By Sandy Szwarc
© Szwarc 2025
Homeschooling itself is the least government-regulated education option and proven better overall for children compared to public schools.
Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is the nonprofit founded in 1983 by members seeking to protect the freedom to homeschool. HSLDA is a Christian organization that believes God has given all parents the right and responsibility over the upbringing and education of their children. It offers complete information and resources for parents looking to homeschool – from support groups, understanding teaching and educational approaches, state homeschool laws, selecting curriculum and what to teach, testing, recordkeeping, and special needs.
An estimated 7 to 8 million school-age children are being homeschooled. Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states. Virginia is among only 11 states that have moderate regulations over homeschooling, as compared to most states that have none or low regulations. Detailed information and forms on the homeschool laws in every state is available from HSLDA.
The main reasons parents look to homeschool are well known and have been reported by Public School Exit and were covered in this series. They include: academic quality, moral and religious concerns, greater safety, political ideologies, personalized and flexible instruction, and freedom of caring parental involvement.
As in all states, exorbitant public school spending has had no relationship to student learning, which has only continued to worsen. TEA, for example, recently released the 2023-2024 Texas Academic Performance Reports on every school district in the state. It found only 16%, 17% and 17% of 8th graders had mastered 8th grade mathematics, science, and social studies, respectively. And only 29% had mastered reading. (“Mastered” is defined as those students whose performance indicates they are expected to succeed in the next grade with little or no remedial academic intervention. In previous generations, that simple requirement would have been necessary to pass a grade and move on to the next.)
Not surprisingly, the dismal state of public education has left growing numbers of parents unhappy with the woke, low quality, and unbiblical curriculums and wanting the freedom to choose alternatives they believe best for their children, without government interference.
Homeschooling has been the fastest-growing form of education across the nation, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. Virginia is among the states with the highest number of homeschoolers, at 4.8% of students by 2021.
Homeschooling in Texas increased 55% between 2020-2021, alone, according to Texas Public Policy Foundation. By the 2020 school year, there were nearly 480,000 homeschooled children in Texas – nearly double that of students even enrolled in private schools.
Research to date on homeschooling has overwhelmingly shown positive results for homeschooled students compared to public-schooled students.
- A systematic review of the empirical research on homeschooling reported the large majority of peer-reviewed studies (11 out of 14) showed higher academic achievement among homeschoolers.
- According to education research compiled by ThinkImpact, homeschoolers have higher graduation rates, 15%-30% higher test results on standard achievement tests (even factoring in parent income and education), 72 points higher SAT scores than the national average, and nearly all homeschool students are active in an average of five extracurricular activities.
- Despite popular myths that homeschooling parents are primarily wealthier, U.S. Census Bureau survey data found homeschooling households are in all income ranges, averaging about 12.5% at incomes under $25,000 to up to $99,999; the lowest percentages are actually among the highest income households.
- Credible and objective data have shown homeschoolers are safer and at a lower risk for child abuse.
- Homeschooled children turn out happier, well-adjusted and more engaged than those in public schools, according to Harvard University research.
- Homeschooled children develop closer family bonds, are shielded from peer pressure and bullying, have lower stress levels, have higher levels of self-esteem and self-confidence, have more diverse and more meaningful socialization connections, and develop greater independence and self-motivation, according to GerosHealth. [Image: GerosHealth]
Realities for homeschoolers
Informed homeschool parents recognize the political realities and the long-standing evidence. They know that accepting government ESA money means being subject to government regulation.
Illinois homeschool parents learned that last month when they were hit with a new state House Bill that would require them to register with the state every year, like sex-offenders, if they want to educate their children at home; with jail time and fines for noncompliance, along with leaving them open to investigations by child and family services. The new legislation (HB2827), known as “the Homeschool Act”, also authorizes an education or public school official to demand, without notice or reason and as many times as he/she wishes, the family to produce evidence of courseware instruction that satisfies the state school code standards. Educational criteria and reporting requirements for parents were also imposed. Homeschool children are also required to comply with all public school health, medical, and immunization reporting requirements to participate in any public school activity. But, the legislation is written so that it can be expanded to all homeschoolers through the State Board of Elections, according to Home School Legal Defense Association. Illinois Christian Home Educators (ICHE) and allied organizations are fighting back.
