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Schools

Number of Homeschooled Students Down Slightly In Maryland

Only Frederick County has not posted a single year of enrollment decline in the last decade.

The number of Maryland children registered as homeschoolers continued to slightly decline in the Free State, according to reports released by the Maryland State Department of Education. By 2007, homeschooling peaked with 25,215 children learning at home. By the end of the 2009-2010 school year, that number dipped by almost 2,000 children. 

Maryland law requires homeschool educators to file a Letter of Intent before they begin to teach their children. Families must also provide annual notification of their intent to continue to homeschool. Local school boards track these notification statistics and report them annually to the state.

Frederick is the only county that has not seen a single year of decline in homeschooling numbers in the past ten years. Yet, Washington County gets the gold star for tripling its total number of homeschoolers from 194 children in 2000 to 774 in 2009. Anne Arundel, Calvert, Dorchester and Talbot counties, on the other hand, drag the state's numbers down by having lost up to a third of their enrolled homeschoolers in the last decade. 

Montgomery, Prince George’s and Baltimore rank as the largest counties in the state by population. They are also home to the largest numbers of homeschoolers. At their peak, these counties boasted as many as 4,500 homeschoolers. Today, none can claim as many as 3,000 children learning at home.

But statistics don’t always tell the whole story.

Tuesdi Harmon, executive director of Many Paths of Natural Learning, an umbrella group which provides oversight to homeschooling families throughout the state, believes the economy forces many families to enroll their children into public school.

“Not only do homeschoolers have to pay for all the resources, material and curriculum they use, but they also have to be home for the kids, which takes income out of the family," Harmon said. "Also, families often travel a great deal. Paying parking, tolls and with gas prices going up, the financial burden is getting too high and homeschooling is becoming cost prohibitive."

Nationwide Numbers

Determining a nationwide number of homeschoolers is difficult. Not every state requires a family to register their intent to homeschool, while other states confer homeschooling oversight directly to local jurisdictions and do not monitor their programs.

Still, estimates abound.

In 2003, the National Center for Education Statistics reported an estimated 1.1 million homeschoolers in the United States. Based upon results from the National Household Education Survey, this estimate includes students who may have been enrolled in part-time public school for less than 25 hours a week.

Ann Zeise, owner of A to Z Home’s Cool mega-site, conducted her own analysis by reviewing available reports from states that publish homeschool statistics. She concluded that, on average, homeschoolers account for about 2.5 percent of a state’s student population.

Maryland homeschoolers account for 2.4 percent of the state’s student age population.

Using that number, along with 2009 census data, Zeise estimates 1.37 million children are homeschooled in the United States.

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