Why American parents are abandoning public schools

They are choosing homeschooling to gain control over what their kids are learning

- Marina Lopes

Every morning, seven-year-old Scarlett Laughlin finishes her formal schooling in under an hour at the kitchen table. She then heads to a nearby farm to learn how to raise goats and grow vegetables. By afternoon, she is at the park with friends.

Scarlett is one of a growing number of Americans whose parents are pulling them out of public schools. Frustrated by rigid curricula, bullying and social pressures, as well as political fights over what children are taught, families like hers are choosing homeschooling.

"It's a movement," said Mrs Erin Laughlin, Scarlett's mother. "Homeschooling parents realise how much better their children are doing without the pressure of public school."

Like the Laughlins, some parents pull their kids out of school to gain greater control over what their children are learning in the classroom. Others want more flexibility to accommodate students with special needs. But the picture is the same nationwide: A public education system once seen as the backbone of American democracy is under strain.

Public school enrolment has plunged by more than a million students in just four years, the steepest decline in decades. Government projections show a 7.6 per cent fall by 2031, which would strip nearly four million children, and the taxpayer funding they bring in, from the system.

A SYSTEM IN DECLINE

What started as a temporary decline in enrolment during the Covid-19 pandemic, when schools across the country shuttered, has lingered.

Between 2019 and 2023, 41 US states reported drops in student enrolment. By raw numbers, California was hit hardest, shedding 325,000 pupils, or about 5 per cent of its total. Once considered engines of economic growth, urban school districts have seen average enrolment losses of 4 per cent.