Demographic Characteristics of Homeschooled Students in 2007

In each administration of the Parent and Family Involvement in Education survey of the NHES, students' parents were asked whether or not the child was homeschooled. NCES uses a consistent definition of the population of homeschooled students in its reports. This definition includes being ages 5 to 17 with a grade equivalent of kindergarten through 12th grade. To maintain consistency in reporting on the percentage of homeschooled students in 2007, this analysis of homeschooled students uses the same definition of the population of homeschooled students that is used in other NCES reports and reports estimates to one decimal place when the denominator is all students. As noted in table 5, some homeschool estimates should be interpreted with caution because the estimates are unstable (have coefficients of variation greater than 30 percent) due to small subgroup sample sizes.

Data from 2007 indicate that 2.9 percent of all students ages 5 to 17 were homeschooled in 2007 (table 5). Most of those students were homeschooled full-time. Less than a half of one percent of all students attended school part-time and were homeschooled part-time (14 percent of homeschooled students). The percentage of students who were homeschooled varied by sex, race/ethnicity, poverty status, parents' highest level of education, family structure, and locale. For example, a higher percentage of females (3.5 percent) were homeschooled than were males (2.4 percent). A higher percentage of White students (3.9 percent) were homeschooled in 2007 than Hispanic (1.5 percent) or Black (0.8 percent) students. A smaller percentage of poor students (1.8 percent) than near-poor (4.1 percent) or non-poor (2.9 percent) students were homeschooled in 2007. A smaller percentage of students whose parents' highest level of education was a high school diploma or GED (1.8 percent) were homeschooled than were students whose parents highest level of education was some college or a bachelor's degree (3.8 and 3.9 percent, respectively). A larger percentage of students in two-parent households (3.6 percent) were homeschooled than were students in one-parent households (1.0 percent). A higher percentage of rural students (4.9 percent) were homeschooled than were students living in cities or suburbs (2.0 and 2.7 percent, respectively).

Readers interested in the percentages of homeschooled students with selected demographic characteristics may refer to table 6. Table 6 shows how homeschooled students were distributed with respect to their demographic characteristics and hours homeschooled, in 2007. For example, about 84 percent of homeschooled students were homeschooled on a full-time basis, and 16 percent were homeschooled on a part-time basis.