We Ditched Public School To Teach at Home…

So, to give this a bit of back story, so you will know how difficult of a decision this was for me. We all know the stories of how it was in the 80’s and 90’s, right? Truly the land of the free… School, when I grew up was different. Classes were classes, not social experiments. The paddle was the equalizer. The teachers were your boss and educator, not your babysitter and enabler/coddler. The morals were up to the family, the EDUCATION was the schools job. As a kid, you could take off on Saturday morning on your bike and didn’t come back until dark. I could write a book on the differences in time here, but not for this moment. I was fully in the camp of kids need traditional school for socialization… I say this to preface the current, which is currently the exact opposite. Just too much crazy going on to let your kids go wild for hours and not worry they wont make it back or at least make it back smarter!

With That Said…

We had our kids in a good small town school, out of the way, nice community, good people across the board. We would have stayed had it not been for educational issues out of the immediate local admin control. Blanket control of education by way of federal stranglehold, shoving a one size fits all banana right up the tailpipe of individuality and specific district needs. In a small town, there is only so much funding available. Which translates into, only so much extra curricular, personal attention, educational excel programing, and extra help when needed, to name a few… We moved to different school, and taxied our kids to and from this school that has some of the highest marks in the state! Larger school district, many more extra curricular activities, many more teachers and aids, didn’t seem to have much by way of accelerated curriculum, but seemed to have some extra help when needed. There are downsides as well, that I wont get into right now and I will not name schools, as I am not looking to down on either of these schools. Both had pluses, both had minuses… This is the way it is. Now the commonality these schools had is that they are public schools. Federal blanket control… Here’s where the proverbial 💩 hits the 🚽! (bet you thought I was going to use a fan, didn’t ya… Me too, couldn’t find one. Moving on…)

When I was growing up

homeschooling was seen as kind of odd and or for the super religious. People knew of it, but most didn’t know anyone who was doing it. Why would you keep your kids at home and try to teach them yourself. These people employed as teachers at schools, have degrees and years of learning to become real trained teachers!! Buuuuuuut homeschooling isn’t some fringe weirdo thing anymore; who knew they were ahead of the curve as it were – it’s ballooned to around 3-4 million kids (that’s like 6-7% of K-12 students, depending on who’s counting), and the numbers are still climbing post-pandemic. Parents aren’t doing it because they hate field trips or recess, nah, it’s a mix of “hell no” to public school SYSTEM and “hell yes” to controlling the material going into their impressionable children’s heads. Surveys from places like NCES, Pew, and NHERI show as much, so here’s my no-BS reasons we decided to homeschool, and even some statistics thrown in for good measure. Ill run them down like Frank Costanza’s Festivus for the rest of us!

Spoiler: It’s rarely just one thing; most families check multiple boxes like they’re building a resentment buffet.

1. Public School Environment Is a Dumpster Fire

(83% of Parents Cite This as Well, btw)

What topped our chart was safety worries (shootings, violence), drugs, bullying, toxic peer pressure, mental health meat grinder, with precious little seriously being done to remedy it. Public school officials are adding feelings sessions and active shooter drills, then patting themselves on the back and taking a long lunch at the Red Lobster… The blanket solution to an individualized issue by an out of touch system. Some kids are left to explore the internet at home unsupervised as a babysitter, and all of that garbage is brought directly to the school and your kids. If everyone is truly honest with themselves, unsupervised internet/social media is miserable for our children… Come at me whiners… We looked at the average public school and saw a pressure cooker, not a learning zone. In 2026, the headlines are still screaming about fights, threats, and kids coming home wrecked, this one was non-negotiable. Why ship your child to a place where survival trumps subtraction?

2. Academic Instruction? Yeah right…

(72% Dissatisfaction – Legit)

One-size-fits-all mediocrity, overstretched and federally strangleheld teachers, curricula that are dumbed-down and / or an ideologically loaded thick steamy pile. When’s the last time any of us saw 35 humans in the same room where anything “one size fits all” would bring the best out in everyone!!! But isn’t that supposed the be the goal here? To bring out the best for our future? We are done taking a back seat to feelings training and federal morality police. We are done settling for less than…

Homeschooled kids routinely outperform on tests (15-25 percentile points higher in many studies), so the “but socialization!” crowd looks increasingly out of touch. Don’t get me wrong though, I was very much a part of the “but socialization though” crowd. But, now when you go to a business with a young person behind the counter, can you tell me that the public school socialization efforts are doing our kids justice…? These kids are “learning” that if it isn’t on a phone screen, google, or AI, it isn’t real or right! Just repeat after us, your parents are old, out of touch, and don’t understand what we are doing here. You’re right! I don’t get it. I do know that when I see a fire, I don’t throw 5 gal buckets of unleaded at it. Maybe that’s just me… The thing is, if the school’s teaching to the middle while your kid’s bored or struggling, why not curate something that actually works? Novel idea.

3. Customized Individualized Learning

(Everything is customized now, why not education?)

