Amid the growing national movement toward homeschooling, Alaska leads all states in terms of interest, according to a newly released study.
Entitled “Which States Are Seeing the Biggest Interest in Homeschooling Amongst Parents?” the study was conducted by My eLearning World. The report looked at the reasons parents are choosing to move away from public schools. While Covid concerns were a primary cause, the study found that more than 72% of those who began homeschooling their children because of Covid did not plan to send their kids back to public school.
Researchers also found a strong correlation between political identity and homeschooling interest. Generally, parents from red states were likelier to be interested in homeschooling than their counterparts in blue states.
Conducted with the help of Mindnet Analytics, using Google Trends to measure interest in each state, the findings were derived from looking at search terms associated with homeschooling. Each state’s homeschool interest was then rated on an index, from zero to 100.
Alaska was the only state to score a perfect 100 with regard to homeschooling interest.
According to a separate report published Jan. 26 by the National Home Education Research Institute, there are now 3.7 million children, K-12th grade who were homeschooled in 2020/2021. This is 6-7% of all children in those grades nationwide.
ALASKA WATCHMAN DIRECT TO YOUR INBOX
A review of Alaska’s public correspondence schools shows that more than 15% of Alaska students in grades K-12 were enrolled in publicly funded homeschool programs in the 2020-2021 school year. There were about 13,000 students in state funded homeschools for the 2018-19 pre-Covid year. That number had jumped to more than 20,000 in 2020-2021. This does not include thousands of additional Alaskan students who homeschool independently, using no state funding or assistance.
The 10 largest publicly funded homeschool programs in Alaska grew as follows from 2018-2019 to 2020-2021:
— IDEA: 4,524 to 7,049
— Raven Homeschool: 1,623 to 3,045
— Mat-Su Central: 1,632 to 2,179
— CyberLynx: 1,074 to 1,470
— Family Partnership: 679 to 1,235
— Denali PEAK: 716 to 842
— Fairbanks BEST: 287 to 743
— Twindly-Bridge Charter School: 478 to 567
— FOCUS Homeschool: 415 to 516
— PACE Statewide Correspondence: 252 to 493
9 Comments
I moved my family to Alaska years ago. We came here as Alaska is the #1 state for homeschooling. No other state is so generous with the tools and knowledge to educate our own children.
It’s the right thing to do, home schooling
Take your kids out of these Sickening run schools.
If you leave your kids in these schools, your kids will be disrespectful towards you and have a warp woke world view. Then when there not happy because you took away there cell phone, they will turn you into the government.
Again who’s in charge the parents or this woke school system
Great then please start homeschooling and leave the school boards and staff alone good lord
Not the way it works. The school board and staff are employees of Anchorage. Just because I choose not to let them influence my child is not cart blanc permission to do whatever they want. They still need to operate within the boundaries of acceptable moral standards.
As a homeschooling mom, and also a mom who has two in public school – your dismissive tone is gross.
Despite the belief that homeschool parents have no say in public school I’d like to remind you that we still pay property taxes which fund school boards and staff. Also, homeschooled kids share a community with publicly-schooled ones. We are not enemies. We simply prioritize different things. Don’t make this an either/or divisive issue, the ones who suffer for that immature claptrap are the kids.
We plan to homeschool next year – how do you get the homeschool allotment if you don’t want to go through the state funded program? Apply at local school district? Many thanks!
We use Raven and I recommend them heartily. When you start school with them they send you all the information forms and instructions on what you can get and how to meet reimbursed. It is a very good system.
Thank you!
I highly recommend Mat Su Central. Great resources, tons of experience from principal to advisors and teachers, wonderful library, terrific building, tons of field trip offerings, a lengthy list of vendors and even on-site classes for students wanting to be in a more social setting. Wide variety of testing choices, unique curriculum options…. Students who are courteous and have actual manners and morals. Our children have been enrolled in homeschool with MSC since Pre-K.