This is very good news. USA Today reports that homeschooling is not only growing, it is actually growing at an increasing rate:
The ranks of America’s home-schooled children have continued a steady climb over the past five years, and new research suggests broader reasons for the appeal.
The number of home-schooled kids hit 1.5 million in 2007, up 74% from when the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics started keeping track in 1999, and up 36% since 2003. The percentage of the school-age population that was home-schooled increased from 2.2% in 2003 to 2.9% in 2007. “There’s no reason to believe it would not keep going up,” says Gail Mulligan, a statistician at the center.
1999-2003: 9 percent/year
2003-2007: 9.5 percent/year
At the current rate of growth, there are now 1.64 million homeschoolers representing 3.2 percent of American schoolchildren. That’s nearly a third of the children who attend all of the private schools in the country combined. Since these families will represent the educated elite of the nation’s future, it’s also where libertarians should be focusing their political recruitment efforts.