From Religion News Service:
Feds: Home-school numbers up
WASHINGTON — The number of home-schooled students has nearly doubled in the last eight years, with parents’ desire to provide religious and moral instruction the most oft-cited cause, according to a recent report by the Department of Education.
An estimated 1.5 million students — nearly 3% of the country’s school-age population — were home-schooled in the spring of 2007; that’s up from 850,000 home-schoolers reported in 1999 and the 1.1 million home-schoolers reported in 2003, according to the report.
More than 8 in 10 parents said they home-school their children to provide religious or moral instruction, up from 72% in 2003. A plurality of parents — 36 percent — said that was the most important reason they home-school their children, followed by concern about the school environment (21%) and dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at other schools (17%) — Daniel Burke