MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A Christian worldview. Life skills. Bible education. Safety. Flexibility.

These are some of the benefits homeschooling parents say they can offer their kids that are unavailable — or available to a much lesser degree — in public or even private Christian schools.

Sisters Rebecca Stewart and Jessica Dean — co-directors of Virtue Road Academy, a homeschooling tutorial based in Tennessee — have homeschooled their children for about a decade.

They’re part of an increasing number of parents choosing to educate their children at home.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 3.4 percent of school-age children — roughly 1.8 million, based on an estimated 53 million total school-age children — were homeschooled in the 2022-23 school year. 

That’s up from 2.8 percent, roughly 1.5 million, in 2018-2019 — just before the COVID-19 pandemic, which Stewart and NCES say impacted homeschooling trends.

Previously, the rate of homeschooling had peaked at 3.4 percent in 2012 before beginning years of decline.

Stewart, 43, taught in public and private elementary schools for 12 years before she began homeschooling her oldest child, Carter, now 15.

She was concerned that her son might get bored academically, feeling he was already ahead of the kindergartners at her school. She also feared for his safety.

“I knew that every time they had a school shooting that technically it could be anywhere,” Stewart said.

She also homeschools her 10-year-old son, Weston, and 8-year-old daughter, Everly. They attend the South Gate Church of Christ in Columbia, Tennessee, with Stewart’s husband, Greg.

For Dean, 47, the first attempt at homeschooling came when her oldest child, Caitlin, now 25, was in elementary school. 

But it took a few tries — going back and forth among public school, private school and homeschooling — before bullying and other social issues led the Deans to fully embrace homeschooling.

“I wasn’t educated enough about it,” Dean said of her difficulty getting started. “So we put her back in, and it just didn’t go well. And finally, at a certain point, the beginning of 10th grade, she’s like, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’ So we took her out. We said, ‘We’ll make this work.’ And by then, I had already educated myself.”

Dean has also homeschooled her daughter, Lydia, 22, and son, Corbin, 16. They attend the Highland Church of Christ in Columbia with Dean’s husband, Garrett.

Many parents similarly struggle to get started with homeschooling, Dean told a small crowd gathered at Faulkner University for a recent seminar she and Stewart presented.

“That first year can be kind of rough, and some people will give up right away because they’re like, ‘Oh, I just don’t have it together, like Susie Q over here,’” she said. “But Susie Q may have been doing it for like five years, and she’s already figured it out.”

Stewart said many homeschooling parents make the mistake of trying to imitate public or private school at home.

“If you try to … have your kid doing schoolwork sitting down somewhere for seven or eight hours at your home, that just doesn’t work,” she told The Christian Chronicle.

And while there are challenges associated with homeschooling, “it’s just a matter of choosing your hard,” she added.

Stewart said parents with children in public or private school often vent to her about their own difficulties, such as dealing with bad teachers and the logistics of getting kids to school every day.

Dean added that it’s easier to help a child work through a hard day at home than at school.

Still, parents have to make some sacrifices to homeschool their kids.

Some get remote, part-time or second-shift jobs. Many, like Stewart and Dean, give up their careers or education paths entirely. 

Dean had already chosen to be a stay-at-home parent with the birth of her second daughter, Lydia, who has Down syndrome and nonverbal autism. At the time, Dean was studying at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee. Now she does artwork for real estate on the side. Stewart, the former teacher, tutors.

But while their husbands have supported them — financially and emotionally — they know even single parents who have made homeschooling work.

Dean was adamant that “anyone can do it” with the right support system of family, friends and church members.

Navigating schooling costs

Beyond the potential loss of income, homeschooling can carry other costs that, while much lower than for private school, can be more burdensome than those associated with public education.

According to TrustedCare, a national child care organization, homeschooling parents spend $700 to $2,800 per year on average. The cost of online homeschooling programs can vary more widely, from $500 to $5,000. Those costs include curriculum, supplies and extracurricular activities.

But they can be lessened significantly by using the right resources, Stewart said.

She recommends finding books from the library and Goodwill, buying used books and reselling them later and teaching subjects like math and reading through everyday objects and activities — particularly for younger children.

Controversial programs known as school vouchers or school choice can also help parents pay for homeschooling materials by reallocating taxpayer funds that would go to their local school system.

But Stewart and Dean caution that those programs may have unintended consequences.

“When you have the public funds from taxes that are going to pay for this private school over here or these homeschooling supplies over here,” Stewart said, “then the government’s going to want accountability.”

She said multiple friends have come from states that required a certified teacher to come into their home to ensure they were meeting certain requirements.

“And that’s just very invasive,” she added.

Homeschooling regulations vary by state, but they can include notification to the school district, degree requirements for the teaching parent, mandated subjects and regular reports and assessments.

