In the 2024-2025 school year, homeschooling continued to grow across the United States, increasing at an average rate of 4.9%. This is nearly three times the pre-pandemic homeschooling growth rate of around 2%. Notably, 36% of reporting states recorded their highest homeschool enrollment numbers ever — exceeding even the peaks reached during the pandemic.
By Angela R. Watson, November 2025
During the pandemic, homeschooling experienced dramatic growth followed by a slight decline immediately after traditional schools reopened. However, in the 2023-2024 school year, homeschooling participation rebounded. These new data for 2024-2025 indicate that this upward trend has continued in the most recent round of reporting.
Of additional interest, several states are reporting growth rates in the double digits, with one state exceeding 20%. Other notable trends include continued growth in some states, rebounding growth in states that had been in decline, and highest-ever homeschooling rates in multiple states. These trends vary when we look at cities, with some showing growth and others declining.
Thirty states, including the District of Columbia, report annual homeschool participation counts, while the remaining 21 states do not report. Of the states that do report, 28 have reported for the 2024-2025 academic school year as of this writing. 80% of these reporting states show an increase in homeschooling. In some cases, the increase is small. For example, homeschooling in Louisiana only grew by 1% over the previous year. In other states, like New Hampshire (14.5%), Ohio (15%), and Vermont (17%), the increase is quite large. The state with the highest growth percentage is South Carolina at 21.5% over the previous year.
We’re seeing something remarkable here. Homeschooling growth is nearly triple the pre-pandemic rate and shows no signs of slowing down. This isn’t a pandemic hangover; it’s a fundamental shift in how American families are thinking about education.
Continued Growth
Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and South Carolina all maintained a continuous growth trend, meaning that homeschooling in these states has increased since the pandemic without the post-pandemic decline observed in many other states.
Highest Highs
Ten states, representing 36% of those reporting, have reported their highest-ever homeschooled enrollment numbers. These states include all four continuous growth states mentioned above, as well as Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming.
Declining States
New Hampshire and Vermont, two states that experienced decline in 2023-2024, have now reported rebounding growth rates of 14.5% and 17%, respectively.
There were six declining states for the 2024-2025 school year, including Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Tennessee. This is an important point because, while long-term trends cannot yet be established, the evidence indicates that declines in some states may be temporary and subject to year-to-year fluctuation.
Variation in Cities and Urban Centers
While national and state growth appears persistent, there is variation within states. For example, while Georgia is a growth state that growth ranges from 4.5% in Cobb School District to over 22% in Atlanta Public Schools.
In Colorado, also a growth state, there were actually declines in homeschool participation in Denver and Jeffco school districts, but large growth in more rural districts like Woodland Park and Poudre.
Florida, which normally has robust growth and a large homeschool sector, showed a decline by 1.7% but it is a universal ESA state where homeschooled students who take the ESA are no longer counted as homeschooled in the state which could impact reported growth. Other states and city trends are featured below.
Who Is Counted
It is important to understand that these are state-registered homeschool participation counts collected by local districts (in most cases) and issued by the state. They count only the families who report their homeschool participation to the state. While reporting is required in these states, there is no guarantee that all homeschool families report. Conversely, it is also unlikely that families would falsely report homeschooling while their children attend traditional schools. Therefore, we consider these counts as the minimum number of homeschooled students in each state.
These numbers also frequently include students attending microschools, hybrid schools, and learning cooperatives (i.e., homeschool-adjacent models that resemble traditional schools but may be legally classified as homeschooling). In states where homeschoolers are eligible to receive public funding, such as New Hampshire, it is unclear if these students are counted in the same way.
What We Can Conclude
For another consecutive year, these findings demonstrate continued homeschooling growth that is not pandemic-driven and significantly outpaces pre-pandemic growth rates. However, differences in urban growth rates may indicate that homeschooling is growing in different areas for different reasons. More nuanced study is needed.
What’s particularly striking is the resilience of this trend. States that saw declines have bounced back with double-digit growth, and we’re seeing record enrollment numbers across the country.
Several new studies also indicate that homeschooled students frequently move in and out of the sector, thus expanding the impact of these trends beyond the approximately 3 million students currently being homeschooled.
The team at the Johns Hopkins Homeschool Research Lab continues to monitor for new data from the 2 states yet to report and will update this page as those figures become available. All data reported here are collected directly from the respective states and are freely available for access and download on the Johns Hopkins Homeschool Hub.
Data collection is ongoing and we will publish new results as they become available; last updated January 2026.
About the Author
Angela R. Watson
Angela R. Watson is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education and a senior research fellow at the Institute for Education Policy. She has researched homeschooling for nearly a decade. She has a BA in K-12 education, an MAT, and a PhD in education policy. While she was never a homeschool participant, she has always had an academic interest in homeschooling and other nontraditional modes of education. Watson’s other broad research work includes charter schools, high-quality curriculum as a lever to improve education, and the value of cultural/arts field trips.