In summer 2020, a few months into the COVID-19 school shutdowns, as many as 2.5 million children found themselves newly homeschooled. About 5.5 percent of families had previously homeschooled, but as 41 states required their schools to close, that number doubled to 11 percent.
Most had endured “Zoom School.” Some parents noticed for the first time what their kids were learning—or not learning. Many, also trying to work from home, found themselves monitoring computer classes and reteaching what couldn’t be communicated by camera. Carrying the burdens of homeschooling with none of the flexibility, why not give real homeschooling a try?
Homeschooling dipped a bit from 2021 to 2023 as COVID-19 restrictions eased and some families returned their children to classrooms. But many continued homeschooling. In 2024, the number of homeschooling families stood around 6.5 percent—a sizeable number that places a once-fringe movement squarely in the realm of “normal” (157).
How did this happen, and is homeschooling here to stay? In Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream (Eerdmans, June 2026), Dixie Dillon Lane traces the American homeschooling movement from its origins in the 1950s to its national breakout in 2020 and into the present.
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