How many homeschoolers are there?
No exact figures exist, but there is a general consensus that homeschoolers comprise at least one percent of the school-aged population of 50 million children. Last year the Department of Education estimated the number at 850,000, based on its telephone survey of 57,278 households. Sarah E. Durkee, legislative assistant for the National Center for Home Education, says that the number of homeschooled children in the United States is approximately 1.9 million. This writer, in her book The Homeschooling Revolution, estimates that the number was between 893,217 and 990,817 for the 1998-1999 school year. These figures were calculated by contacting state education agencies and, alternatively, homeschool advocacy groups when the state itself did not collect such data.