Finding a community of parents

Another concern many have with homeschooling is a lack of social interaction. But homeschooling groups like Stewart and Dean’s academy can provide an opportunity for kids to socialize and participate in similar events to public school children.

Virtue Road Academy is a homeschooling tutorial that has about 20 children in seventh to 12th grade. Tutorials typically offer some weekly classes that parents can drop their kids off at — which sets them apart from co-ops, at which parents stay with their kids and take turns teaching. 

Both can be part of hybrid schooling, where children have part of their schooling at home and part in a classroom.

Stewart said she and her sister started the academy last year to cater to an underserved group of older homeschooled children. Besides classes, those students also participate in field trips, formals, pop-up history programs, paint parties and other events.

There are also groups of homeschooled children that participate in clubs and sports — kickball, cross-country running, board game club, tea party club, book club and nature club, for example.

Regardless of what kind of homeschooling group parents join, Stewart said it’s important to have some kind of community.

“If you are new to homeschooling, you want to find the other homeschooling people,” she said. “Because it can be isolating, and you’re going to have challenges that other people don’t have. So build those mom relationships and dad (relationships) when possible.”

Tailoring an individual curriculum

Parents may also be concerned about their homeschooled children falling behind their peers, but planning and accountability are key to ensuring they stay on track — or even get ahead — Stewart and Dean said in their seminar.

“If you are planning for a year, you might say, ’What do I want my child to be able to do by the end of this year?’” Stewart said. “It could be academic. It could be behavioral. It could be spiritual. It could be just relationships, social experiences.”

Elizabeth Snively, who attended the seminar with her 6-year-old son, S.J., was homeschooled until eighth grade. She believes homeschooling helped her become more advanced educationally than her peers when she entered public school — even being put into honors classes.

Now, she homeschools S.J. and plans to homeschool her 4-year-old, Ashton. That allows them to travel with Snively’s husband, A.J. — who preaches for the Brighton Church of Christ in Michigan — to Christian college lectureships like this one.

That kind of individualized education and flexibility are some of the key benefits of homeschooling, parents say.

They can use school time to teach their children life skills — organization, simple finances, cursive writing, how to change a tire, cooking, social skills and time management, for example.

Aretha Harris, another seminar attendee who homeschooled her son, James Harris III, said she would take him to the store and show him how to interact with people and count money, “just the little things that you do, to help him as he grows up in society.”

Harris emphasized that she and her husband — James Harris Jr., who preaches for the North Gulfport Church of Christ in Gulfport, Miss. — didn’t neglect more standard subjects, but they tried to make their curriculum fun and engaging.

And individualized education can be particularly beneficial for those with disabilities or other learning disadvantages, like Dean’s daughter Lydia.

Lydia was in a special education classroom before being homeschooled. But at home, she was able to focus on learning how to communicate her needs, how to feed herself and other important day-to-day skills. And she was able to graduate with a special diploma.

Homeschooling allows Stewart’s son Carter, who has ADHD, to do schoolwork with additional time, in a different learning space or with headphones to block out distractions.

“If you’re doing this, you truly have a customized education,” Stewart said. “And if you see your child has a particular strength, you can nurture that strength. Or if your child has a weakness, you can adapt and supplement materials to help them strengthen it.”

Providing a Christian education

Most importantly for many parents, homeschooling gives their children the opportunity to learn through a Christian worldview — even the ability to incorporate Bible study and lessons on how to find and read Scripture, lead a prayer or teach a Bible class.

Both Snively and Harris noted that God was an important part of their homeschooling experience.

Snively said her 6-year-old has Bible studies every day and has already memorized 35 Bible verses. 

Harris said her son had Bible lessons, too, and learned how to conduct the five aspects of worship — prayer, preaching, singing, communion and collection. He’s now a biblical studies major at Faulkner.

According to the 2023 NCES report, a desire to provide moral and religious instruction ranked among the top five reasons parents chose to homeschool, along with a concern about school environments, a desire to emphasize family life and a dissatisfaction with local academic instruction.

That’s part of the reason Stewart and Dean say churches should be more involved in offering homeschooling resources — like the Highland church in Columbia, which hosts Virtue Road Academy classes.

“Your children’s relationship with God and their worldview is being shaped every day,” Stewart said in the Faulkner seminar. “And we don’t stand up here like we’ve got it all figured out. … but we just want to say these things to remind you: Do not miss the teachable moments to work God into your every day.”

This piece is republished with permission from The Christian Chronicle.

Calvin Cockrell is a freelance digital media specialist, media editor for The Christian Chronicle and copyeditor for Religion Unplugged. He also serves as the young adults minister for the North Tuscaloosa Church of Christ in Alabama.