More families turned to homeschooling during the Covid response, but many are continuing to choose this option today, even as schools have returned to normal.

Recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey reveal that homeschooling rates remain well above pre-pandemic levels, with more than five percent of students now being homeschooled, loosely compared to pre-pandemic Census data suggesting around three percent of students were homeschooled.

"A lot of families started realizing things weren't working in the conventional system," said Syreeta Farria, a homeschooling mother of two children in Detroit who, along with another homeschooling mother, Victoria Washington, runs a weekly homeschooling program for local families. Farria has seen the growth in homeschooling over the past three years, particularly among families of color. "There are a lot of stereotypes about what homeschoolers look like and, quite often, most people do not see moms like myself and Victoria. They do not see that there are Black and brown families in urban areas that are moving away from traditional learning and deciding to do homeschooling or non-traditional methods when it comes to educating their children," Farria told me in a recent podcast interview.