Schools Could Be Like”
By Brian Lopez
Excerpts from this article:
Christina Hernandez, a mother of two and a former San Antonio theater teacher, knows firsthand how difficult it is to give every student the attention they deserve.
And this school year, as class sizes have gotten bigger amid a statewide teacher shortage exacerbated by the pandemic, she started suspecting her public school district was not meeting her kids’ needs.
So she pulled them out and started home-schooling them…
“I know my kids better than anyone, and I know how they learn,” Hernandez said. “Within a week I was like, ‘They're already just more focused.’”
Hernandez and her family are among the Texans who started home schooling when the pandemic hit.
Research suggests home schooling was already growing in popularity before the pandemic, but according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, an effort to examine the impact of COVID-19 on American life, the percentage of Texas families that home-school their children went up in 2020 — from 4.5% at the end of the 2019-20 school year to 12% at the start of the 2020-21 school year. The increase was particularly notable among Black families.
According to data collected by the Texas Homeschool Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes and advocates for home schooling in the state, about 30,000 students across the state withdrew from a public or charter school and switched to home schooling during the spring of 2021, an increase of 40% compared with the previous year. The figure is likely higher because the state does not track withdrawals from public schools below the seventh grade, said Jeremy Newman, the coalition’s deputy director.
Peggy Semingson, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington who tracked home schooling during the pandemic, said the increase can be attributed to a number of factors. Some families were worried about the spread of COVID-19 at schools; others who had been thinking about home schooling finally took the step after remote learning gave them a glimpse of what teaching their kids at home could look like. The Uvalde school shooting on May 24, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed, might have led some parents to switch to home schooling this year, she said.
Differences over how race and sex are taught at schools also played a role. While the topic had stirred tensions between families and educators in the past, they intensified during the pandemic as more public school lessons were transmitted to family computers during lockdown. The debate spilled into last spring’s school board races as conservative groups rallied against critical race theory, a college-level discipline that examines how racism is embedded in laws and culture. Although the approach is not taught in public schools, it became a shorthand to attack how race is discussed in classrooms.
Newman said he’s heard from parents who have chosen to home-school because they don’t like how politicized schools are becoming. That sentiment is coming from both sides of the political spectrum, he said.
Traditionally, Newman said, parents have home-schooled their children to give them a religious education. But that has shifted in recent years, with growing concerns about bullying, drugs and poor academic achievement. For people of color, fears that their children will face racism at school can drive them out, he said.
For Hernandez, the decision to home-school meant she could make sure her kids are safe and that she can talk to them about topics like sex and politics before a stranger does...
Away from schools
Another reason Newman believes there’s an increased interest in home schooling is because the pandemic forced families to spend more time at home and showed them that they can educate their children without being tied to a brick-and-mortar school.
“We’re moving into an era now where people are just going to demand that there are more hybrid forms of education,” Newman said. “We build rigid forms of education because we think they’re stable, right? But people have realized that in times of crisis, they are not.”
Excerpts from this article:
Christina Hernandez, a mother of two and a former San Antonio theater teacher, knows firsthand how difficult it is to give every student the attention they deserve.
And this school year, as class sizes have gotten bigger amid a statewide teacher shortage exacerbated by the pandemic, she started suspecting her public school district was not meeting her kids’ needs.
So she pulled them out and started home-schooling them…
“I know my kids better than anyone, and I know how they learn,” Hernandez said. “Within a week I was like, ‘They're already just more focused.’”
Hernandez and her family are among the Texans who started home schooling when the pandemic hit.
Research suggests home schooling was already growing in popularity before the pandemic, but according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, an effort to examine the impact of COVID-19 on American life, the percentage of Texas families that home-school their children went up in 2020 — from 4.5% at the end of the 2019-20 school year to 12% at the start of the 2020-21 school year. The increase was particularly notable among Black families.
According to data collected by the Texas Homeschool Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes and advocates for home schooling in the state, about 30,000 students across the state withdrew from a public or charter school and switched to home schooling during the spring of 2021, an increase of 40% compared with the previous year. The figure is likely higher because the state does not track withdrawals from public schools below the seventh grade, said Jeremy Newman, the coalition’s deputy director.
Peggy Semingson, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington who tracked home schooling during the pandemic, said the increase can be attributed to a number of factors. Some families were worried about the spread of COVID-19 at schools; others who had been thinking about home schooling finally took the step after remote learning gave them a glimpse of what teaching their kids at home could look like. The Uvalde school shooting on May 24, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed, might have led some parents to switch to home schooling this year, she said.
Differences over how race and sex are taught at schools also played a role. While the topic had stirred tensions between families and educators in the past, they intensified during the pandemic as more public school lessons were transmitted to family computers during lockdown. The debate spilled into last spring’s school board races as conservative groups rallied against critical race theory, a college-level discipline that examines how racism is embedded in laws and culture. Although the approach is not taught in public schools, it became a shorthand to attack how race is discussed in classrooms.
Newman said he’s heard from parents who have chosen to home-school because they don’t like how politicized schools are becoming. That sentiment is coming from both sides of the political spectrum, he said.
Traditionally, Newman said, parents have home-schooled their children to give them a religious education. But that has shifted in recent years, with growing concerns about bullying, drugs and poor academic achievement. For people of color, fears that their children will face racism at school can drive them out, he said.
For Hernandez, the decision to home-school meant she could make sure her kids are safe and that she can talk to them about topics like sex and politics before a stranger does...
Away from schools
Another reason Newman believes there’s an increased interest in home schooling is because the pandemic forced families to spend more time at home and showed them that they can educate their children without being tied to a brick-and-mortar school.
“We’re moving into an era now where people are just going to demand that there are more hybrid forms of education,” Newman said. “We build rigid forms of education because we think they’re stable, right? But people have realized that in times of crisis, they are not.”