The U.S. Department of Education has yet to release homeschool statistics for 2010, but the 2007 homeschool statistics are still reflected on the federal government website. These home school statistics show that there is an estimated 1.5 million students being homeschooled throughout the United States. Let’s take a look at these homeschool statistics and the reasons why parents choose to homeschool their children.

Homeschool Statistics:

• The most recent homeschool statistic numbers reflected in 2007 are up 1.1 percent from 2003 when the previous survey had been done revealing 2.9 percent of all students being homeschooled, according to the National Household Education Surveys (NHES).
• Prior to 2003, homeschool statistics showed that about 2.2 percent of the total student population in the United States were homeschooled.

This continuous upward trend in homeschooling illustrated by homeschool statistics reports shows a growing popularity for homeschool educational methods. Let’s take a look at the home school statistics showing why parents have an increased desire to homeschool their children.

• According to both the 2003 and the 2007 study by the NHES regarding homeschool statistics, the top three reasons for parents to choose to homeschool their children was because of concerns about the school environment, to provide more religious and moral structure in homeschool educational guidance and to make up for dissatisfaction at the level of education being provided for students in public school settings.
• About 88 percent of parents who homeschool their children agreed that they were concerned for their children’s well being in a public school environment, which is part of the reason for homeschool, according to the NHES homeschool statistics.
• Other homeschool statistics revealed that 83 percent of parents that choose to homeschool their children was because of religious or moral reasons. Many parents found they wanted more religious educational information brought into the daily learning curriculum, which is not an option at public schools.
• Lastly, 73 percent of parents who homeschool agreed that public education had proven lacking for their children, which was a primary force to encourage them to choose the homeschool option instead.
• According to the 2007 NHES homeschool statistic numbers, 36 percent of these parents agreed that homeschooling for religious purposes was the biggest reason behind their choice to homeschool. This number is followed by 21 percent of parents who were primarily concerned about the public school environment. About 17 percent of parents gave their primary reason for homeschooling as being dissatisfaction with public school education efforts.

Sources: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009030.pdf