Public school funds v. homeschoolers?

[El...]

This question has been popping into my head lately. To what extent does homeschooling's growth affect the public schools?

Homeschool is BOOMING here. It's grown so much since 2020 that it is now mentioned in our state board of ed's financial outlook as a reason that they have less funding than they expected. 

My county has stopped letting us participate in their AP tests, even paying our own fees. In a recent county meeting about funding schools, the school officials stated that most homeschoolers return for high school "to have access to APs." It seems they are guarding AP access to push students back into the public high schools. 

I joined a national homeschool Facebook group, and am seeing a lot of stories of homeschoolers being grilled while out-and-about on their qualifications. It sounds worse than five years ago. (But maybe that's just the Facebook effect.)

What are you observing? How does homeschooling growth affect public schools in your area? How do people view that effect? 

[Katy]

It totally depends on how the state funds schools. In some states we’ve lived it’s a dollar amount for those enrolled, or a dollar amount for average daily attendance. Oklahoma had the most convoluted formula I’d ever seen when we lived there. It was an 18 page document that included area population, the number of kids who needed busses, and how far they needed bussing. 

[Carrie12345]

I haven’t seen my district post their breakdown in a few years now, and I’m not sure how much is from the (legal status) homeschoolers and how much is from cyber charter schools. But our student enrollment was near 13,000 around a decade ago and is about 8,000 now. They’ve had to close schools, which are hard to sell. 

[Clarita]

Where I live, public schools are affected by homeschoolers (regardless of whether homeschoolers receive public dollars); so this funding is also affected by private schools. Our public schools receive funding based on student attendance, so less students attending means less money for that school. I know there are other streams of income (like local tax stuff) a school in my locale can have that are not based on attendance and I don't totally know the breakdown of how much money is attendance based and how much is not and how a school can use what funds. 

In my state (California) the only way you can get government money is to homeschool through a Charter school, which is a public school (but "not part of a public school district"). 

How do people view that effect?

I live near and am in a not so good to downright bad school district (and bad in more ways than just academics). So 90% of people don't give me grief about not sending my children to public schools.  That number actually got better post-pandemic. My children weren't in school for this so I'm fuzzy on the exact duration but my school district didn't allow for in-person a year and a half (people were a lot more sympathetic).  So, in my area homeschooling is not the sole reason schools are losing out on enrollment. I do have friends who believe we should send our children to school to help fund the school and somehow elevate our local school; we don't see eye to eye on this and they don't expect me to sacrifice my children on an altar I don't believe in. 

I have been asked about my qualifications by random people. Since usually they are concerned about a mother's ability to teach math, my husband likes to tell them that I have a MS degree and have taken more college math than most teachers. So that does tend to squash a lot of qualifications questioning. (I hate this and find it utterly ridiculous and usually follow up with my qualifications don't matter because there is so much support out there, why is it my math abilities that you are concerned about etc. etc.- so many facets of this questioning that trigger me).  

 

[KungFuPanda]

I live in a state where you are in or out, so we never had a culture of homeschoolers doing much at the schools. You can sit for APs (I think) and SATs at the school. Still, more and more people seem to be choosing dual enrollment over AP testing. It’s not free for homeschoolers/private schoolers but they do get a deep discount.  They can gate keep APs all they want but they have no sway over the community college. 
 

I can’t imagine my city stressing over homeschoolers. If they all went back to school they’d need to build another high school. They really couldn’t gracefully absorb a sudden influx. We’re already growing so much that nobody would wish for that growth to suddenly increase

[Clarita]

4 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:

I can’t imagine my city stressing over homeschoolers.

Probably in my city the homeschooling loss is a drop in the bucket compared to private school.

[KungFuPanda]

I’m a little miffed that nobody ever challenged my homeschooling qualifications. Nobody ever came after me for breastfeeding in public either. I was prepared for both scenarios and never got to have that debate. We have really good schools too, but nobody ever got defensive about me not using them. I do live in a big enough town that there isn’t really a culture of getting into a stranger’s business.
 

I actually got more pushback and (perceived) judgement from the homeschooling community when my oldest went to high school. The homeschoolers were WAY more vocally critical of public school than the other way around.  Everyone did relax as the kids got older but we (myself included) certainly started with an almost religious fervor that you just don’t get from public school families. 

[Arcadia]

2 hours ago, El... said:

How does homeschooling growth affect public schools in your area?

