The U.S. homeschooling movement has grown steadily since the early 1980s. In that time, a growing body of academic literature has been published that assesses various aspects of the phenomenon. This article first explains some of the methodological issues surrounding this literature as it has developed. It then summarizes the findings of the literature with respect to the following topics: the history of homeschooling, demographics (including parental motivation), academic achievement, and transition to college/adulthood.

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This article first examines why the homeschooling movement in the USA emerged in the 1970s, noting the impact of political radicalism both right and left, feminism, suburbanization, and public school bureaucratization and secularization. It then describes how the movement, constituted of left- and right-wing elements, collaborated in the early 1980s to contest hostile legal climates in many states but was taken over by conservative Protestants by the late 1980s because of their superior organization and numerical dominance. Despite internal conflicts, the movement’s goals of legalizing and popularizing homeschooling were realized by the mid-1990s. Since that time homeschooling has grown in popularity and is increasingly being utilized by more mainstream elements of society, often in conjunction with public schools, suggesting that ‘homeschooling’ as a political movement and ideology may have run its course.

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In an earlier work I provided quantitative evidence for the claim that the recent historiography of American education is characterized by an increased emphasis on the recent past to the detriment of the colonial, early national, and even antebellum eras. In that piece I noted offhandedly that there has been next to no work done on the history of American education before the arrival of Europeans. This article is my attempt to initiate the process of filling this appalling gap. Anyone so foolhardy as to hazard a history of education before European contact in the land that is now the United States, however, must deal at the outset with at least four theoretical and methodological concerns.