EXODUS: Homeschoolers Double in NC, Nationwide

RALEIGH – The advent of Pandemic Panic in early 2020 accelerated and exacerbated many extant trends here in North Carolina and nationwide. Perhaps no area has been squeezed by the quickening quite like education, with blanket closures putting maximum pressure on students and parents to address schooling needs outside of the arbitrary control of the public school system.

North Carolina was already a national leader in school choice reforms and homeschooling growth, but the Pandemic Panic has spurred a veritable exodus — the number of homeschool families has doubled.

From the Carolina Journal‘s David Bass:

“[…] Nationwide, the number of homeschoolers doubled in 2020. Between April 25 and May 5, 2020, the Census reported 5.4% of all U.S. households with school-age children were homeschooling. That leapt to 11.1% of households by fall. In North Carolina, the increase was from 5% to 9.4%.

“It’s clear that in an unprecedented environment, families are seeking solutions that will reliably meet their health and safety needs, their child care needs and the learning and socio-emotional needs of their children,” wrote Census researchers Casey Eggleston and Jason Fields.

The pandemic could be contributing to homeschooling becoming even more diverse. In households where respondents identified as Black or African American, the increase in home education was five-fold, from 3.3% to 16.1%. […]”

This is a trend that definitely doesn’t comport with the Left’s desire to snuff out choice and competition, necessarily limiting their reach and ability to shape education in ways that propel their sociopolitical agenda. In this way, the ‘Stay Closed or Teachers Die’ approach taken by radical groups that purport to represent teachers has backfired.

While the Pandemic Panic closures may have spurred the majority of moves to homeschooling, the ever tighter embrace of Woke social campaigns and politics by public school systems from top to bottom is bound to make parents think twice about returning their children to such ‘learning’ environments.

Read more about this massive growth in homeschooling, in North Carolina and around the country, here.