Mass shootings cause parents to choose homeschooling

The day after a teenager opened fire at a high school in Parkland, Florida in February 2018, helicopters rushed to another high school near the campus where 17 people were killed.

The nearby Atlantic Technical High School was on lockdown while authorities investigated a copycat threat. Young Eden Frallicciardi and his dad were on the campus to pick up his older brother when a cop pulled the dad and son into a janitor’s closet to hide.

The traumatic event led the Frallicciardi family to take stock of their options.

Eden never returned to his elementary school. Now 17, Eden has spent the remainder of his childhood learning science and phonics at the skate park or on a beach in South Florida in the homeschooling program his parents run. The family says it is the safer option.

Helicopters were swirling and the school was under lockdown while authorities investigated a copycat threat. A cop pulled the dad and son into a janitor’s closet to hide when they arrived.

The traumatic event led the Frallicciardi family to take stock of their options.

Eden never returned to his elementary school. Now 17, Eden spent the remainder of his childhood learning science and phonics at the skate park or on a beach in South Florida in the homeschooling program his parents run. The family says it is the safer option.

Parents who are anxious and afraid have been considering homeschooling in the wake of another mass shooting this month that left four dead at a school in Georgia and dozens of shooting threats at schools across the nation. Others made the move to homeschooling programs after previous school shootings and threats in the past several years.

More than 2.8 million students are now enrolled in homeschooling or virtual learning programs, according to new national data from the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. The number of families choosing these options increased between the 2018-2019 school year and the 2022-2023 school year, shifting how some kids learn across the U.S., data shows.

Homeschooling parents often considered safety more important than teacher quality or a school’s academic reputation when choosing a path for their kids, according to data collected by the federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics and EdChoice, a group that advocates for school choice.

More families of color are also choosing homeschooling than before, representing a shift from the days when most homeschooling families were white Protestants, said Brian Ray, founder of the National Home Education Research Institute.

This movement of families turning away from traditional schools presents a growing challenge for public and private schools plagued by shooting threats, said Roberta Lenger Kang, a professor at Teacher’s College at Columbia University.

Homeschooling impacts other decisions families make

Some families who make this choice out of fear for their kids’ safety relocate to a region more amenable or financially supportive of homeschooling.

Christopher Moye and his wife believed their kids’ private schools in New York and Delaware weren’t investing enough in safety measures or providing the education they wanted. After they did some research, the couple decided to relocate with their kids to access homeschooling programs in Northern Virginia, where regulations are more lax, Moyes said.

They never allowed their two youngest to attend traditional schools.

“It’s not just school shootings, but, overall, we just felt safety wasn’t a priority,” he said. “If you compared (schools) to anything else, like a car dealership, you would never accept such a poor product.”

Through homeschooling, the Moyes’ 17-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter, can hone in on interests and skills beyond traditional reading and arithmetic lessons: learning math and physics through Pokémon cards and fencing, he said. It’s been a positive change for them, he said.

He worries about kids being taught by educators who are fearful of shootings and aren’t being paid well for being in that position.

“Imagine going in every day as a teacher and thinking you can get shot and your students can get shot dead,” he said.

In Atlanta, Valerie Myers has been homeschooling her seven sons for years – except for the year she sent two to a private Christian school. The family lives about 20 minutes from Apalachee High School, where a teenager is charged with killing two adults and two students in September.

Myers wanted to infuse religion into their lessons, so she says having autonomy over what her kids learn has been beneficial. Because her family is Black, She also feels the public education system isn’t structured in the children’s best interest.

Safety wasn’t a prime driver for Myers when she chose homeschooling for her kids. But the recent massacre so close to home was fresh on her mind. She said she’s been thinking about what Apalachee and other schools could do to prevent tragedies.

“Obviously, it does raise a level of concern,” she said. “I’m disheartened at the way it’s been handled.”

Gun violence is also affecting whether school staff will return to campuses.

Myers’ nanny, who used to substitute for Cristina Irimie, a math teacher killed at Apalachee, helps homeschool Myers’ kids two days a week. The nanny told Myers she didn’t plan to return to the classroom anymore because of the tragedy.

Homeschooling in the U.S.

Homeschooling allows parents the flexibility to choose what, when and how kids learn but it also puts the financial onus on them. The cost of home school varies. It can cost thousands of dollars depending on the books and curriculum. In some cases, there’s the added cost of the lost income for a parent who is teaching rather than in the workplace.

