Fewer home schoolers cite "religion" as their main motivation

Fewer home-school families cite religion as their main motivation [Excerpts]

When Jennifer Pedersen-Giles started to home-school her son Westen six years ago, it was because he needed a more hands-on environment than what public schools could offer. Now the eighth-grader studies writing, music, art, geometry, literature and world religions from his home in Arizona.

Religion, in other words, had nothing to do with his mother’s decision.

She’s not alone. According to the federally funded National Center for Education Statistics, the share of parents who cited “religious or moral instruction” as their primary motivation for home-schooling has dropped from 36 percent in 2007 to just 16 percent during the 2011-12 school year.

“You used to have to be a hero to home-school,” said John Edelson, founder and president of Time4Learning, a curriculum provider for home-schoolers. “You were really going against the mainstream. Your mother-in-law didn’t understand it, the neighbors didn’t understand it, police would stop you in the middle of the day and wonder what was going on.”

As home-schooling slowly becomes more mainstream — 3 percent of American students age 5-17 are home-schooled, up from 2.2 percent in 2003 — most parents cited the environment of public schools (25 percent), not religious belief, as the main reason behind their decision to home-school.

Edelson said the number of home-school families who do so for religious reasons has not decreased, but the percentage of those who list it as a first priority has dropped as other parents join the home-schooling community for different reasons.

“You go to any cocktail party, church, any group of people and you say, ‘I’m in the home schooling business,’ and all these women will jump on it and say, ‘Oh, we home-schooled,’” Edelson said.

Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, a nonprofit organization that conducts original research, said years of studies on home education led to its increasing acceptance.

“In the earlier days of the modern home-school movement, because home-schooling was such a tiny, tiny minority of the public, parents had to be very strongly committed to what they were doing,” Ray said.

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