Homeschool Fact Sheet
According to Collegeathome.com and the various sources they used to compile the following data:
Over 2.04 million students are now learning at home which is a 75% increase from 1999.
Of parents who homeschool at home 73% cite dissatisfaction with the American school system as a reason.
Homeschooled kids consistently outperform public school kids with an average of 86% for homeschooled kids compared to 50% average for public schooled kids.
Scores for homeschooled kids are largely unaffected by household income, the education level of their parents or by the amount that was spent on their education. Specifically parents who spent under $600, on their student per year, range in the 86th percentile compared to parents who spent $600 or more, on their student per year, rank in the 89th percentile.
Homeschool students graduated from college at a higher rate than their peers. Specifically 66.7% of homeschooled students compared to 57.5% in other categories.
Homeschool students also score higher than public school students in the areas of communication, daily living, socialization, and maturity.
According to a survey done by Trinity University, the following are the reasons why parents homeschool their children:
- 48.9 percent believe that they can provide a better education for their children at home
- 38.4 percent cite religious reasons for home schooling
- 25.6 percent believe that there is a poor learning environment at traditional schools
- 16.8 percent cite family reasons
- 15.1 percent homeschool to develop morals and character in their children
- 12.1 percent object to what is taught in traditional schools
- 11.6 percent believe traditional schools don't challenge their child
- 11.5 percent cite they don't like the available schools
- 9.0 percent cite behavior problems
- 8.2 percent have a child with special needs
According to the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, as of 04/28/2013
Home School Statistics |
Data |
| Total number of home schooled students in the U.S. | 1,508,000 |
| Average academic percentile of a home school student | 77th |
| Average reading percentile of a home school student | 79th |
| Average math percentile of a home school student | 73rd |
| Average SAT score of a home school student | 1083 |
| Average ACT score of a home school student | 22.6 |
| Annual rate of increase in families choosing to home school | 7% |
According to U.S. Census data on homeschoolers
| All U.S. stud. | Homeschoolers | |
| Total number | 51,135,000 | 1,508,000 |
| % in grades K-5 | 46% | 48% |
| % in grades 9-12 | 30% | 28% |
| % male | 48% | 58% |
| % white, non-Hispanic | 58% | 78% |
| Family size: 3 or more kids | 43% | 60% |
| Two-parent family | 73% | 89% |
| 2 parents, 1 in the workforce | 51% | 34% |
| Family inc. of $75,000 or more | 37% | 33% |
| % parents w/ bach. degree | 43% | 50% |
A SAMPLING OF FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO WERE PRIMARILY OR ENTIRELY HOMESCHOOLED
U.S. Presidents
John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, James Garfield, William Henry Harrison, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, John Tyler, George Washington and Woodrow Wilson.
Statesmen
Konrad Adenauer, William Jennings Bryan, Winston Churchill, Henry Clay, Pierre du Pont, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, William Penn and Daniel Webster.
U.S. Supreme Court Judges
John Jay, John Marshall, John Rutledge and Sandra Day O'Connor.
Scientists
George Washington Carver, Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, Michael Faraday, Oliver Heaviside, T.H. Huxley, Blaise Pascal and Booker T. Washington.
Artists
William Blake, John Singleton Copley, Claude Monet, Grandma Moses, Charles Peale, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrew Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth.
Inventors
Alexander Graham Bell, John Moses Browning, Peter Cooper - (invented skyscraper, built first U.S. commercial locomotive), Thomas Edison - (invented the stock ticker, mimeograph, phonograph, and perfected the electric light bulb), Benjamin Franklin, Elias Howe - (invented the sewing machine), William Lear - (airplane creator), Cyrus McCormick - (invented grain reaper), Guglielmo Marconi - (developed radio), Eli Whitney - (invented the cotton gin), Sir Frank Whittle - (invented turbo jet engine) and Orville and Wilbur Wright - (built the first successful airplane).
Composers
Irving Berlin, Anton Bruckner, Noel Coward, Felix Mendelssohn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Francis Poulenc and John Philip Sousa.
Writers
Hans Christian Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Pearl S. Buck, William F. Buckley, Jr., Willa Cather, Agatha Christie, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Charles Dickens, Robert Frost - Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alex Haley, Brett Harte, L. Ron Hubbard, C.S. Lewis, Amy Lowell, Gabriela Mistral, Sean O'Casey, Christopher Paolini - author of #1 NY Times bestseller, Eragon, Isabel Paterson, Beatrix Potter - author of the beloved Peter Rabbit Tales, Carl Sandburg, George Bernard Shaw, Mattie J. T. Stepanek - 11-year-old author of Heartsongs, Mercy Warren, Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Performing Artists
Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, Whoopi Goldberg, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Yehudi Menuhin - (child prodigy violinist), Frankie Muniz, LeAnne Rimes and the Jonas Brothers.
Business Entrepreneurs
Andrew Carnegie, Amadeo Giannini -(Bank of America’s founder), Horace Greeley - (New York Tribune founder), Milton Hershey- (founder of Hershey's Chocolate), Soichiro Honda - (creator of the Honda automobile company), Ray Kroc - (founder of McDonald's fast food restaurant chain), Adolph Ochs - (New York Times founder), Joseph Pulitzer - (newspaper publisher; established Pulitzer Prize), Frederick Henry Royce - (co-founder of Rolls-Royce), Colonel Harland Sanders - (started Kentucky Fried Chicken), Dave Thomas - (founder of the Wendy’s restaurant chain) and Daniel Mills - (founder of Salem Ridge Press).
Others
Ansel Adams - (Photographer), Susan B. Anthony - (reformer and women’s rights leader), John James Audubon - (ornithologist and artist), Clara Barton - (Started the Red Cross), Christopher Columbus, Davy Crockett - (frontiersman), Charles Evans Hughes - (jurist; Chief Justice), John Muir - (naturalist), Florence Nightingale - (Nurse), Thomas Paine - (political writer during the American Revolution), Will Rogers - (Humorist), Bertrand Russell - (Logician), Albert Schweitzer - (Physician), Gloria Steinem - (founder and long-time editor of Ms. magazine), Lester Frank Ward - ("Father of American Sociology") and Frank Lloyd Wright - (Architect)
Note:
While the information presented above is the generally accepted statistics regarding homeschooling and homeschoolers, the National Home School Association (NHSA) does not accept or endorse any of these figures or conclusions. The NHSA believes that there can be no dispute whatsoever of the superiority of homeschooling over public school in just about every possible scenario except for when parents are clearly unfit to be parents let alone teachers. However, the NHSA also believes that the tendency of homeschool families to choose not to take part in surveys or in many cases even to disclose the fact that they homeschool (where permitted) would suggest that no real conclusions can be drawn from the limited sampling that has taken place.
Nevertheless, throughout history there have been countless success stories of people who have been homeschooled. Furthermore, the NHSA believes that while there are also successful people who went to public school, evidence strongly suggests that those people became successful in spite of public school not because of it and that in most cases those successful people either taught themselves or were in fact homeschooled in the evenings when so-called “homework” was being done.
It has been clearly demonstrated that a caring parent, working one-on-one with their child only a couple hours a day, can help their child learn everything in 3 years that it would take them 13 years to learn in public school, assuming of course that they would ever learn the material in public school at all.