Parents in America are more and more interested in alternative forms of schooling as many schools continue to threaten closures or force students to wear masks in the midst of the highly contagious Omicron variant. “There is dissatisfaction with how folks were being taught and treated in schools,” said Martin Whitehead, spokesman for the Homeschool Association of California.

Over the course of the pandemic, alternative schooling options have become more attractive to parents in the midst of COVID-19 regulations and constant school closures. 

The U.S. Census Bureau released data in March of last year, noting that the coronavirus pandemic pushed a renewed desire for many to homeschool their children. According to the bureau, “national homeschooling rates grew rapidly from 1999 to 2012 but had since remained steady at around 3.3%.”

In the spring of 2020, around 5.4% of households in the United States with school-age kids said they were homeschooling. By the time fall hit, 11.1% of households with the same age kids said they were homeschooling. 

“That change represents an increase of 5.6 percentage points and a doubling of U.S. households that were homeschooling at the start of the 2020-2021 school year compared to the prior year,” the Census Bureau added. 

The report also noted that race seemed to be somewhat of a factor in the schooling choices. It stated, “[i]n households where respondents identified as Black or African American […], the proportion homeschooling increased by five times, from 3.3% (April 23-May 5) to 16.1% in the fall (Sept. 30-Oct. 12). The size of the increases for the other Race/Hispanic origin groups were not statistically different from one another.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that in California, almost 35,000 families filed an affidavit with California to start a private home school for five or fewer kids during the 2020-2021 school year. That number was more than double the amount of affidavits filed in 2018-2019.

Homeschooling numbers also differed in certain cities.