Lance Izumi - The Homeschool Boom: Pandemic, Policies, and Possibilities- Why Parents Are Choosing to Homeschool Their Children

The Homeschool Boom: Pandemic, Policies, and Possibilities

Why Parents Are Choosing to Homeschool Their Children

Lance Izumi

October 2021

ISBN: 978-1-934276-46-4
ISBN: 978-1-934276-47-1 (e-book)

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For Rikio, Mikuri, and Rick Izumi

To be raised in a wonderful family is one of the greatest blessings that God can bestow.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Virtually overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of children to receive their education at home as nearly all schools in the United States closed to in-person instruction.

However, the ineffectiveness of the public schools in providing quality distance learning through Zoom and other similar programs not only resulted in significant student learning losses, but also convinced many parents that trying to replicate public school at home, with a one-size-fits-all curriculum and a teacher in charge of a whole classroom, was a failure. For the first time, parents saw with their own eyes why their children were not learning.

In response, many parents started to consider homeschooling, which allowed them to choose the best curriculum, the best learning methods, the best scheduling, the best groupings, and the best services for their children. Rather than having regular public schools dictate what their children had to learn, parents discovered that homeschooling allowed them to have choices about what worked best for their children.

Parents then found that there is a wealth of resources available to homeschoolers, from online curricula to learning videos to various types of neighborhood homeschooling groups to homeschooling arrangements with charter schools.

Parents realized that they did not need a large bureaucratic and often unresponsive system like the regular public schools to educate their children. They found that with the freedom to address the individual needs of their children they were much better able to educate them.

They also found that homeschooling provided their children with a safer environment. They would also be able to promote their familys values and ensure healthier social relationships for their children.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continued, the number of families opting out of the public schools in favor of homeschooling skyrocketed.

This book profiles a diverse group of parents, children, educators, and policy advocatesmany who shared their experience with me about homeschooling. Most of the homeschooling students and parents profiled in this book made the shift to homeschooling their kids long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Like new homeschool families during the pandemic, these parents also went through their own trial-and-error process as they searched for what worked best. Eventually, the parents you will meet on these pages figured out a learning model that fulfilled the individual needs of their kids.

Of all the educational choice options available to parents and their children, homeschooling is probably the most misunderstood alternative with the greatest number of myths that have grown up around it.

The myths that swirl around homeschooling are well known. For example, many people think that homeschooling isolates children because they only have contact with their parents, who teach them. As a corollary, it is believed that parents shoulder the entire teaching responsibility with no assistance from any other source.

Also, many believe that homeschooling is practiced by only a narrow demographic of American society.

In terms of curriculum and teaching methods, it is often believed that homeschoolers are taught through rote memorizationthe much-disparaged drill and kill methodthat many claim results in one-dimensional students unable to think critically or deeply.

As to the motivation for homeschooling, the common belief is that families mainly homeschool for religious and moral reasons.

When it comes to children with special needs, it is assumed that parents cannot homeschool such children because they lack the targeted resources that a public school may have available.

Some people, especially influential academics, believe that children are safer if they are taught in schools rather than at home.

As the experiences of millions of parents who became homeschooling parents overnight has shown, these and other widely held views of homeschooling are myths. Not only do recent data debunk these myths, so do the real-life experiences of the people involved in homeschooling.

Throughout the book, the parents, students, and education leaders we interviewed offer advice for parents looking to homeschool their kids full-time. They also share the books, support groups, and other resources they relied upon in becoming homeschoolers, and also give an up-close look at how current public policy affects the homeschooling community.

The reality is that homeschooling is an incredibly diverse movement. The people, the methods, the motives, and the challenges and successes are as varied as the individuals who homeschool.

If there is any common thread that weaves through much of the homeschool movement, it is well captured by Kennesaw State University professor Eric Wearne.

Professor Wearne, who is the author of a well-regarded book on hybrid homeschooling, has pointed out that the growth in homeschooling can be attributed to changes in American life and how people feel about their public schools.

The growing desire, Wearne has observed, for smaller and more personalized tastes Americans have developed over the last 20 or so years, enabled (or perhaps driven) in part by improvements in technology, has surely been a major factor.

Thus, As society is changinglooking for quicker, more bespoke, individualized solutions to everythingtechnology is changing as well, enabling more creative forms of schooling and making it more accessible. Further:

American society is more willing to see people working from home making new schooling models logistically plausible. As technology improves and policy evolves to keep up, more individualized models of school choice are be

In addition, Families are being pushed out of increasingly large public schools, in a sense, because they feel less welcome there and less able to control or even monitor their childrens education.