{"id":196893,"date":"2025-09-09T20:36:58","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T01:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=196893"},"modified":"2025-09-09T20:37:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T01:37:00","slug":"homeschooling-on-the-rise-in-ohio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2025\/09\/09\/homeschooling-on-the-rise-in-ohio\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeschooling on the rise in Ohio"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>By Megan Henry\/Ohio Capital Journal<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More Ohio students are being homeschooled now than during the COVID-19 pandemic.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The number of Ohio students being homeschooled was trending upward pre-pandemic, spiked to about 51,500 students during the COVID-19 pandemic and dipped back down slightly.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But homeschooling recently saw another surge with about 53,000 homeschooled students during the 2023-24 school year, according to data from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The number of homeschooled students in Ohio, according to the&nbsp;Ohio Department of Education and Workforce:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>2023-24: 53,051 students&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>2022-23: 47,468 students&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>2021-22: 47,491 students<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>2020-21: 51,502 students<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>2019-20: 33,328 students<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>2018-19: 32,887 students<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>2017-18: 30,923 students<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>There were about 3.1 million home schooled students nationwide in 2021-22, quite the jump from 2.5 million in spring 2019, according to the&nbsp;National Home Education Research Institute.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHome schooling was already on a slightly slower upward trajectory, and had been for a number of years,\u201d said Douglas J. Pietersma, research associate at National Home Education Research Institute. \u201cWhat COVID did, from our perspective, is just infused it.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He expects the number of home schooled students to keep growing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not going to put public schools out of business or anything like that, but it\u2019s going to be a slow growth that is certainly going to be measurable over time,\u201d Pietersma said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Remote learning during the pandemic made parents become more aware of what was being taught in schools, said Melanie Elsey, Christian Home Educators of Ohio\u2019s legislative liaison.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think that it was a mass exodus from the public or private schools into homeschooling, but for parents who felt like they could accomplish more with one-on-one attention to learning \u2026 You can tailor the education to meet the needs of their children,\u201d she said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not everyone who switched to homeschooling stayed after the pandemic, Elsey said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSome of them put their children back in because it was too much of a commitment,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I think it was sort of a time period that parents felt comfortable trying something different to see if they could help their children learn more.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The modern home education movement sprung out of the 1970s and \u201cskyrocketed\u201d in the 1980s, Pietersma said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPeople were either upset with the quality of education in general,\u201d he said. \u201cThen another group of people, it was more about the content of education.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today there are many reasons why a family might opt for homeschooling.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cObviously, the quality of education is still one of the big issues,\u201d Pietersma said. \u201cSafety issues are a huge thing. People who have had their children in schools where they\u2019ve been bullied or assaulted or had exposure to drugs \u2026 given the size of school, it may be not impossible to prevent some of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason for homeschooling varies and it is not always because a family is not satisfied with their local school district, Elsey said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She homeschooled her children, but did not originally think it was for her family. However, she changed her mind after she enjoyed being home with her children through their preschool years.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe prayed about it and really felt like it was something that was worthwhile,\u201d Elsey said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jeannine Ramer has homeschooled her four children \u2014 two are now in college and two (ages 17 and 13) are currently being homeschooled.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHomeschooling has really strengthened our family relationships, my kids are very, very close and supportive of one another, and I think that\u2019s all of the hours spent at home and just really learning together,\u201d said Ramer, who lives in Alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They were not initially planning on homeschooling their children, but Ramer\u2019s sister-in-law homeschooled her children and encouraged them to think about it as their oldest approached preschool age.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They decided to try it for a year or two, but found it worked well for their family.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe loved it,\u201d Ramer said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had the ability to tailor each child\u2019s education to that child.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A parent does not need to be a licensed teacher in order to homeschool their children, Elsey said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how well families do because they have access to resources, really, all over the world, when you can get curriculum from anywhere that meets the needs of your students to learn to pursue their interests,\u201d she said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Families who decide to homeschool their children enjoy the flexibility,&nbsp;Pietersma said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey can tailor the education that they\u2019re providing to their child in so many ways that an institutional school can\u2019t just because of sheer numbers,\u201d he said. \u201cOne teacher in a classroom with 30 students can\u2019t take the lesson plan and tailor it to each of the 30 students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ramer\u2019s oldest child was interested in printing and design work as a teenager, so they were able to craft his high school education to those areas. Now he is studying industrial and innovative design in college.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt just allowed us the ability to foster that,\u201d she said. \u201cThere was much more flexibility.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Megan Henry\/Ohio Capital Journal More Ohio students are being homeschooled now than during the COVID-19 pandemic.&nbsp; The number of Ohio students being homeschooled was trending upward pre-pandemic, spiked to about 51,500 students during the COVID-19 pandemic and dipped back down slightly.&nbsp; But homeschooling recently saw another surge with about 53,000 homeschooled students during the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 05:09:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196893"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196935,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196893\/revisions\/196935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}