In Texas, homeschooling parents are also vulnerable to state overreach, explained attorney Albert Hollan. TEA determines whether a parent is operating a home school in a bona fide manner, he explained. While currently, it recognizes homeschooling and parents have broad freedoms, authority over homeschooling is based only on case law (known as the Leeper law) and can be changed at any time by the legislature (and Governor and his Commissioner).
During school choice debates, public disinformation runs rampant. Proponents even tried to claim this past year that school choice programs in 32 states hadn’t increased regulations for homeschooling. Texas Homeschool Coalition (THSC), which had endorsed Governor Abbott’s campaign and has long campaigned for school choice, made this claim using a survey out of Johns Hopkins School of Education. Texas Home Educators applied careful discernment in completely debunking the spurious study.
The most genuinely sincere opposition to school choice does not come from those who stand to profit or have alternative interests. It doesn’t come from those with big financial backers or loud politically connected voices. It doesn’t come from groups masquerading as homeschool advocacy organizations. The greatest opposition to school choice legislation across the country comes from Christian homeschoolers themselves.
Like ICHE in Illinois and THE in Texas, HSLDA has been a leading voice for homeschool parents across the country and in opposition of school choice legislation. HSLDA has followed legislation closely for years and warned homeschooling parents of the dangers in school choice and ESAs. HSLDA realizes it is a silent footprint – they do what they do for the sake of the children:
“My experience with my 7-year-old son taught me that my role as father is not that of dictator; rather, I came to see my job as that of a shepherd. My children are not products. Like the still-small voice that first drew me and has since guided and sustained me, I have striven to nurture, challenge, and keep my children safe so they can hear God’s still-small voice guiding them. It is my job to prepare them for their life to come—both temporal and eternal….
I believe God has placed to-die-for love in my heart for my children. For me, parenting is a truly awesome responsibility in the old sense of the word: inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, or fear. I sometimes fail. I often fall short. But I nevertheless aspire to be a great dad. And homeschooling has been one vehicle for my wife Debbie and I to love our children as God would have us do…
We honor God by nurturing them in their uniqueness and by faithfully curating their education…. For the sake of your children. That’s always been our heart, even if it has sometimes been buried in a silent footnote.” – James R. Mason, President, HSLDA
Christian home schoolers stand alone in many states as the only real voice for educating children as the Bible instructed.
Globalism is like yeast
The undeniable conclusion about government schools is that it has become virtually impossible for parents to obey Jesus and ensure that their children are educated with a Biblical worldview. Turning their children over to the state or subjecting their education to government control, guarantees their children will be encircled in globalism, as well as a falling quality of education.
Globalism has infected every professional teacher and education association; every government educational department and agency – state and local; and every secular organization in education, science and medicine.
It’s much as yeast infects the bread of life with corruption and evil, as Scripture warned. Just as DEI was intentionally “woven into the fabric of the American Psychological Association,” dissecting out Marxist and anti-Christian ideologies from public education will be impossible.
Christ instructed us to purge yeast from among us. For Christian parents, returning the education of their children back to the folds of homes, families and churches is the only way to save their children and raise them in a Biblical worldview. Homeschooling and Christian schools are the only real options left for Christian parents – but only if parents remain in control to choose the curriculum and providers for their children’s education with no interference from the government.
That is only possible by parents not going along with school choice or accepting government money…money that comes with strings attached. Just as education was used as a means to fundamentally transform America to a socialist-technocratic vision of utopia … education can also be a way to fundamentally restore America to the exceptional God-blessed vision of our country’s founders.
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Addendum: Homeschooling parents, may find “A word about homeschool curriculum” of help when selecting instructional materials for core education subjects.
