More parents are home-schooling. Some are never turning back.

Who is choosing to home-school right now is just as fascinating as the why. Overall, the proportion of American families home-schooling at least one child grew from 5.4% in spring 2020 to 11.1% in fall 2021, according to a U.S. Census Bureau analysis. Meanwhile, the number of Black families choosing to home-school increased five-fold during that time, from 3.3% to 16.1%. (As I explain in my story, one partial explanation is that because of distance learning, Black parents for the first time got a front-row seat to the biased treatment that pervades so many classrooms and the education system overall.)

Anecdotally, though — and not something I’ve yet seen captured in any data — experts I interviewed noted that the pandemic pushed more parents who would never have otherwise home-schooled their children in that direction. As James Dwyer, a professor at William and Mary Law School and co-author of “Homeschooling: The History and Philosophy of a Controversial Practice,” told me: a growing segment of “the mainstream middle class, well-educated and not on either political extreme, has been very disenchanted with public schools’ response to the pandemic.”