1.1 Million Homeschooled Students in the United States in 2003

Until 1999, little empirical information existed about the prevalence of homeschooling nationally (Bielick, Chandler, and Broughman 2001). In 1999 and 2003, the National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) collected nationally representative data that can be used to estimate the number of homeschooled students in the United States. Data from the 1999 NHES showed that there were an estimated 850,000 homeschoolers in the United States—about 1.7 percent of the school-age population (Bielick, Chandler, and Broughman 2001).

This Issue Brief provides estimates of the number and percentage of homeschooled students in the United States in 2003, and compares these estimates to those from 1999. In addition, parents’ primary reasons for homeschooling their children are described. Estimates of homeschooling in 2003 are based on data from the Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey (PFI) of the 2003 NHES.

Students are defined as children ages 5 through 17 with a grade equivalent of kindergarten through grade 12 (K–12)¹. Interviews were conducted with the parents of 11,994 students (239 of whom were homeschooled). When weighted properly, these data represent approximately 50 million students ages 5–17 with a grade equivalent of K–12 in the United States in 2003.

Students are considered to be homeschooled if their parents reported them as being schooled at home instead of at a public or private school for at least part of their education and if their part-time enrollment in public or private schools did not exceed 25 hours a week. Students who were schooled at home only because of a temporary illness were not included as homeschoolers. All differences discussed in this Brief are statistically significant at the .05 level according to two-tailed student’s t-tests.

Number and Percentage of Homeschooled Students in the United States

About 1.1 million students (1,096,000) were being homeschooled in the United States in the spring of 2003 (figure 1). This represents an increase from the estimated 850,000 students who were being homeschooled in the spring of 1999. In addition, the estimated homeschooling rate—the percentage of the school-age population that was being homeschooled—increased from 1.7 percent in 1999 to 2.2 percent in 2003 (not shown in tables or figures).

As with results from any sample survey, the numbers and percentages discussed in this Issue Brief are estimates of the actual numbers and percentages of homeschooled students in the population. Although 1,096,000 is the best estimate available from the 2003 NHES, another similar sample survey might produce a different estimate. A 95 percent confidence interval defines a range of values around an estimate, within which 95 percent of the estimates from all possible similar sample surveys are expected to fall. The 95 percent confidence interval for the number of students who were homeschooled in spring 2003 is 915,000 to 1,277,000 (figure 1)². The best estimate provided here—1,096,000—is the midpoint of that interval.