Education

School-choice options popular with homeschool families

November 12, 2024

Ray Carter

Like many families facing COVID school shutdowns and their aftermath starting in 2020, Jennifer Johnson found her children were being left behind academically by the traditional school system and opted instead to homeschool them.

Today, the Skiatook mother of four is in her fifth year of homeschooling. And she strongly supports the creation of state school-choice programs that will allow her family to use tax dollars to offset educational costs, such as Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) that allow families to use a portion of their child’s per-pupil taxpayer funding to cover homeschooling expenses.

“It’s really important for parents to have that flexibility to choose the education format that fits their kids best, but a lot of times they are hindered by the cost of anything outside of public school,” Johnson said. “We homeschool, and while there are affordable curriculums available to us, there are also some that are really amazing that I would love to use, but they’re more expensive so that keeps us from using them.”

A recent poll reveals that Johnson’s views are not unusual among homeschool parents.

A nationwide poll of 1,000 K-12 homeschool parents conducted from Aug. 29–Sept. 2 for the yes.every kid. foundation found that 84 percent of homeschool families support the creation of Education Savings Accounts and 88 percent support tax-credit school-choice programs.

The poll found a majority of homeschool parents strongly support both ESAs (53 percent) and tax credits (58 percent).

“Homeschool parents want what every parent wants—the freedom to access the best education for their child as possible,” Matt Frendewey, vice president of strategy for the yes. every kid. foundation, stated in a press release. “They recognize the value of educational freedom and programs that put parents in charge of their child’s education. This data shows they’re leading the charge for programs like ESAs that give families the flexibility they need.”

While Oklahoma does not have an ESA program, it does offer a refundable tax credit to homeschool families.

In 2023, Oklahoma lawmakers passed the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act, which provides refundable tax credits to families to help cover the cost of private school or homeschooling. For those attending private school, the program provides credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child with the largest tax credits given to the lowest-income families. The program also provides a $1,000 tax credit for those who homeschool with up to $5 million in homeschool credits provided each year.

Vocal Minority of Homeschoolers Oppose

While polling shows strong support among homeschoolers for school-choice programs like the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act, the legislation drew opposition from some organized elements of the state’s homeschool community.

In 2023, Homeschool Oklahoma issued a statement opposing the passage of House Bill 1934, which created the school-choice tax-credit program.

“Homeschool Oklahoma does NOT support this tax credit and recommends you do not take it,” the group’s leadership declared.

Officials with Homeschool Oklahoma objected to the creation of the program because families who filed for the credit would be self-identifying as homeschoolers to the state and would also be required to maintain records of purchases, which Homeschool Oklahoma officials suggested would lead to government control.

“The bill unequivocally ensures that the state can track participating families through the student’s social security number, which the parent must give the state, along with details about the curriculum purchased,” Homeschool Oklahoma’s statement said. “The state may ask for money back based on the curriculum chosen, so parents may limit their choices to what the state accepts. Homeschooling families incorporating Christian discipleship into their education, which we strongly encourage, would be at a disadvantage because this tax credit gives the state a say in a family’s educational choices.”

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act does not prohibit families from using Christian materials as part of their child’s curriculum.

Homeschool Oklahoma asked why lawmakers offered the tax credit program to homeschoolers “since we have repetitively asked our legislators to leave us out of any legislation.”

But the yes.every kid. foundation poll shows the concerns raised by officials with Homeschool Oklahoma are not widely shared among homeschool families nationwide.

The poll found only 27 percent of homeschool families viewed ESA or tax-credit programs as “a way for government to monitor people.”

Only 5 percent of homeschool families strongly opposed ESA programs and only 3 percent strongly opposed tax-credit programs like the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act.

The Changing Face of Homeschooling

The strong support for school-choice programs may be a product, in part, of the changing face of homeschool families.

According to the poll, 87 percent of homeschool families began homeschooling in 2021 or later due to COVID restrictions. Over half of homeschool families (58 percent) were entirely new to homeschooling, having started within the last two school years.

Overall, 42 percent of homeschool families in the survey had incomes below $75,000 and 59 percent had incomes of less than $100,000 per year. Only 18 percent had income greater than $150,000 annually.

The growth of homeschooling, expected at one point to be a limited phenomenon tied to COVID, has outlasted the pandemic.

A report released in September by the Johns Hopkins School of Education found that in 19 of 21 states for which data are available, the number of children homeschooled increased in the 2023-2024 school year. And in one state where decline was recorded—New Hampshire—the report noted a change in how students are counted and classified may explain the shift rather than an actual reduction in homeschooled students.

“While homeschooling grew rapidly during the pandemic, most people thought that students would return to more traditional schools when the pandemic disruptions abated,” the Johns Hopkins report stated. “Some states did show a decline, but few have returned to normal, even four years after the onset of the pandemic. What we see with the most recent increases in state-reported homeschool participation is something new—these numbers are not driven by the pandemic.”

In 16 states there was a post-pandemic decline but in 2023-2024 the number of homeschoolers increased again. Neighboring Arkansas and Colorado were among that group. (Data were not available for Oklahoma.)

The report also noted that the overall share of students being homeschooled is increasing because homeschool numbers are rising even as the total number of U.S. students is declining.

Despite a surge of new families into the homeschooling world, the poll found broad support for school-choice programs existed even among families who were engaged in homeschooling prior to COVID.

The poll summary noted, “Support for each policy is equally strong among families who began homeschooling before the COVID-19 pandemic and after.”

Johnson said many homeschool families simply want to provide the best education possible to their children and see school-choice programs as a tool to achieve that goal.

“We pay taxes for the public-education system. However, it wasn’t serving our kids well,” Johnson said. “We still pay taxes for that system on top of the cost of educating our kids. So it would be really great if we were to receive the state funding for each of my kids that would have been allotted to them were they in public school, so then we could use those funds to further expand their education.”