Author: Grace
Homeschooling is an increasingly popular educational choice. According to the Johns Hopkins School of Education, homeschooling is increasing at an average rate of 5.4% per year in the United States. Parents are turning to homeschooling as an alternative to traditional school, something they may hope will provide their children with a superior education and social development.
Despite its growing relevancy, studies on homeschool outcomes are few and often flawed. The research that does exist gives a messy, incomplete picture of homeschooling. Without enough research it is difficult to get an accurate picture of what the average homeschooled student is truly like.
The Study
In this article I, the author, will discuss a high-quality study on homeschool outcomes titled “Diverse Outcomes for a Diverse Population“. This 2025 report by Albert Cheng and Angela R. Watson was published by the think tank Cardus. The data was taken from the 2023 Cardus Education Survey, which was given to a representative sample of 2,350 U.S. adults by the polling firm Ipsos Public Affairs. About eight percent (181) of these were homeschoolers. Some major strengths of this study are that it allows homeschoolers to be compared with each other, and with a control group of traditionally schooled adults, and that random sampling reduces the likelihood of the results being biased towards a specific type of homeschooler. The authors also controlled for demographic factors besides school type.
How Long Were Respondents Homeschooled?
The authors divide the respondents into short-term (1-2 years), medium-term (3-7 years), and long-term (8-13 years) homeschoolers. Overall, about 36%, 27%, and 36% of participants fell in each group. The most common number of years spent homeschooled was only 1 year (20% of respondents) with an additional 16% percent of respondents spending 2 years homeschooled. The next most common time was 13 years (17%), so in total K-12 homeschoolers were a minority representing less than 1/5 of the homeschool population. Homeschooling temporarily or making it a long-term commitment seemed to both be a bit more common for students than splitting their education evenly between homeschooling and traditional schooling.
Is There a Higher Education Gap?
According to this study, there is a gap, with homeschoolers being less likely to pursue higher education.
The 2023 Cardus Education Survey revealed some disparities between different educational groups. Rates of bachelor’s degree attainment were found to be about 46% for non-homeschoolers, 45% for short-term homeschoolers, 27% for medium-term, and 29% for long-term. On the other hand, the rates of having only a high school diploma were 27%, 36%, 47% and 41% respectively. According to the authors’ analysis medium and long-term homeschoolers were less likely to pursue any kind of higher education, and all homeschoolers were more likely to have nothing above a high school diploma than non-homeschoolers.
The study cannot prove that homeschooling causes these outcomes. However, homeschooling for three or more years was at least correlated with lower pursuit of higher education among those surveyed.
Do Homeschoolers Earn Less?
According to this study, they do tend to earn less.
52% of non-homeschooled respondents reported a household income above the U.S. median. Only 41% of short-term, 33% of medium-term, and 35% of long-term homeschoolers could say the same. Unemployment was also worse for homeschoolers, especially the medium-term ones who reported an unemployment rate of 33% compared to 19% for non-homeschoolers.
Why does this gap exist? Cheng and Watson speculate that it may be partly due to homeschoolers’ attitudes towards life:
“…long-term homeschoolers may value other things in life more than money, which might partially explain their lower educational attainment and income levels. However, long-term homeschoolers also placed more value on hard work, which might be a partial explanation for why their likelihood of employment was similar to that of more highly educated short-term homeschoolers.”
However, this is just a suggestion, and the authors do not offer an explanation for the source of these differing attitudes.
Are Homeschoolers More Content in Life?
They said yes in this study.
Overall long-term homeschoolers scored the highest on gratitude, positivity, satisfaction with life, and close social relationships, and the lowest on depression and anxiety. Of the three groups of homeschoolers medium-term ones tended to score the lowest on these. The authors do not say whether all of the differences between groups were significant, but the findings suggest that homeschooled respondents at least did not report worse mental health than the others. Homeschoolers were also more likely to have volunteered, and to attend religious services regularly.
When it came to marriage and having children, the largest divides existed within the homeschooling community. Sixty-three percent of long-term homeschoolers were married compared to only 34% of medium-term ones. Long-terms had an average of 1.23 children each while medium-terms had .61. This shows that while some homeschoolers were more likely to have formed a family than non-homeschoolers others were less likely to have done so.
Conclusion
The research by Cheng and Watson truly demonstrates that there are “Diverse Outcomes for A Diverse Population“. Some findings are encouraging, others are worrying. The variations between differently educated adults suggest that traditional schooling, homeschooling, and switching between the two might affect life trajectories. However, Cheng and Watson still warn that their work does not prove homeschooling as the cause of varying outcomes.
” It is important to reiterate that the associations between outcomes and amount of time someone was homeschooled should not be interpreted as causal. The analytic methods used in this report cannot account for every potential factor that leads to the differences observed among homeschoolers. Likewise, the findings in this report cannot speak to why homeschooling for different lengths of time might lead to different outcomes.”
Where will homeschool research go from here? It’s hard to say, but there are many things that could be investigated. Personally, I think there needs to be research done on the causes of the lower rate of college attendance among homeschoolers. Is it really just different priorities? Is the average homeschool high school education as academically rigorous as the average traditional school one? Do some homeschooled teens miss out on college-prep classes or standardized tests? I would also like to see more investigation into the mental health of homeschool graduates. What specific homeschooling experiences are correlated with good mental health? And is there anything different about the homeschooling experiences of those who do report poor mental health? This information homeschoolers should want to know. Hopefully, future generations of homeschoolers will have access to more data than what is available today.
Homeschooled Voices 