This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, August 3rd, 2020. I'm Caleb Brown.

Imagine you're a parent of a school-aged child. You want your kid to get an education.

Schools aren't telling you much about their plans, and you need to move forward.

Enter the pandemic pot, a way that many parents and even teachers are discovering can be a good way

to provide education without the risks currently associated with big classes.

Carrie McDonald, Cato adjunct, and author of the book Unschools, comments.

So, Pandemic P pods are these remarkable examples of parent ingenuity and adaptability when confronting so much educational

uncertainty related to the pandemic.

A back to school plans like you said in many places are still not finalized.

Some districts are planning on remote learning only this fall, continuing what they started last spring when school shut down.

Other districts are planning to do partial reopening with students attending school a couple of

days a week and then learning online for the rest of the time. So parents have been observing

this back to school turmoil and many are saying no thanks and are re-assuming control

of their children's education. We're seeing homeschooling

numbers soaring across the country in recent weeks. In fact, in North Carolina, so

many parents submitted their online intent to homeschool form during the first week of July

that it crashed the state's non-public education website.

Last week NPR reported that in Nebraska, homeschool applications are up 21% this year.

This week, NPR reporting similar trends in New Hampshire.

So some of these parents who are opting out of school for homeschooling this fall are planning to be independent homeschoolers

Tailoring a curriculum for their own child, but others are forming these pandemic pods

Which in many ways are a modern twist on traditional homeschool parent co-ops, where a group of parents gets together to help teach their children.

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