Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Floridians chose to home-school their children at a much higher rate last year than in previous years, according to a report from the state Department of Education. The newly released data reflect home-schooling numbers from the 2020-2021 school year and do not include students who used remote instruction but remained enrolled in public schools.
The report showed that 143,431 students from 100,293 families used home-education programs last year, up 35.2 percent from the number of home-schooled students during the previous year. The department wrote in the report that the upward trend in home-schooling is “believed to be a direct result of families opting out of face-to-face instruction in a classroom due to the ongoing pandemic.”
Hillsborough, Palm Beach and Orange counties reported the highest number of home-schooled students, collectively accounting for 20.3 percent of the state’s total. Home-schooling has been on the rise for the past decade in Florida, the department’s report said. The number of families home-schooling has more than doubled since the 2010-2011 school year, when 69,281 students were reported as home-schooled.
Step Up for Students, a nonprofit organization that helps administer two-state school-voucher programs, heralded the increase.
“The significant increase in home-schooling illustrates that more and more Florida families are seeking flexibility to customize their children’s education. We hope the state will continue to support giving all students access to the educational setting that works best for them,” said Scott Kent, the organization’s assistant director of strategic communications.
With Desantis turning schools into germ factories, what did you expect. Not mandating masks in schools until the wave ends is just criminal as kids will die and many more hospitalized.
Keep it up and DeSantis, other repubs won’t get elected dog catcher.
get a grip, parents should be the ones who determine if they want their child to wear masks. Also kids are constantly pulling, touching their face anyway you are not going to stop it, mandating is not going to help anything, Show data where there has been “many” more dying and hospitalized. You are wrong DeSantis will win by a landslide we are sick of dems turning our country towards communism. Also in home learning is much better maybe the kids will finally start getting taught the basics instead of social garbage.
Where do you get your incorrect information?? There is NO data to back up what you are saying. Please provide studies (which there are none) instead of parroting the propaganda of the fake news. My family moved from liberal, locked down, freedom hating DC to Florida precisely because DeSantis is such an amazing governor who is leading the way towards freedom and away from forced masked and forced vaxxed communism. Now that we are florida residents, we cant wait to vote for DeSantis either as governor again or as President!
If earlier such training was used in individual cases, today more and more parents take responsibility for teaching the child and use the format as a way to ensure high-quality education for the child in modern realities. It is also important to be aware of organizational issues with documents, I advise you to learn more about homeschooling in Portugal here