2019 Homeschooling and Full-Time Virtual Education Rates. Stats in Brief. NCES 2023-101

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has lo//ng reported on public and private school enrollments. But it is only since the late 1990s that NCES has collected information on homeschooling, after the expansion of its National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES) to address this topic. The past two decades have also seen growth in another form of out-of-school learning--virtual education. In virtual education, instruction is provided remotely via information technology. As information technology has advanced, this form of education has become a more feasible option for both children being homeschooled and enrolled students (Molnar et al. 2019). This increased access was particularly important during the coronavirus pandemic, which forced many schools to switch to virtual education. The NHES is now poised to provide key trend data on virtual education, with the 2019 NHES serving as a prepandemic baseline. The next NHES collection will occur in 2023. This report includes the national rate of homeschooling in 2019, as well as information on who participates in homeschooling and on why parents choose to homeschool. Using the new questions on virtual education, the report also includes the national rate of participation in full-time virtual education, information on who participates in full-time virtual education, and the rate at which students participate in either of these instruction-at-home options.