COVID spurs droves to leave public schools for homeschooling

As COVID-19 fears heighten across America with school starting next month, parents are withdrawing their children fully from public schools to enroll them in homeschool in record numbers.

With a supposed resurgence of the coronavirus hitting the nation, local school districts from coast to coast are desperately attempting to come up with reopening plans that will be acceptable for students and faculty alike.

“[T]eachers’ unions … are in many cases holding districts hostage with laundry lists of insane leftist demands, [and] many parents are responding by pulling their children out of public schools altogether – in favor of homeschooling,” TheBlaze reported.

Skeptics of homeschooling now embracing it?

Many parents who once criticized homeschoolers – even though they score 30–37 percentile points higher than publicly schooled children across all subjects – are now embracing home education, with a recent poll conducted by the American Federation of Children revealing that 40% of those surveyed are more likely to pursue homeschooling due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We actually had to get a much bigger inbox for our email because it was starting to bounce emails at the end of the day,” National Home School Association Executive Director J. Allen Weston shared, according to Fox News, noting that parents are frustrated with school reopening plans to the extent that they are searching for alternatives. “We’re hearing things like six-foot by six-foot chalk squares on the playground and that the kids can’t leave their square. We’re hearing isolation rooms for any kid that coughs – or they get put in solitary confinement all day.”

This comes as President Donald Trump is ramping up for in-person classes to start soon for the fall semester, but many parents are worried as the mainstream media and Democratic leaders continue to report increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases and ramp up public hysteria as the 2020 presidential election nears.

“Everybody wants it,” Trump insisted, as reported by Fox News. “The moms want it. The dads want it. The kids want it. It’s time to do it.”

Homeschooling groups getting swamped

Many homeschooling organizations in states across the country are being inundated as parents scramble for ways to keep their children out of school.

“In Texas, the Texas Homeschool Coalition says they have been ‘flooded’ with calls from parents who have been dissatisfied with the distance learning they received from their public school system during the spring shutdowns, and have decided to pull their kids out of public school entirely and homeschool them,” TheBlaze noted. “After the Texas Education Agency announced that schools in Texas will be permitted to use online-only learning for at least the first eight weeks, the Texas Homeschool Coalition estimated that their average weekly number of contacts from interested parents doubled.”

A similar situation can be seen to the north, with homeschooling becoming the new choice of parents for various reasons.

“Nebraska’s homeschool filings have jumped 21% over last year already, and many educators predict that the number will grow even higher in the Cornhusker State,” the report added. “Some parents are no doubt considering homeschooling due to uncertainty over what their school district’s plans will involve – or dissatisfaction with online learning in general. Others are certainly considering homeschooling because of nervousness about the virus itself.”

With 3–4 million already homeschooling before the pandemic – mostly over objections to leftist ideologies being taught in public schools – many see the exodus from public instruction as a chance for more parents to become the main influence in their children’s lives, once again.

“As the issue becomes more and more of a political football – with teachers’ unions flexing their political muscle in order to extract concessions in order to return to school – one thing seems certain: There are likely to be fewer children in public schools this year than in previous years, which means less societal influence for an educational system that has been increasingly criticized as an indoctrination ground for liberal values,” TheBlaze pointed out.

Instead of instruction primarily taking place online, it is widely recommended that parents or teachers should be teaching children directly, as virtual instruction is argued to have its disadvantages.

“[S]cience strongly suggests that kids should return to in-person learning as quickly as possible – whether at home or in the classroom,” TheBlaze informed. “Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended that children should return to school and in-person learning this fall, [and] districts that refuse to do so may soon find themselves permanently short of a large percentage of their student population.”

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