While there isn’t comprehensive data on how many parents are planning on home schooling come fall, several states, including Texas, Utah and Washington, have reported sharp upticks in interest, NBC News reports.
Over the last month, calls and emails from parents inquiring about home schooling have "exploded," said J. Allen Weston, executive director of the National Home School Association.
Public schools across the country have started to reveal what a return to classrooms may look like amid the pandemic, but many parents have preemptively opted not to return and are planning to home-school instead, a decision experts say is a huge undertaking that parents should be well prepared for.
"A lot of parents were disillusioned with what they saw over the last 120 days," said Luis Huerta, a professor of education and public policy at Teachers College at Columbia University. "They felt the level of instruction was not up to par and that schools dropped the ball during the transition. That led many parents to reconsider, at least temporarily, that they need to take control of their children's education."
Even though parents have every right to that decision, they have to consider the extent to which they are prepared and have the skills to carry it out, he said. Some families may have the ability to do it well and even better than their local school, but others will struggle.
