Homeschooling Up, Public Schooling Down during COVID-19, BU-Aided Research Finds, with Implications for School Reform
Findings suggest the need for school ref
BU research shows that a notable surge in homeschooling occurred last year, as some American parents shunned in-person learning at public schools. Photo by nicomenijes/iStock
Homeschooling Up, Public Schooling Down during COVID-19, BU-Aided Research Finds
Findings suggest the need for school reforms
It’s old news that the pandemic forced students into remote learning last year. But a BU-aided study adds a new twist: COVID-19 also drove many parents to remove their children from public schools altogether in favor of homeschooling or private schools.
The study came from a multi-institution team that included two Wheelock College of Education & Human Development scholars: Andrew Bacher-Hicks, an assistant professor of education policy, and Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of education and economics (with a joint appointment in the College of Arts & Sciences).
The researchers looked at student data gathered by the federal government and the state of Michigan, which warehouses additional information not collected by the feds. In fall 2020, public school enrollment in the Wolverine State dropped by 10 percent among kindergarteners; overall, kindergarten-through-12th grade enrollments fell 3 percent. Most of those students were homeschooled, the researchers found, with the biggest spikes in districts where public schools maintained in-person instruction. The rest moved to private schools.
Bacher-Hicks and Goodman recently discussed their findings with BU Today.
Q&A
BU Today: You list Michigan’s percentages for shifts to homeschooling and private schooling in fall 2020. Did the same percentages occur nationally?
Bacher-Hicks: Yes. The trends that are possible to compare between national data and Michigan data are quite similar. For example, we find that enrollment declined by 3 percent among K-12 students and 10 percent among kindergartners in Michigan. National statistics are nearly identical. However, the Michigan data provide substantially more detail than data at the national level. For example, national data do not track student movement to private schools, which was something we were able to do in our Michigan analysis.
BU Today: Do you have any data on fall 2021, in terms of whether those people returned to public schools?
Goodman: One limitation to using these detailed records is that they are often not available in real time. We are eager to examine trends in real time, but detailed data for the fall of 2021 are not yet available.
BU Today: At some point, the pandemic will end. Might public school enrollments gradually return to pre-pandemic levels?
Bacher-Hicks: Absolutely. Some students who left the public school system during the pandemic will certainly return. The question is how many will return and whether they will all return at once or if reenrollment will be more gradual. Our research shows that sharpest declines in public school enrollment occurred in the earliest grades, particularly kindergarten. This suggests that the implications of returns to pre-pandemic levels will be most important for elementary schools. I suspect that we will begin hearing news reports of overall student enrollment counts from the fall of 2021 semester, which will begin to answer this question.
I think improving access to online learning—such as investing in broadband—will be an increasingly important strategy.
BU Today: Homeschooling to avoid in-person learning during a pandemic makes sense, but why did some families merely shift to private school? Were private schools more likely to offer remote options?
Goodman: Though we can’t test this directly with our data, other studies have found that private schools were more likely to offer in-person instruction than public schools. In our study, we found that there were relatively larger shifts to private schooling among areas where the public school system offered only remote learning, suggesting that some families sought out in-person learning when the public education system did not offer it.
BU Today: What are the policy indications of your findings—what should states and school districts be doing? Is universal broadband access one of them, to redress the fact that some students cannot study remotely easily, or at all?
Bacher-Hicks: Absolutely. I think improving access to online learning—such as investing in broadband—will be an increasingly important strategy for equalizing learning opportunities. A prior study that we published earlier this year found that demand for online learning resources increased sharply during the pandemic, but that it was concentrated among more affluent geographic areas with high levels of existing broadband connections.
Goodman: Another key policy implication is that states and districts need to be prepared for lower than average student enrollments in the near term, but a rebound at some point. This means that the public education sector will need to be more nimble than in the past to make sure classrooms are fully staffed with effective educators. It may also suggest that state and local policymakers need to respond more effectively to future crises if public schools want to retain and attract families who have alternative schooling options.
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