In my school district, the funding comes from property tax so they don’t have to worry about the number of students or the attendance. In fact, many of my neighbors send their kids to private schools. My district has never let outsiders take AP exams and they also rarely host the Saturday SAT or ACT exams. Part of it is manpower, no one wants to do more work and also janitors would have to be paid overtime for Saturday SAT/ACT testing. 
For nearby districts that are given funding based on number of students and attendance, many are overcrowded and using portable classrooms. As such they already do not care if parents choose private schools or homeschooling.

I don’t know offhand any school district that suffers from funding due to having less students because of homeschooling. The ones who had to downsize the number of schools in their district has to do with population demographic shift (less school age kids or kids moving to other parts of the city). 

Edited February 17 by Arcadia
typo

[Ausmumof3]

I haven’t seen or heard any complaints about homeschooling and funding. There’s a lot unhappy about the number of kids moving to private schools and saying government needs to cut funding to private schools and reinvest in public schools. 
 

Im torn because I want the public school system to be strong, but as it is right now I don’t want my kids in it and cutting funding to private schools would probably make them unaffordable for us. 
 

ETA I’m talking about trends here in Aus not the US obviously. 

Edited February 17 by Ausmumof3

[wendyroo]

Around here homeschooling is very popular and the general public largely approves. 

But, our local (large, fairly affluent, suburban) public school district is also growing faster than it can gracefully keep up with, so they give little thought to homeschoolers. And if their new buildings, robotics teams and e-gaming labs are anything to go by, they are rolling in the dough. 

It is the small, poor, rural districts that are looking for creative ways to court homeschooling money. Michigan allows shared time programs - homeschoolers enroll part time (often not in their local district) and get their elective classes paid for. This allows hosting districts to collect partial state money for the homeschoolers, and keep a hefty chunk for administration and overhead. I consider it a win/win. Small districts can “earn” a lot of money to put toward resources they need, and Homeschoolers are getting ~$1500 per child per year to spend on art, music, PE, foreign language classes, nature classes, etc. Plus part time enrollment with the district opens the doors to state dual enrollment funds (which are not available to homeschoolers) and AP testing. In the district my homeschoolers participate in, shared time students make up about a third of all the students in the district. Without the program, their revenue would take a huge hit. 

[Lori D.]

This chart from National Center for Educational Statistics, with data from 1985 through 2021, indicates that overall enrollment in K-12 grades in public schools has been trending upward: "Total enrollment for private elementary and secondary schools was 6.2 million students in fall 2000, then 5.3 million students in fall 2011, and projected to be 6.1 million students in fall 2021."

Meanwhile, the total percent of school-aged children being homeschooled is hard to get an accurate read on, but 20 years ago, the estimate was that 3-3.5% of K-12 students in the US were homeschooled. Current estimates place that amount at about 5.22%. 

So yes, a bit of an increase in amount of homeschoolers. And when you compare total amount of school-aged children from 20 years ago to know, it's only an increase of about 1 million students. So homeschoolers are a slightly larger piece of the educational pie.

I found these statistics interesting:

 . . . . . . children 6-17yo . . . total population . . .  % of pop. = age 6-12
1950 = 28.2 million . . . . . 148.2 million . . . . . 19%
1960 = 40.2 million . . . . . 176.1 million . . . . . 23%
1970 = 48.9 million . . . . .  200.3 million . . . .  24%
1980 = 44.1 million . . . . . . 223.1 million . . . .  20%
1990 = 41.7 million . . . . . . 248.0 million . . . . 17%
2000 = 49.3 million . . . . .  282.4 million . . . . 17%
2010 = 49.1 million . . . . . .  311.2 million . . . . 16%
2020 = 50.3 million . . . . . . 335.9 million . . . . 15%


ETA -- In answer to OP-er's questions...  I live in a low regulation state with a lot of homeschoolers. I do think the # of homeschoolers has increased a bit since the pandemic due to dissatisfaction with the quality of academics/teaching. Homeschoolers here are allowed to participate on public high school sports teams, and take AP / PSAT tests (if there is room). I don't know of any schools (elementary or high school) that offer single classes to homeschoolers in my city. That may be an option in other school districts in the state.

Edited February 17 by Lori D.

[Mrs Tiggywinkle Again]

Schools here are in or out.  There is no option for homeschoolers to take any classes, play sports are participate in electives. Schools also receive funding based on the number of students they get, and so it is a problem when the “good” students-those who require the fewest support or resources—leave for private school or homeschooling, which in turn reduces funding but leaves the high support kids(it’s X amount of funding with only a little bit more for special needs kids).  They are closing public schools where I am, but I think it’s likely due more to population drain vs homeschooling/private school.  But it does make an impact.

