Five thousand eight hundred children who were enrolled in Alabama's K-12 public schools last year did not return this year.
Of those, 3,000 accepted CHOOSE Act funds, allowing the State to gain insight into how those families continue their education through either private school or homeschool. That leaves 2,800 students whose families chose not to reenroll them this school year without telling the State.
"I do think that a number of those students may have gone to homeschool but did not report it that way to their school of enrollment," Eric Mackey, the State Superintendent of Education, told Alabama Daily News (ADN).
Alabama greatly expanded parental rights by choosing to remove prior requirements for families to use cover schools, sometimes called umbrella schools, in 2014 through a bill sponsored by former State Sen. Dick Brewbaker (R-Montgomery).
The primary purpose of most of those "schools" was mainly to manage administrative and record-keeping tasks to meet reporting requirements.
Alabama Education Association executive director Amy Marlowe told ADN that she isn't surprised that about 3,000 students used the CHOOSE Act education savings accounts to move to private schools, but is worried about those whose whereabouts are unknown.
"It seems like we've gone backwards because we used to have laws in Alabama where, as a last stop, the school system could find kids that went missing," she said. "Maybe they moved or are homeschooling, but that was an extra safety net to make sure Alabama's children were safe," Marlowe said in the news story before going on to say that over time, such enrollment losses will likely mean fewer public school employees, even if initial reductions occur through attrition.
Homeschooling has continued to grow as a popular school choice for parents across the country, driven by COVID shutdowns, masking mandates, a rising trend of pervasive woke ideology in classrooms and families returning to traditional values and priorities.
Seventeen states have so far reported increases in homeschooling for the 2024-2025 school year, according to state data compiled by Johns Hopkins' Homeschool Research Lab, which tracks homeschooling trends in the United States, as reported by the Business Journal.
According to the report, this year's gains follow a trend: "19 states reporting increases in homeschooling in the 2023-24 school year, with just two states reporting decreases."
Alabama is just one of the 20 states that do not collect or provide homeschooling data, according to the Hopkins project.
Alabama's reporting requirements for students are centered on parental freedom and a parent's right to choose the education that's best for their families without government intervention, barriers, or other requirements. It emphasizes that it is the role of parents, not the government, to keep their children safe.
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