Homeschooling in the United States: An Overview of the Washington State Regulations and Implementation

Abstract

In the past few years, there was a noticeable increase in homeschooling, parent or guardian -directed education, in the United States. This work has as its main objective to increase awareness on the topic using Washington State as model. The methods were literature review, exploring State regulations and qualitative interviews on implementation- in practice, sampling users of this system. Challenges and advantages of this educational system were presented. The main reported benefits were flexibility or freedom to choose the curricula, to change the schedule, to determine priorities, as well as the direct involvement in their children’s education. Our results have shown that the significant increase on homeschooling, in these past years, can be related to different reasons such as faith-based or religious practices within the family, or as a product of the covid-19 pandemic, when the majority of parents were required to become closer to their children’s learning process, without in-person instruction.