The Diocese of San Diego made headlines this week, when The Pillar reported a new diocesan policy forbidding homeschool groups from meeting at parishes within the diocese.
Homeschooling has historically been a small movement within the United States, but it has grown in recent years, especially since the 2020 pandemic led to extended school closures in many parts of the country.
Today, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that there are 3.4 million homeschooled children in the U.S., more than double the 1.7 million children in Catholic schools.
The number of Catholic homeschoolers is smaller, but The Pillar’s calculations indicate there is likely at least one Catholic child behind homeschooled for every three in Catholic school — and they have an outside impact on priestly vocations, and thus the future of the Church.
The Pillar looks at the numbers.
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The modern homeschooling movement in the United States began in the late 1970s. There were significant legal barriers in many states, and the number of children being educated at home was at first small. The National Home Education Research Institute estimates that by 1983 there were nearly 100,000 homeschooled children nationwide and by 1990 the number had grown to 275,000.
According to the group’s estimates, the number of homeschooled children passed 1 million around 1997.
From the earliest days of the homeschool movement, some Catholic parents were among those choosing to teach their children at home. To supply families who wanted Catholic educational materials for use at home, multiple Catholic homeschool curriculums entered the market.
Our Lady of Victory began as an independent Catholic school in 1973, but in the late 1970s began to sell its curriculum to Catholic homeschooling parents. The Seton Home Study School had 50 students in 1983 and grew to 4,500 by 1993. Kolbe Academy was founded in 1980 as an independent Catholic school, and by 1987 began to offer their curriculum to homeschoolers through a distance learning program. Mother of Divine Grace launched in 1995.
Today there are many other distance schools, curriculum providers, and homeschool associations and co-ops supporting Catholic parents who teach their children at home.
While the number of Catholic families who homeschooled in those early days is hard to quantify, there is a reliable source of data from 1998-2000. In those years, the General Social Survey, a major sociological survey which conducts interviews with panels of respondents every two years, included a question asking about the type of school respondents children attended.
According to that data, 2.4% of all US families with school age children were homeschooling between 1998 and 2000.
For Catholics, the percentage was higher, with 3.5% of Catholic respondents teaching their children at home.
For context, the number of Catholics with their children in Catholic schools at the same time was nearly six times higher at 20.7%.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on homeschooling rates in the US. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the stable pre-pandemic homeschool rate was 3.3% of school age children.
During 2020-2021, it briefly reached rates as high as 11%.
According to the U.S. Census, the homeschool rate is still significantly above the pre-COVID rate: 5.4% as of March 2024.
Although the Census does not ask the religious affiliation of respondents, if the relationship between the general homeschooling rate and the Catholic rate has remained stable since 2000, it would mean that more than 7% of US Catholics are now teaching their children at home.
Even those numbers, however, may fail to convey the significance of homeschooling in the ongoing life of the Church.
Each year, CARA, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown, conducts surveys of newly ordained priests and newly professed religious.
There has long been a trend showing that a disproportionate number of vocations come from young people who were educated in Catholic schools.
But in recent years Catholics who were homeschooled have come to take an increasingly prominent place in vocations.
In 2023, 11% of newly ordained priests had spent at least part of their school years being homeschooled, as compared to 43% of ordinands who had attended Catholic elementary schools. The remaining 46% had attended public schools or non-Catholic private schools.
Among newly professed religious in 2023, 14% had been homeschooled, while 51% had attended Catholic elementary schools.
While the percentages of homeschooled priests and religious may seem small overall, consider this: When newly ordained priests or newly professed religious were in elementary school, the rate of Catholic homeschooling was likely similar to that found by the GSS survey in 1998-2000: around 3.5%.
In order for the 21% of Catholic children who attended Catholic elementary schools to produce 43% of the priestly vocations, children attending Catholic schools would seem to have pursued vocations to the priesthood at twice the average rate for Catholic young people.
Similarly, in order for the 3.5% of Catholic children who were homeschooled 15-25 years ago to produce 11% of the vocations to the priesthood and 14% of the vocations to the religious life — homeschool students would seem to have pursued those vocations at three or four times the rate of the general Catholic population.
The percentage of Catholic families who are homeschooling is now likely twice as high as it was in 2000, which means that if trends continue, by 2050, 20% to 30% of vocations will be coming from people who were homeschooled.
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Based on numbers from the US Census Bureau, there are more than twice as many homeschooled children in the U.S. as there are children who attend Catholic school. That adds up to 2 million more homeschoolers than Catholic school children.
But assessing the number of Catholic students who are homeschooled isn’t easy — and requires making some (well-founded) assumptions, even to get a rough estimate.
If 20% of Catholic children still attend Catholic schools today, as they did in the 2000— and with data from the National Catholic Educational Association showing that there are 1.7 million students in Catholic schools, of whom 79% are Catholic, that would seem a reasonable rate — it is likely that there are 400,000 to 470,000 Catholic children being homeschooled in the U.S. today.
While that number is smaller and much harder to track than the number of children enrolled in institutional Catholic schools, it does represent a significant number. Based on that estimate, there would be as many as one homeschooled Catholic student for every three Catholic students attending Catholic schools.
By the very nature of their educational choices, these homeschooling families indicate that they value a degree of institutional independence. Pastorally reaching out to them will not be the same as dealing with the Catholic school students or their families.
However, given the size of this group within the Church today, and especially given the key role that homeschooling families are clearly playing in forming vocations which will support the Church in years to come, it will be important for Catholic parishes and dioceses to learn how to work productively with the homeschooling communities which exist within them.
Success or failure in that may not only have significant effects for the spiritual health of these families, but for the institutional health of the Church itself in an increasingly secular world.
Consider the case of the San Diego diocese. With an ordination rate of 1.6 new priests per year over the last five years, supporting the diocese of 97 parishes and 1.4 million Catholics, the diocese may itself also need to continue to consider its relationship with a group of Catholics which has become a growing source of vocations.
