Whatever selection biases there may have been in the past, homeschooling is becoming much more popular now. COVID and remote school pulled back the curtain on the type and amount of learning that is happening in public schools, and parents of all types are opting out of the system.
What we are seeing now is a seismic shift that will result in a much more mainstream population of homeschooled kids. I doubt it will be as easy to tell which kids were homeschooled in a decade.
> James Dwyer, a professor at William and Mary Law School and co-author of “Homeschooling: The History and Philosophy of a Controversial Practice,” told me: a growing segment of “the mainstream middle class, well-educated and not on either political extreme, has been very disenchanted with public schools’ response to the pandemic.”
There are many other articles about the growth of homeschooling during the pandemic, and the likely causes. As the author of the LA Times article notes, the data is still being gathered so experts' theories have yet to be validated with certainty.
But I've not seen anyone question the notion that the people who have recently started homeschooling are not demographically the same as those who homeschooled pre-pandemic. If you have seen such claims, I would be interested to see them!
What we are seeing now is a seismic shift that will result in a much more mainstream population of homeschooled kids. I doubt it will be as easy to tell which kids were homeschooled in a decade.