I say all of that, but my oldest son is the only one in public school, and he attends a program that costs our home district $82,000 a year.  And they get no money for my other kids because one is in private school and one is homeschooled.

[Faith-manor]

Technically schools here are supposed to allow participate in non-core subjects like art and music, and only for a limited amount of credits at the high school level. So APs are off limits anyway. Most schools refuse to allow any participation at all, and nothing is ever done about that despite state policy. All of my kids had 1 or 2 APs, but I taught them going through all of the hoop jumping with the College Board for syllabus approval, and then I searched high and low all over the state for a school that had a seat open for the test. It was a real chore. So I eventually moved to DE's because the university would let us have DE for $50 a credit hour. This was a four year university with a decent reputation, so in actuality, that looked better on college applications than the APs.

Funding is per head based on head count day but through property taxes which means the district does lose money because the state is allowed to funnel that tax somewhere else apparently. $8549 pet student lost. So ya. The local superintendent and faculty very much resent home schooled and privately schooled kids. Several private schools have closed in the county due to wage stagnation making it impossible for families to afford tuition. There were 8 Lutheran schools, 2 Catholic, 1 Baptist Abeka based school, and 1 A.C.E. The A.C.E. is closing at the end of this semester, 1 Catholic school closed several years ago, and 2 Lutheran schools combined into one while another closed reducing the number down to 5 though 2 of those have opted to be only pre-K, K-1, and not have the older grades leaving just 3 that are still K-8. So the number of students attending private schools has dropped a lot.

No money from the state is directly funneled to homeschool or private school students except through what is known as 'Homeschool Partnership ". The partnerships can be started by the school as out reach in non-core subjects supervised by an online public school teacher - students have to check in weekly with this teacher  and answer questions about what they are learning - but non ps teachers teach the material. So for instance, through the Niles homeschool partnership, parents can get up to $350 per semester reimbursement for lessons on an instrument, community art lessons, etc. At one point, we had a rocketry and aerospace class funded through a partnetship. The school gets $350 per student for administrating the program per class, per semester, and then the instructor is paid $350 per student or the parent submits an invoice for the class and then gets the money and has to pay the teacher. These partnerships are very complicated, pain the rears to administrate and very few schools have them. Very few. They are only popular with school superintendents in a few areas with very high concentrations of home schoolers because these superintendents are trying to make relationships, positive relationships with homeschooling/private school parents in the hopes they will re-enroll their kids in the district. Due to the cost of operation, in general, schools barely break even and some go in the hole. 

Other than the above, there isn't any property tax money for homeschool and private school students.

I have never been quizzed about my qualifications. However, I was also well known in the area as a licensed K-12 music teacher, and my husband as an IT professional with multiple degrees. So it didn't occur to others that we couldn't handle the academics. But we often got the "socialization" question. I usually met that with a litany of bad socialization examples from bullying to cliques and student popularity issues to known very bad behavior issues in the school, and that kind of shut them up.

A type of "public school at home" type thing was very popular after the shut down in 2020. Virtual, as it was set up by local districts, was a disaster. Staff who could retire, did so. Teachers quit, especially those with qualifications that would allow them to do other things in the private sector for more money which meant math and science teachers left in droves. It was really bad here. Parents pulled their kids and enrolled them in online programs that required very little supervision on their part, not really any parent teaching. These tended to be not all that successful. But in the short term, the schools lost a lot of money. However, by 2023 most of those students were back in ps. 

The estimate has been roughly 5.3% of students were home schooled in 2020/21 school year as a response to the pandemic. But that number only applies to students who had been in PS and then were removed. These are the only children "tracked" because Michigan does not require homeschool registration or reporting. Kids who have never been in ps (my kids for instance) were never counted. Kids who have never attended ps and have always been in private school are also often not counted since religious schools are exempt from certain kinds of reporting, so the state only had an estimate. So when the state says, "We think there are 50,000 or 100,000 none public school students in the state", they are likely greatly underestimating. My guess is that between these two groups there are likely a quarter million, but it is hard to know. If there are, that is 1.3 billion in per head funding lost from a 20+billion dollar education budget. I have no idea where that money goes. I would imagine it could be funneled back to districts in special funding. I also know my state legislature well enough they have probably found work arounds that allow them to spend on their favorite friends' projects unrelated to education. 

