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Defining Homeschooling and Why It Matters
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Dr. Brian D. Ray presented this paper for the first time at the 2025 International School Choice and Reform Conference ISCRC held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Some scholars believe it was a long-needed clarification of terminology to benefit researchers, the media, policymakers, and the general public.
Abstract
This article
articulates the need for a clear and consistent definition of homeschooling as parent-controlled home-based privately funded private education (PCHBPE) to aid in research and in communication by the public at large. It explores scholarly, historical, philosophical, and general public definitions of homeschooling, primarily focusing on the United States context from 1985 onward. It addresses changes in homeschooling during the modern home education movement while finding that homeschooling
consistently involves parents controlling their children’s education primarily from home. There is a focus on the ongoing debate over parental versus state authority and control in education and recent ambiguities and terms regarding homeschooling introduced by certain government programs and scholars. The implications of tax funding (e.g., tax-funded school choice education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and refundable tax credits) and civil government regulatory definitions further
complicate the landscape of homeschooling. Thus, the clear and consistent definition is needed and offered.
Introduction
The general public has had a firm sense of what it means to homeschool from about 1985 to present in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The first 35 years of this period was the beginning of the modern homeschool movement – a
renascence of an age-old practice (Carper, 1992; Gordon & Gordon, 1990; Meyer, 1983) – and those who have been engaging in it with their families and those writing about it have known what it is. Scholars have been more careful about the definition. They have generally accepted that homeschooling is the practice of parents in charge of planning and administering their children’s privately-run education and most of it occurring at home in the context of family life, while the children do not
go away to a place or organization called school.
Things change in academia, policymaking, and popular culture, however, so this paper addresses what it means to homeschool today. The purpose of this article is to define homeschooling from historical, scholarly, and philosophical perspectives in order to help academics do their work well and to help others in society be consistent in communication. In addition, this effort will focus on
home-based education in the United States.
Historical and Descriptive Perspective
From a macro-perspective, such large percentages of what we now call school-age children were home educated and not sent away from home to be institutionally schooled before 1885 that it is likely no one needed a term like homeschooling (Gordon & Gordon, 1990; McShane, 2021, p. 14;
(United States Department of Education 2009, Table 33). There were, however, terms such as “domestic education” to refer to academic and other education that was commonly provided at home by parents, older siblings, and tutors when institutional schools were present (Gordon & Gordon).
. . . . . [sections removed for this brief introduction]
Defining homeschooling as
parent-controlled home-based privately funded private education (PCHBPE) allows research to ascertain the effects or differences of an educational approach that is rich with the features noted in the preceding paragraph and can rarely be had in any kind of institutionally operated schooling or free of state controls, free of state licensure, free of necessary involvement by state-endorsed expertise, and free of state tax money.
. . . . .
[sections removed for this brief introduction]
On August 3, 2025, SSRN announced:
Congratulations! Your paper is a Recent Top Paper! Your paper, "DEFINING HOMESCHOOLING AND WHY IT MATTERS", was listed on SSRN's Top Downloads list today for: ERN: Education Policy (Sub-Topic) and Educational Administration & Leadership eJournal.
Continue here to more information on the full article.
And please see the comments below.
--Brian D.
Ray, Ph.D.
National Home Education Research Institute
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