There are at least 2 million home-school students in the United States and up to 200,000 in California alone. Source: Home School Legal Defense Association
Home schooling is one of the fastest growing education movements—in 1999, according to federal statistics, there were 850,000 home-schooled children in the US. By 2003, that number had risen to 1.3 million. Some estimates put that figure as high as 2.4 million today. Source: National Home Education Research Institute
In general, reports show that home school students typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public school students on standardized achievement tests. And they are increasingly being recruited by colleges. Source: National Home Education Research Institute
The home schooling movement is surprisingly diverse. According to a study by the Barna Research Group, a slight majority of families who teach their children at home do not identify as born-again Christians. The data also suggested that only a little more than one-third (37 percent) identified with the “mostly conservative” description. Half of all home school parents said they are “somewhere in-between” being politically conservative and liberal. Also a majority of home school households are nonwhite, split evenly between Hispanic and black families.
