Seven Myths About Homeschooled Kids, From Socialization to College

Every few years a dinner-party expert discovers homeschooling and announces, with the gravity of a man reporting a comet, that the children will never learn to talk to other humans. The children, meanwhile, are at the next table, talking to other humans, and a few are correcting his grammar.

The objections to homeschooling are like a certain kind of houseguest. They were shown the door decades ago, and they keep ringing the bell. Let's test seven of them against the record, one at a time, and give each a verdict. Where the facts are uncertain I'll say so, because a good argument does not need to be rescued by a bluff.

First, what we mean by homeschooling

A definition, because arguments about words that mean different things are a waste of everyone's evening. By homeschooling I mean the education of a child primarily at home under the direction of the parents, as a lawful alternative to attending a public or private school. It is not the same as the emergency remote learning that public schools ran in 2020 and 2021, in which the school set the work and the schedule and the kitchen table was merely the venue. It is not the same as a virtual public school either, which is a public school delivered by internet. And it is not a single method. Some families follow a boxed curriculum, some use a co-op that meets two days a week, some borrow a classical model, some teach from a stack of library books and a good deal of conversation.

That variety matters for what follows, because every one of our myths treats "the homeschooler" as one kind of child in one kind of house. There isn't one.

Myth one: "It's illegal in some states"

The claim: Somewhere out there, it is still against the law to teach your own child.

The record: It was once true in practice, or at least dangerously unclear. In the 1970s and early 1980s, parents in a number of states were prosecuted under compulsory attendance statutes that said children had to attend a school, with "school" left undefined or defined to exclude the kitchen. Parents hired lawyers, some of them went to jail, and the movement fought state by state in legislatures and courts. In 1993, the Michigan Supreme Court, in People v. DeJonge, held that applying the state's teacher certification requirement to a family with a sincere religious objection violated their free exercise rights. In 1994, a Texas appeals court in Leeper v. Arlington Independent School District treated homeschools as private schools for the purposes of the state's attendance law. By 1993, by most accounts, homeschooling was legal in all fifty states, by statute, by regulation, or by court decision. The longer story is in Homeschooling Went From Legal Gray Zone to Legal in Fifty States by 1993.

Behind those fights stands a constitutional tradition. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters in 1925, the Supreme Court struck down an Oregon law that would have forced children into public schools, saying that "the child is not the mere creature of the State." In Wisconsin v. Yoder in 1972, the Court held that Amish parents could take their children out of school after the eighth grade, citing the long tradition of parental direction of religious upbringing. Those cases are not about homeschooling directly. They are the soil it grew in. See Wisconsin v. Yoder and the Amish Fathers Who Stopped School at Eighth Grade.

Verdict: false, and has been for a generation. Every state allows it. What differs is the regulation, and that is where the real debate lies.

Myth two: "Parents need a teaching license"

The claim: You wouldn't let an unlicensed person perform surgery. Why let one teach long division?

The record: Here, the states vary, and I want to be careful not to overstate. Most states do not require a parent who homeschools to hold a teaching certificate. A good number require a high school diploma or equivalent. A few set other conditions, and some states ask for more paperwork than others. Check your own state's education department website and, better, the text of the statute, because the rules are not the same from one border to the next.

Now to the logic. The objection assumes that a teaching license is a proven predictor of whether a child learns. The evidence for that is thin. Researchers who study teacher quality disagree about how much certification, as such, predicts how much students learn, and you should check the current studies before taking either side's word for it. That is not an attack on certified teachers, who are the backbone of many excellent schools. It is a reminder that a license is a credential, not a result.

And consider what the analogy skips. A surgeon operates on strangers. A parent teaches one's own child, or a few, with an investment in the outcome no stranger can match, and a tutor's ratio no district can afford. A child taught one-on-one for an hour a day by a person who loves them has an advantage the best classroom of twenty-eight cannot offer. The sensible test for a homeschool is not the parent's paper but the child's progress, and many states ask for exactly that through annual assessments or portfolio reviews.

Verdict: mostly false. Most states do not require a parent teaching certificate, and a license is a credential, not a result.

Myth three: "They're socially isolated"

The claim: Children who don't sit in a classroom of same-age peers will grow up awkward and alone.

The record: I'll grant what is true in the objection. A child who is truly kept in a house with no contact outside the family would be isolated. But that is a description of a bad situation, not of homeschooling, and it is no more typical than a neglected child in a public school is typical of public schools.

