K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Now It’s Black Parents Turning To Homeschooling.

There are as many reasons to homeschool as there are reasons to distrust the public school system. According to The Hechinger Report, African-American families have started to embrace homeschooling and now make up 10 percent of the homeschooling population. Many teach their children at home to protect them from racism, and also, as one scholar says, schools’ lower standards for black students. . . .

We’ve noted before that homeschooling is on the rise as Americans lose trust in the experts that run the American school system. For religious people, that distrust stems from their belief that schools don’t respect their values. Silicon Valley entrepreneurial types think they can disrupt education and create better approaches on their own. According to this piece, African Americans increasingly distrust schools as well. It’s not just because of low expectations either—some families quoted in the piece think their kids don’t get as complete an education in African American history in public schools as they should. Distrust in experts, cultural pluralism, dissatisfaction with current institutions, DIY-ism: some of the biggest trends reshaping America are at play in the rise of homeschooling.

Public schools are a 19th century model. This is the 21st century.