[historically accurate]

My kids are just about graduated and no ps involvement was really ever allowed. 

Tried to find a district (tried 4 and a couple of privates) that would allow oldest to take the PSAT and APs, no go. She ended up full dual enrollment, which, coincidentally is free for public schoolers and full-pay for homeschoolers. We did get ACT for the kids at the local private; we were "rescheduled" out of the local public twice, so I don't know if that was just a fluke or them keeping us out as homeschoolers. 

The large school district next to us let one DD do chess club for about 3 months, and then they cut her off due to "administrative issues" of having her on the team. That was an even harder thing than not getting to do it at all honestly. A local private school did allow oldest to do rocketry club there for a couple of years. 

I just steered clear of the public school for the most part. 

 

Edited February 17 by historically accurate

[Boymama5]

I don’t know real stats but just looking at the homeschooling community growth in the area, many (not all) are people starting as prek and the younger grades. So I think for us it may be something we’ll see more evidence of later on. Also we have school choice here. Our community school has seen less students enrolled because of that (as they are able to follow students through the districts). There has also been a rise in private school enrollment. I have kids in the local school and homeschool some so I’ve seen how this has played out a bit. They are still very welcoming to homeschoolers. ODs will be taking the psats and district act this fall there with no issue. But they’ve had to cut some programs because of funding— much of what has had to do with rising costs, paper costs being one of them. 

[AmandaVT]

School funding comes through property taxes here, and homeschoolers do not get any funding, so I would imagine the more people homeschool here, the bigger the benefit to public schools as they would have the same funding with fewer students. Districts are able to choose if they want to allow homeschoolers to attend for part-time classes or extracurricular activities. The district we live in is happy to let DS join for after-school theater club and would have no problem if he were to take a class or two at the high school. 

[MEmama]

1 hour ago, AmandaVT said:

School funding comes through property taxes here, and homeschoolers do not get any funding, so I would imagine the more people homeschool here, the bigger the benefit to public schools as they would have the same funding with fewer students. Districts are able to choose if they want to allow homeschoolers to attend for part-time classes or extracurricular activities. The district we live in is happy to let DS join for after-school theater club and would have no problem if he were to take a class or two at the high school. 

I think it's essentially the same here. We have so few homeschoolers in my community from my experience, it doesn't seem it would make any difference to the public schools numbers wise.

Homeschooled kids are allowed to take classes and do extracurricular in public schools here, including high school. 

[SKL]

It makes sense for schools to downsize due to decreasing enrollment, and once that happens, I'm not sure it's fair to fault the schools for not being bigger i.e. not having the resources to extend goodies to kids who don't attend school.  Communities / states need to figure out funding & logistics in advance if they want to provide everything to everyone.

In the AP situation, I wonder if an organization could commit to enough resources to create one or more additional AP testing sites.  Perhaps partner with a charter school or private school.  (I'm sure private schools have AP classes.)

[Lori D.]

AP may start moving to digital format, like the SAT and the PSAT are doing. Which might make it easier (or not, depending on how they decide to do it) for homeschoolers to participate. With the number of homeschool high school students increasing a bit, I can't imagine College Board being willing to leave money on the table from homeschoolers because public schools can't or won't accept them. 😉 

 

[athena1277]

My oldest took 1 AP in 11th grade and 1 in 12th through an online school.  The one in 11th she was going to take at a public high school.  The AP coordinator there told me that schools are required to accommodate outside students if they were giving that AP exam.  We did have to pay for it, which was completely fair and reasonable.  The only reason she didn’t end up taking it there was because it was 2020 when they made everyone do it on a computer at home.  In 12th grade she took the exam at a local private school in person.  One thing to note when calling schools - ask for the AP coordinator.  Other staff may wrongly tell you that you can’t take the exam.

[Lucy the Valiant]

1 hour ago, athena1277 said:

My oldest took 1 AP in 11th grade and 1 in 12th through an online school.  The one in 11th she was going to take at a public high school.  The AP coordinator there told me that schools are required to accommodate outside students if they were giving that AP exam.  We did have to pay for it, which was completely fair and reasonable.  The only reason she didn’t end up taking it there was because it was 2020 when they made everyone do it on a computer at home.  In 12th grade she took the exam at a local private school in person.  One thing to note when calling schools - ask for the AP coordinator.  Other staff may wrongly tell you that you can’t take the exam.

