As President Donald Trump works to return most of the federal government's role in education back to the states and eventually abolish the failed U.S. Department of Education, a new report suggests that homeschooled students grow up to be happier, more engaged, and more likely to be married and have children.
Cardus, the Christian think tank in Canada that conducted the survey, also found that those who spent at least eight years being educated at home are more likely to believe in God and have the lowest divorce rate.
Scott Woodruff, director of legal and legislative advocacy at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), says, "That makes a lot of sense."
"The real hallmark of homeschooling is that parents spend more time with their kids," he notes. "Study after study has shown that when parents spend more time with their kids, the kids end up being well-balanced, more mature, more secure, [and] better able to find their place in the world."
Speaking as a product of the public school system – what he calls "a mixed bag" – Woodruff says it is a given that "someone who's in public school is not nearly going to have the input, mentoring, the kind of care and love you would get if a parent were there with you."
Homeschooling, he says, is so beneficial to children.
"Kids are hardwired to believe that whatever their parents do is important, so when a child sees their parent educating them, the child grows up just naturally primed to believe that education is important," the HSLDA spokesman summarizes. "That clicks a little switch in the child's mind and makes them more interested and more capable and more willing to learn."
Meanwhile, many of the findings of this current study line up nicely with a similar study that was conducted in 2003. It showed homeschool graduates "enjoyed life tremendously," with five times more feeling "happy" or "very happy" about their life, four times more thinking life was "exciting" or "very interesting," and homeschool graduates getting far more involved on the civic front than their publicly educated counterparts.
The Cardus Education Survey seeks to examine the school-sector effect in the lives of a nationally representative sample of high school graduates aged 24 to 39. To date, it has been administered four times in the United States, in 2011, 2014, 2018, and 2023; three times in Canada, in 2012, 2016, and 2018; and once in Australia, in 2018.
