I am currently reading Robert Kunzman’s excellent 2009 book Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling. The book explores the modern American homeschooling movement’s history and culture through interviews with conservative Christian homeschooling families. In the first chapter, titled “Shaping a Godly World,” Kunzman explains why homeschooling statistics are so hard to come by (and why you should view any glowing statistical claims about homeschooling with either a grain of salt or a decent amount of skepticism): homeschooling is wildly deregulated. Homeschooling is so deregulated in the United States that we don’t even know how many children are being homeschooled, much less how well they are being homeschooled.
Here is Kunzman’s explanation:
Despite the growing popularity of homeschooling, research data about its demographics and effectiveness are fundamentally incomplete. Any statistics claiming to provide a definitive picture of some aspect of homeschooling across the United States are, simply put, wrong. The truth is, we just don’t know for sure who is homeschooling or what they are learning. Homeschool regulations, as is typical with much educational policy, vary widely from state to state; some require extensive documentation, while others don’t even know (or ask) how many families are homeschooling within their borders. We have numerous anecdotes of spelling and geography bee champions, and the occasional horror story of physically abused children whose parents claimed to be homeschooling them. We have impressive standardized test results volunteered by some homeschool families; plenty of others don’t report them or don’t administer them in the first place. Many homeschoolers will not respond to surveys, particularly government-sponsored ones. Most education regulations aimed at gathering performance data, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, apply only to public schools. Even in states where registration and/or testing is required, substantial numbers of homeschoolers (including several families I visited) simply ignore the regulations.
While Kunzman wrote this in 2009, it applies equally to 2026. These facts will unfortunately not change anytime soon.