What do homeschooled children actually do all day? In many families, a surprising amount of it is outside the house: church and youth groups, co-ops that meet weekly, music lessons, 4-H, scouting, volunteering, community theater, library programs, team sports, part-time jobs for older teens. A homeschooled child often spends more of the week with people of a range of ages, adults and teenagers and little kids, than a child who spends six hours in a room of peers born within twelve months of each other.

That brings up something we rarely say out loud. The "socialization" a school provides is, in part, the socialization of a pack of age-mates, and anyone who has been through middle school knows that pack is not always a school for civility. The classical picture of how a young person becomes a citizen involves mixed company: the family, the congregation, the neighborhood, the workplace. The Founders would recognize that picture better than they would recognize a building where hundreds of thirteen-year-olds are sorted by birth year.

Research on this question exists, including studies that have found homeschooled adults do as well as others on measures of civic involvement and satisfaction. I will say plainly that much of the research comes from surveys of families who chose to participate, which limits how far it can be pushed, and a fair reader should hold the strongest claims loosely. What can be said with confidence is that the confident claim of isolation, offered as if it were settled fact, has no solid basis in the evidence.

Verdict: false as a general claim. It describes a possible outcome, not a feature of homeschooling.

Myth four: "Colleges won't take them"

The claim: Without a diploma from an accredited high school, a homeschooled teenager is locked out of higher education.

The record: Colleges and universities across the country, including the most selective, admit homeschooled students every year, and many publish the application requirements for them. The standard route is a parent-prepared transcript, a record of the books and courses completed, standardized test scores such as the SAT or ACT, sometimes subject tests or advanced coursework, essays and recommendations from outside teachers or mentors. The Common Application has a process for homeschool applicants, in which the parent serves as the school counselor and answers extra homeschool questions. Many homeschooled students also build a transcript through dual enrollment at a community college, which proves their ability in a way an admissions officer can easily read. See Cut a Year Off College Before Graduation With Dual Enrollment and CLEP for how that works.

Military academies and the armed forces have their own policies for homeschool graduates, and these have changed over the years, so a family aiming at one should read the current rules directly. Financial aid forms ask for the same information as for anyone.

Is it harder in any way? Yes, a little. A homeschooled applicant has to make the case on paper, since no guidance counselor does it for them, and the family has to keep good records. A thorough, honest transcript is worth the work. But "harder to document" is not "barred."

Verdict: false. Colleges admit homeschooled students routinely. The burden is on the family to document the work well.

Myth five: "Only one kind of family does it"

The claim: Homeschooling is for religious conservatives in a certain kind of house. Take that away and it disappears.

The record: It is true that homeschooling's modern revival drew a great deal of energy from families of faith who wanted to pass on their beliefs, and I make no apology for that. The Founders thought religion and morality necessary to good government. See Religion, Morality and Knowledge, the Northwest Ordinance's School Clause. But it is also true that the movement has always had other strands: parents drawn to progressive "unschooling" in the 1970s, parents of children with learning differences who found the classroom poorly suited, parents of gifted children bored in a lockstep curriculum, parents with academic or athletic ambitions their local schools could not meet, parents who simply preferred more time with their kids.

And the demographics have been shifting. The Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey, which began in 2020, found that the share of households reporting homeschooling rose sharply that year, and the Census Bureau reported the largest increase among Black households, from 3.3 percent in the spring to 16.1 percent in the fall. Some of that surge was emergency remote schooling, and I would not read it as a permanent count of true homeschoolers. The people choosing it looked more varied than the stereotype.

The lesson for conservatives is a good one. A policy defended on the claim that it serves one tribe is vulnerable. A policy that serves families of every kind who want something different deserves wider support. That is the better argument.

Verdict: false, and increasingly so. There is no single homeschooling family.

Myth six: "They can't play sports"

The claim: If you don't attend the school, you can't be on its team.

The record: The answer used to be "mostly no," and in some states it still is. But the trend has long been the other way. In 1996, Florida passed a law giving homeschooled students the right to take part in interscholastic athletics at the public school they would otherwise attend, provided they meet eligibility rules like a minimum grade standard and, in the usual case, take the same tryout as anyone else. Over time many other states passed laws of their own. Because a homeschooled quarterback named Tim Tebow played for a Florida high school team in the early 2000s under that law, and later won a Heisman Trophy at the University of Florida, these laws are often called "Tebow bills," and several states have passed them under that name since. Policies vary widely: some states guarantee access, some leave it to local districts or to the state athletic association, and some still bar the door. Check your state.

