Mississippi

History

Mississippi is in the southern United States. Education from home has been legal since 1972. However, the current homeschool law in Mississippi was passed in 1982. Policies regarding accepting homeschool grades and credits are set at the district level.

Regulation

Mississippi offers one option for homeschooling. Parents in Mississippi who wish to homeschool their children between the ages of 6 to 17 must fill out a form with their local school attendance officer in September of each year. Parents are advised to review the Mississippi standards and create and maintain a portfolio of work, assessments, and a log of books and materials used for instruction. Otherwise, there are few specific instructional requirements. There are no requirements for educator qualifications, testing, subjects, or minimum instruction hours.

Mississippi provides no access for any nonpublic students to sports, extracurriculars, or courses offered in the local public schools. Access to special needs services is also restricted.

State Data

There is limited homeschool participation data for Mississippi. The data that is available is from 2016 to the present. For example, there were fewer than 20,000 homeschooled students prior to the pandemic, increasing to 30,000 the following year. While participation has since declined, participation is still higher than pre-pandemic.

Additional information on homeschool participation in the state comes from the U.S. Census estimates. These estimates indicate that about 3.4% of Mississippi families homeschooled in the spring of 2020. That percentage increased to 15.0% by the fall of 2020. This is about 4% points more than the national average during the same period. Based on U.S. Census data, our calculations indicate that about 7.72% of K-12 students in Mississippi were homeschooled during the 2022-23 school year, and 7.77% during the 2023-24 school year. Due to survey changes, the data from 2020 reflects the percentage of households, while the data from following years reflects the percentage of students.

Cross-Sector Comparison

During the 2019-20 academic year, 3.6% of Mississippi’s K-12 students were homeschooled. Homeschool participation in the state was nearly half of the 7.1% of Mississippi students attending private schools. Charter school participation in the state was much lower than private school participation, at only 0.4%. In 2021-22, 4.8% of Mississippi’s K-12 students were homeschooled. About 8.5% of Mississippi students attended private schools. Charter school participation increased slightly to 0.6%.

School Choice Context

In addition to homeschooling, parents in Mississippi have multiple school choice options. These include enrollment in traditional public schools with inter- and intra-district choice, private, magnet, limited charter, and virtual online schools. Mississippi also has three private school choice programs for students with special needs. There are no funding options for homeschooled students.

Commentary

Mississippi could do more to remove barriers to all nonpublic students by increasing access to public school offerings like extracurriculars and courses.