(Center of the American Experiment) — Minnesota homeschool enrollment for the 2024-2025 school year is the highest on record, surpassing even the spike during COVID and school closures.
New enrollment data from the Minnesota Department of Education reports 31,216 students in the state were home educated during the 2024-2025 school year, which is up 7.4 percent from the previous year and 18.1 percent since the 2022-2023 school year. Since pre-COVID, homeschool enrollment is up 50.8 percent.
While homeschool participation in the state is still a small percent of Minnesota’s student population (under 4 percent), the climbing homeschool counts show there is an interest in this type of learning environment that has taken off again since schools re-opened. New and expanding homeschool classes, tutoring, co-operatives, and resources may mean more families are perhaps realizing they can handle home education.
An informal poll published June 2024 by Homeschool Sherpa, a homeschool resource site created by two Minnesota home educators, asked 170 Minnesota homeschool families over a nine-day period their top three reasons for homeschooling — “family time” and “dissatisfaction with traditional schools” came in each at 56 percent, followed by “lifestyle flexibility” at 49% and “religious or philosophical beliefs” at 32 percent.
Minnesota legalized homeschooling in 1987 under H.F. 432, which modified the state’s compulsory attendance laws to include homeschool.
This article was originally published by the Center of the American Experiment.
Catrin Wigfall
Catrin Wigfall is a Policy Fellow at Center of the American Experiment.
Catrin’s experience in education and policy research began during her time with the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. Her interest in education policy led her to spend two years teaching 5th grade general education and 6th grade Latin in Arizona as a Teach for America corps member. She then used her classroom experience to transition back into education policy work at the California Policy Center before joining American Experiment in February 2017.
Catrin graduated summa cum laude from Azusa Pacific University in California, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science.
