Saturday, December 29, 2007

Demographics

United State
Statistically, the typical American homeschooling parents are white, married, home educate their children primarily for religious or moral reasons, and are almost twice as likely to be Evangelical than the national average. They have three or more children, and it is the mother that typically stays at home.

Atypical homeschools may even be found in single parent homes, also known as single parent homeschooling. According to the peer review journal Education Policy Analysis, based on the findings of the National Household Education Survey, of the National Center of Educational Statistics, as early as 1994, 11% of United States homeschools were being led by a single parent, and by 1999, 20.6% were so being led. However, this phenomenon seems to be flying under the radar as the movement does not seem to have significant advocacy from any national agency or organization and the statistics tracking single parent homeschools have currently not yet been posted on the websites of the DOE, the NHERI,or The Barna Group.

There is online advocacy at The Single Parent Home School Website. website sponsored by Morningstar Educational Network and The Work at Home Professional Website.

According to United States Department of Education report NCES 2003-42, "Homeschooling in the United States: 2003", there was an increase in homeschooled students in the U.S. from 850,000 students in 1999 (1.7 percent of the total student population) to 1.1 million students in 2003 (2.2 percent of the total student population).

According to an unsourced National Home Education Research Institute statement, an estimated 1.9 to 2.4 million children were home educated during 2005-2006.

During this time, homeschooling rates increased among students whose parents have high school or lower education, from 2.0 to 2.7 percent among White students; 1.6 to 2.4 percent among student in grades 6-8; and 0.7 to 1.4 percent among students with only one parent.
Race and ethnicity ratios remained "fairly consistent", with 2.7 percent of White students homeschooling, 1.3 percent of Black students, and 0.7 percent of Hispanic students.

As in 1999, rates were highest in families with three or more children (3.1 percent), and higher in families with two children (1.5 percent) than only one child (1.4 percent). There were more homeschool students from families with two parents (2.5 percent) than only one parent (1.5 percent), and students from two parent families where only one parent worked were more than twice as likely to be homeschooled (5.6 percent).

According to a 2000-2001 Barna survey, 41 percent of homeschoolers are White, 29.5 percent are Black and 29.5 percent Asian. (These figures, if true, would be significant, since Whites make up 81.7 percent of the U.S. population, Blacks 12.9 percent, and Asians 4.2 percent). The study indicated that home school parents are 39 percent less likely to be college graduates, 21 percent more likely to be married, 28 percent less likely to have experienced a divorce, and that the household income is 10% below the national average. Barna found that homeschoolers in the U.S. live predominantly in the Mid-Atlantic, the South-Atlantic, and the Pacific states. It found that homeschoolers are almost twice as likely to be evangelical as the national average (15 percent vs 8 percent), and that 91 percent describe themselves as Christian, although only 49 percent can be classified as "born again Christians." It found they were five times more likely to describe themselves as "mostly conservative" on political matters than as "mostly liberal," although only about 37 percent chose "mostly conservative", and were "notably" more likely than the national average to have high view of the Bible and hold orthodox Christian beliefs.

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