Braxton Taylor
An analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University has revealed that military families are much more likely to homeschool their children than civilians. It also suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t exert as much of an influence on military families’ choice to do so.
The researchers identified military families as one of the special groups whose motivations to homeschool might help explain why households in the wider population do it.
“We knew at least anecdotally that people said [military families] homeschooled at higher rates,” said Angela Watson, assistant research professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education.
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Data gathered as part of the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, launched in 2020, provided the ability to quantify the difference in homeschooling between military and civilian households, Watson said. The survey asks participants about their children’s school attendance, as well as whether the participants are members of the active-duty military or the National Guard or another reserve component.
“What we found was that, indeed, the Pulse does show a high — almost double — rate of homeschooling among these families,” Watson said.
Published as part of Johns Hopkins’ Homeschool Hub research aggregator, the analysis found that 12% of active-duty military respondents said their family homeschooled during the 2023-2024 school year. Civilians, on the other hand, did so at a rate of 6%.
And while the civilian rate had doubled since prior to the pandemic, the military rate stayed relatively flat, Watson said. Blue Star Families’ Military Family Lifestyle Survey reported rates of homeschooling between 11% and 13% going back to 2018.
Conventional wisdom suggests that military families might choose to homeschool for the sake of stability amid numerous permanent change-of-station, or PCS, moves or, following a deployment, to “prioritize that time together” over sending a child to school, Watson said.
However, she pointed out that those reasons may not fully explain the higher prevalence since National Guard and reserve members also homeschool at a much higher rate than civilians: 11% in 2023-2024, only a percentage point behind the active duty.
Natalie Mack, founder of the Military Homeschoolers Association, said stability and time together exemplify what she considers the traditional reasons military families homeschool.
She also named what she considers new reasons, including the ability to meet special needs such as neurodivergence and to avoid bullying and the prospect of school violence.
Mack said her organization is waiting to see what the Defense Department proposes in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order on school choice before weighing in on whether it could benefit homeschoolers.
Trump ordered the department to look at ways it could pay for military families “to attend schools of their choice” as soon as next year.
Related: Trump Orders DoD to Study School Choice Options for Military Families
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