Children who are home schooled are white, wealthy and their parents are well educated. Their numbers have dramatically increased, nearly doubling from 850,000 in 1999 to 1,508,000 in 2007 according to the the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics. Home schooled females now outnumber the number of home schooled males by a wide margin (58%-female, 42%-male.)
Sixty percent of home schooled families earn more than $50,000.
The most important reason for home schooling according to the Department of Education was to provide “religious or moral education” (36%). Twenty-one percent of the parents cited concerns about school environment and culture. Only seventeen percent cited dissatisfaction with academic instruction.
It is possible that the decrease of female attendance at traditional schools is the increase of school bullying. But the report did not go into that.