It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYc. Welcome back everybody. I'm Bridget Bergen.

Filling in for Brian today.

Home schooling is now the fastest growing form of education in the country.

That's according to a year-long series by the Washington Post that included more than a hundred

interviews and two significant data projects. The Post estimates that there are

now between 1.9 and 2.7 million homeschooled children in the United States. By comparison,

there are fewer than 1.7 million children in Catholic schools nationwide. This phenomenon was forced to grow

during the pandemic era and has sustained itself and changed the face of a practice once considered the domain of the Christian right.

Even here in New York, between 2017 and the 2018 school year and the 2022 and 2023 school year, New York saw a 103% increase in total homeschool student enrollment.

Wow.

The Washington Post has spent months

documenting the rise of American homeschooling and it's changing faces it grows

more ideologically and racially diverse. We're going to dig into some of the data and talk

about what's motivating families who opt out of conventional academic setting.

Joining me now is Peter Jamieson, an Enterprise reporter at the Washington Post.

Peter, welcome to WNYC.

Thank you for having me.

And listeners, we want to hear your perspectives too.

If you've opted to homeschool since the onset of the pandemic,

help us report this story.

What motivated you?

In what ways has homeschooling been better or worse for your family or child?

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