I can tailor the education to my kid’s pace, interests, strengths, and quirks – no more forcing square pegs into round holes! This is huge for gifted kids, neurodivergent ones, or just anyone who doesn’t thrive in a 30-kid classroom zoo. Flexibility means ditching rigid schedules for real-life learning, like field trips on Tuesdays because why not? You want to take a day off to go to the Children’s Museum? Well, lets do it today… Right now actually, then get some lunch at the Sizzler with Mr. McGavin! Why? Because! That’s why…

4. Moral / Values Instruction

(Still Strong at 50-75%)

That old-school reason that’s faded from #1 but hangs on strong nationally. Think about this, your children are at public school for 8 hours of the day. Say on the very low side estimate, get up 30 minutes early to get ready for school, 30 minutes for the bus ride, get there 15 minutes to the bell… That’s already 9 hours and 15 minutes out of their day. Then 30 minute bus ride home, 30 minutes to unpack with 2 minutes to talk about what they did during the 8 hours and 28 minutes to talk about the miserable little crap that makes everyone’s life a living hell all day. You know who you are… Then, say 45 minutes for homework, 30 minutes to study for the test on Friday, dinner, shower, so on so on… That’s saying they don’t have a sport or extra curricular… Regardless, I think you get the point. Your talking at least 11 hours a day, someone has your kids, maybe more. We are talking their most impressionable point in life! The system has your kids more than you do. Do you think the best ones to teach a moral compass and or virtues to your children is a board of unelected government bureaucrats? Not this guy…

Some of you out there will disagree with me, some of you believe these bureaucrats are just the people to instill virtues into your children, and that’s fine. That’s the wonderful thing about America! You are legally allowed to be wrong. The majority of parents want to weave in faith, values, or ethics without the secular hammer counteracting or instilling whatever cultural wars are raging in curricula this week. In a polarized world, controlling the moral compass feels like a superpower, and sadly, Im pretty sure it is…

5. Family Time & Stronger Bonds

(72-75% Emphasis Nationally)

I kind of mentioned this above, but it bears its own slot. You get more meals together, fewer homework battles, actual conversations instead of rushed drop-offs. I get it, some of you may not like your kids, that’s fair, I don’t like your kids either! But, you may start liking them more when you are the ones controlling what goes into those little sponges. Homeschooling turns the home into a hub, not a pit stop. In a society where everyone’s overscheduled and disconnected, reclaiming daily life with your kids is revolutionary.

Bonus: Siblings actually like each other more when they’re not competing in the school popularity contest. Just saying…

6. Protection from Negative Influences & Mental Health Wins

Bullying, social media poison, early exposure to adult crap – homeschooling acts as a shield. Studies show homeschooled kids often have better emotional well-being, confidence, and real (not forced) social skills through co-ops, sports, church, etc. Parents see schools churning out anxious wrecks with an identity crisis; home feels like a sanity saving alternative. There are so many options for helping create social skills, especially with a few million kids now being homeschooled. With these options, you get to choose the environment your kids learn socializing skills. Would you rather have some control over who your kids have to interact with? Or, just hope they don’t get bullied into depressive state. Seems like an easy choice if you can have the option and are able.

The Bottom Line:

Our decision, as is many others (statistics prove) to homeschool wasn’t about rejecting society per say – it’s about rejecting a broken default that prioritizes compliance over curiosity, safety theater over actual safety, and test scores over thriving human real world useful education.

Everyone is so worried about what’s trending right? $1.75 for a cup of coffee, cream, sugar? Heck no! Starbucks “boutique coffee” is the trendy McTrenderson, where the “coffee” has all the cream, mocha, cocoa, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, all flavors of random chemicals and dyes, a cute dollop of whipped cream on top, and maybe if you look real hard, a tiny bit of coffee! All for the low low price of $13 for the “venti”, with a name like that, you can shame all your friends who just got the “large” at the gas station. Also that $13 doesn’t feel so bad when the purple hair that is a fresh product of the public school system reminds you that you shouldn’t be a racist or bigot. I had no idea! Thank you for educating me!!! Here’s the $13, for my coffeeish that has more sugar than a 5gal bucket of Jolt Cola (Look it up) and 5 times the calories of the heart attack burger in Vegas. $13 for a cup of the Kool-Aid mans version of coffee, doing every stupid Tik-Tok challenge, shopping at the vintage shop around the corner instead of the mall, and so many more. But what about our kids, can you get more “boutique” for their education than this?!

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In today’s society, homeschooling isn’t just some quirky side hustle anymore. It’s a full-on movement with millions of families saying, “Nah, we’ll handle this ourselves.” We’re talking roughly 3-4 million kids (about 6-7% of K-12, depending on whose numbers you trust), and creeping up post-pandemic. Parents aren’t doing it for the Instagram aesthetics; they’re doing it because the default system feels like a colonoscopy gone wrong, every day!

Parents are mathing it out

Why risk the drama and that ever-present drive down mediocrity lane in a 1997 Ford Escort, when you can build something better, cheaper (relatively), and way more effective?

Look, homeschooling’s not for everyone – it may seem like a grind at first, and socialization myths persist (pro tip: co-ops and sports fix that). But in 2026, with schools still playing catch-up on literacy, safety, and sanity, parents are voting with their living rooms. If you’re eyeing it, congrats: You’re joining the ranks of families saying “we can do better than this mess.” If you’re on the fence like I was, the data’s screaming one thing: The experiment worked, and more families are opting in every year. I took the plunge and after the initial learning curve, I would never go back… Your move…

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