How I wish that were universal!

[Eos]

4 hours ago, MEmama said:

I think it's essentially the same here. We have so few homeschoolers in my community from my experience, it doesn't seem it would make any difference to the public schools numbers wise.

Homeschooled kids are allowed to take classes and do extracurricular in public schools here, including high school. 

It seems like the charters are the big competition for public schools here.

[MEmama]

39 minutes ago, Eos said:

It seems like the charters are the big competition for public schools here.

Idk much about them—are those like the math and science school in Portland? 
 

There’s a popular Waldorf school not too far from us that attracts a lot of homeschooled kids for high school. Same with the private school in Yarmouth. Overall it doesn’t seem we have as much “school choice” as more populous regions, and I was always surprised homeschooling wasn’t more popular (our public schools are very good though, so maybe that plays in).

[Clarita]

40 minutes ago, Eos said:

5 hours ago, MEmama said:

I think it's essentially the same here. We have so few homeschoolers in my community from my experience, it doesn't seem it would make any difference to the public schools numbers wise.

Homeschooled kids are allowed to take classes and do extracurricular in public schools here, including high school. 

It seems like the charters are the big competition for public schools here.

Yes us too. Although in my area people don't view going to a public charter school as taking amazing students or money away from public schools. It seems the feeling is that both those things are "public schools". We have quite a few of those in my area serving a multitude of services.

Hmm that makes me think though. I'm currently homeschooling through a charter school. I wonder if I get grilled more if I were independently homeschooling... 

[Eos]

58 minutes ago, MEmama said:

Idk much about them—are those like the math and science school in Portland? 
 

There’s a popular Waldorf school not too far from us that attracts a lot of homeschooled kids for high school. Same with the private school in Yarmouth. Overall it doesn’t seem we have as much “school choice” as more populous regions, and I was always surprised homeschooling wasn’t more popular (our public schools are very good though, so maybe that plays in).

Yes, they're generally themed and some sound quite cool but my teacher friends see them as problematic in terms of taking funding away.  Maybe they don't see homeschoolers that way because we were never there to begin with, if that makes sense. https://www.maine.gov/csc/schools

Off-topic for out-of-staters: Maine also has a 200 year old "academy" tradition, North Yarmouth Academy is one of them. Some are local public high schools, some are magnet schools by application and paid for by the sending community or parents, some are boarding schools https://maineanencyclopedia.com/academies/ 

 

Edited February 18 by Eos

[Starr]

Isn’t there state funding and federal funding?  I think federal money is per pupil attending. 

[Arcadia]

On 2/16/2024 at 4:01 PM, El... said:

I joined a national homeschool Facebook group, and am seeing a lot of stories of homeschoolers being grilled while out-and-about on their qualifications. It sounds worse than five years ago. (But maybe that's just the Facebook effect.)

I think it depends on the tone of "grilling". I do get more curiosity questions during and after the pandemic as people are more interested after schools and colleges went online for months during the pandemic.

My kids went to a community college that allows dual enrollment from 9th grade. They welcome homeschool kids to do dual enrollment there. While funding is through property tax, the elderly people we met through volunteer work are rather enthusiastic to donate or pay for bonds/measures to schools and community colleges when they see kids they know benefiting. We get comments like "oh they are putting tax dollars to good use by allowing dual enrollment from 9th", "great that they are doing so much for the kids" (food pantry, loaner laptops and other benefits).

1 hour ago, Clarita said:

Hmm that makes me think though. I'm currently homeschooling through a charter school. I wonder if I get grilled more if I were independently homeschooling... 

I get asked if I was a former teacher and when I said I was an engineer, I get a free pass immediately. To them, an engineering mom is probably better at math (and science) than the typical school teacher.

[Wheres Toto]

I'm in a no requirements to homeschool, not allowed to do anything at the public schools state.    But schools are funded primarily through property taxes, then from the state based on property values and income levels, then federal government which is the only portion based on enrollment and evidently minimal.   I'm in one of the highest income counties in the country so property taxes is definitely the biggest portion of our school funding.   

We also have multiple other options for private schools, parochial schools, charter schools, and various magnet schools run through our votech program.  So there are many many options other than just attending your local public school, especially at the high school level.  Nobody seems to pay much attention to what is "lost" due to homeschoolers.    Homeschoolers can do the dual enrollment programs at our county colleges but they are not free unless they are through the votech and then you are considered a public school student for many of them.