The coronavirus pandemic has sparked the fastest homeschooling growth in U.S. history. Two years later, even after schools reopen and vaccines are widely available, many parents choose to continue directing their children’s education on their own.

The number of people homeschooled this year is down from last year’s all-time high, but remains well above pre-pandemic levels, according to data obtained and analyzed by The Associated Press.

Families who may have turned to homeschooling as an alternative to hastily created distance learning plans have persisted — for reasons including health concerns, disagreement with school policies and a desire to keep what works for their children.

Among the 18 states that shared data through this school year, the number of homeschooled students increased by 63% in the 2020-2021 school year, before falling by just 17% in the 2021-2022 school year.

Before the pandemic-induced surge, about 3 percent of U.S. students were homeschooled, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Rising numbers have slashed public school enrolments in ways that affect future funding and have reignited debate over how closely homeschooling should be regulated. It’s unclear whether this year’s small drop marks a step toward pre-pandemic levels — or a sign that homeschooling is becoming more mainstream.

Linda McCarthy, a mother of two in suburban Buffalo, said her children will never go back to traditional school.

When school abruptly closed in the spring of 2020, she was dismayed by the classes being offered remotely, so she started homeschooling her then fifth- and seventh-graders. McCarthy, who has been a teacher’s aide, said she knew she could do better. She said her children thrive on lessons tailored to their interests, learning style and schedule.

“No more homework, no more tears, until the early hours of the morning because we couldn’t get the job done,” McCarthy said.

Homeschooling, once a relatively rare practice for reasons related to religious teaching, exploded in popularity after the turn of the century, then stabilized at around 3.3 percent, or about 2 million students, in the years before the pandemic. Census. Factors identified in the survey included dissatisfaction with neighbourhood schools, concerns about the school environment and the appeal of tailored education.

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In the absence of federal guidelines, there is little uniformity in reporting requirements. Some states, including Connecticut and Nevada, require little or no information from parents, while New York, Massachusetts and others require parents to submit instructional plans and follow assessment rules.

The new surge in homeschooling has led state legislatures across the country to consider measures to either ease regulations for homeschooling families or impose new regulations — a debate that has raged for years. Proponents of more oversight point out that child abuse and neglect cases may go undetected, while others are arguing for fewer in the name of parental rights.

All 28 state education departments that provided homeschooling data to The Associated Press reported a surge in homeschooling in 2020-21, when fears of infection closed many school buildings. All but one of the 18 states whose enrollment data included the current school year said homeschooling was down from the previous year, but remained well above pre-pandemic levels. (The exception is South Dakota, which recently changed the way it collects data).

For example, Minnesota reports that 27,801 students are now homeschooled, compared to 30,955 last school year. Before the pandemic, homeschooling was around 20,000 or fewer.

Black families make up many homeschooled converts. According to the U.S. Census, the percentage of Black households that homeschooled their children fivefold from spring to fall 2020, from 3.3 percent to 16.1 percent, while the share of other groups roughly doubled.

Laine Bradley, a mother of Raleigh, N.C., said the shortcomings of the school system became more apparent to families like hers when remote learning began.

“I think a lot of black families realize that when we had to do distance learning, they realized exactly what was being taught. A lot of it didn’t involve us,” said Bradley, who decided to homeschool her 7- , children aged 10 and 11. “My kids have a lot of questions about different things. I’m like, ‘Didn’t you learn it in school?’ They’re like, ‘No.'”

Bradley, who works in financial services, converted her dining room into a classroom and rearranged her work schedule to take over her children’s education, adding financial literacy, black history and Caribbean history lessons important to her legacy .

“I can integrate what I think they should know,” she said. Her husband, Vince, who retired from the Air Force last year, also steps in at times. The couple also has a 14-month-old child. Children plan to continue homeschooling for as long as they want. Her social media posts about her experiences have generated so much interest that Bradley recently created an online community called Black Moms Do Homeschool to share resources and experiences.

Andrew Bacher-Hicks, a researcher at Boston University, said the data showed that while homeschooling rates rose across the board in the last school year, districts that resumed in-person learning before some parents were ready to send their children back saw an even bigger increase.

While there has been additional unrest in schools as parents and policymakers debate issues such as race and gender and which books should be in libraries, the same health issues driving these increases are likely to be the cause, he said. reasons for these increases.

“It’s hard to separate these two things because all of them are happening at the same time,” he said. “But my guess is that a large part of the decision to leave the system is really related to COVID-related issues, not politics, because those things come up so often and we’ve never seen an increase in homeschooling rates like this before.”

Parents may also be concerned that schools have to rely heavily on the quality of education provided by substitute teachers amid the staffing shortage caused by the pandemic, he said.

McCarthy, a mom from suburban Buffalo, said it was a combination of everything, and the pandemic exacerbated her misgivings about the public school system, including her philosophical disagreements over vaccine and mask requirements and the need for academic priorities.

The pandemic, she said, “is kind of like — they say the straw that broke the camel — but the camel’s back may have been broken.”

“There are kids who don’t know basic English structures, but they want to impose other things on kids, which can be blatant, but it can also be, and most of the time, very subtle, very, very subtle,” McCarthy said. “So we’re going to pull them back and never send them back to traditional schools. It’s not for us.”

“It’s just a whole new world, a better world for us,” she said.