The argument for access is simple. The family pays property taxes that support the school. The student is eligible by age and residence. And the school gets a roster spot filled by a kid who wants to be there. The argument against, from athletic associations and some districts, is about eligibility standards, accountability for grades and conduct, and fairness to enrolled students. Those worries can be met with rules that apply equally to everybody, such as a grade floor, a tryout, a residency requirement and a code of conduct.

Meanwhile, private leagues, church leagues, homeschool athletic associations and club teams fill the gap in many places, and plenty of homeschoolers have gone on to compete in college. A parent who wants a varsity jersey for their child has options in any state.

Verdict: partly true, trending false. It depends on your state, and the law has moved steadily toward access.

Myth seven: "Nobody checks on them"

The claim: Homeschoolers are unsupervised. Parents can do nothing and no one will know.

The record: The reality is a patchwork, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Some states ask almost nothing of homeschooling families beyond a notice of intent. Others require annual standardized tests or evaluations by a certified teacher, a portfolio of the child's work reviewed by an official, regular reports to the school district, or attendance records, and some require subjects to be covered. A few states are quite demanding. The range is wide, and families, legislators and courts have argued over where the line belongs for decades.

I'll put the best case for the critics first, because it deserves a fair hearing. Child abuse and neglect cases are real, and when a child is out of school, one set of mandated reporters, the teachers, is missing from his life. That is a serious concern and anyone who waves it away isn't taking children seriously. But the answer is not what many critics propose. Abuse is a crime in every state whether the victim is enrolled in school or not. The tools for finding it are neighbors, relatives, doctors, clergy, coaches and the child-protection hotline, along with the targeted investigation of specific allegations. A blanket presumption that every homeschooling family must prove its innocence is a different thing, and it would flip the American tradition on its head. We don't search every house because some houses hold crimes.

What's right and reasonable is a balance: notice to the state, some demonstration of progress, such as a test or portfolio, and the ordinary protection every child has against abuse. In the many states with such requirements, they are enforced. And families who care, which is most of them, build their own checks: curricula with graded tests, co-op classes with outside teachers, dual enrollment, and standardized exams of their own choosing.

Verdict: false as stated. Oversight ranges from light to heavy, children are protected by the same laws as everyone's, and responsible families add their own accountability.

Why the myths keep coming back

If the record answered these claims long ago, why do they keep returning? Three reasons, in my view.

One, they are cheap to say and costly to check. "Homeschoolers are isolated" fits in a sentence. The answer requires an afternoon with the statutes and a few studies.

Two, they protect a system. A public-school system funded per pupil has a financial interest in every child who stays, and officials sometimes fall into treating a departing family as a threat instead of a signal. That isn't a scandal. It is incentives. See Real Spending Per Pupil More Than Doubled Since 1970, So Where Are the Gains for the money side.

Three, they flatter a belief that learning requires an institution. The truth, as the Founding generation knew, is that a great deal of American education happened at home and at church long before there were districts. Much of that learning took place around the family Bible and a short shelf of books. The institution is a tool. It is not the thing itself.

What fair-minded critics get right

I don't want to end with a victory lap, because a column that only counts its wins isn't doing the job. Critics are right that a poorly run homeschool can fail a child, as a poorly run school can. They are right that some states have almost no accountability and that this deserves a conversation. And they are right that for some families, homeschooling is not feasible: it takes time, money or a parent at home, and a policy that favored it above all other options would hurt families who cannot do it.

That last point is why conservatives should want choice broadly, not just homeschooling: education savings accounts, charter schools, tax-credit scholarships, open enrollment, microschools. The goal is not that every family does the same thing. It is that every family has a real choice. See Microschools Are the One-Room Schoolhouse Reborn, With Modern Rules.

The case in brief

1. Homeschooling is lawful in all fifty states, a status won through legislatures and courts in the 1980s and 1990s, on a constitutional tradition that runs from Pierce to Yoder.
2. The claims that parents need a license, that the children are isolated, and that colleges reject them do not hold up against the record, though regulation varies and the research has limits.
3. Homeschooling families are more varied than the stereotype, and access to school sports has expanded since Florida's 1996 law.
4. Oversight exists in varying degrees, and the answer to abuse is targeted investigation, not a presumption of guilt for every family that teaches at home.
5. The honest conservative position is broad choice, so that every family, not only the one that can teach at home, can find a school that fits.

What you can do: Look up your state's homeschool statute on the legislature's website, read the notice and testing requirements, and share what you find with a family that is thinking about it.