Home-led education was the norm for families in the U.S. until the 1800s, according to the Coalition for Responsible Homeschooling.

When it came back in the 1970s, schooling kids at home was considered a cutting-edge alternative, prompted by the work of educational theorist John Holt, who argued for “unschooling” or moving kids away from the traditional schoolhouse, Ray said.

In the intervening decades, homeschooling has entered the mainstream conversation. Ray said people often begin talking about homeschooling when they’re concerned about physical violence or bullying. School voucher programs in some states that allow parents to use public funding for nontraditional schooling may have also influenced the increase in homeschooling interest and enrollment, Ray said, but he thinks it’s too soon to tell if that’s the case.

How many parents are choosing homeschooling?

Most U.S. families send their kids to traditional schools.

Among those who chose homeschooling, 83% said the environment at other schools was “important” to their decision, according to the national NCES survey. Parents who did not homeschool, on the other hand, rated the quality of staff safety and the quality of academic programs as “very important” to their selection of schools.

A national survey by EdChoice, an organization that advocates for school vouchers, also found safety was the most important factor for homeschooling parents in deciding on their child’s educational path. The group surveyed about 2,300 current school parents and 1,500 Americans in April 2024.

“In the last four years, we’ve seen that homeschooling parents are prioritizing safety at a much higher rate than other parents,” said Colyn Ritter, a senior research associate for EdChoice. “And that’s only gone up since tragedies in Uvalde and other places.”

Toni Frallicciardi, who is Eden’s mother, said several families in her Florida community moved their kids to homeschooling and microschools after the Parkland shooting. She and her husband now lead an education program that serves 400 kids in three local counties.

What should parents know about homeschooling?

Homeschooling looks different for U.S. families, depending, in large part, on where they live. There is no federal governing body that dictates how homeschooling programs should work.

At least 13 states have stringent regulations on homeschooling testing or curriculum, while other states are more lenient, allowing parents to decide their kids’ schedules and some curriciulum, according to a state tracker from the Home School Legal Defense Association.

The schooling option is controversial. Homeschooling and education experts largely disagree about its merit.

Parents in unregulated states are largely left to figure out what works for them even though homeschooling programs should be “equal or equivalent to the quality of education they’re receiving at school” in Lenger Kang’s opinion. Unregulated programs can create haphazard types of curriculum and can contribute to academic inequities, she said.

Families can also put their kids’ academic success and their relationship with their children at stake when they move them to an alternative form of schooling out of fear, she said.

“It makes a lot of sense to me that this is something that parents are considering,” Lenger Kang said. “But it’s not as simple as buying the textbook and sitting down with coffee and having them do worksheets. It can require an extensive amount of time and money.”

On the other hand, Ray, from the National Home Education Research Institute, said homeschooling is accessible if you take advantage of resources on the internet, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be a good alternative for families who don’t want a regulated, traditional schooling option or to worry about campus violence, he said.

Ray recommends parents find a support group with other families, use free curriculum and learning programs online to cut down costs and take advantage of programs at libraries and museums designed for homeschoolers if they’re seriously interested in the option.

Jonah Stewart, director of research for the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, said parents who choose homeschooling should plan to do so responsibly.

Kids thrive when they are part of a homeschooling group or embedded in their community, for example, and the financial resources a family has don’t always equate to academic success, Stewart said.

Ray believes the benefits of individualized education are worth it.

For some families, it’s the only option they’ll consider.

Why parents moved kids to homeschooling, charter schools, private schools

‘Only in America’

Some families told USA Today they feel homeschooling and other alternative options are the only way forward because gun violence in schools is a reality of American life. Others who want their kids to be able to attend school without being scared about shooting threats, say there has to be a better way.

Annie Andrews, a pediatrician and senior advisor at violence prevention group Everytown for Gun Safety, said everyone from lawmakers to parents needs to band together to help stop the violence and make schools a safe place for kids and their teachers.

“Every parent is entitled to make decisions that feel right to them when it comes to their child’s health and safety, but these considerations shouldn’t even need to be on the table,” Andrews wrote in an email to USA Today. “The fact that parents are even having these discussions at all should be enough to warrant urgent, meaningful action on every level.”

Andrews from Everytown and Stewart from the Coalition for Responsible Home Education both said that homeschooling isn’t for everyone.

“Only in America are parents choosing to opt out of traditional schooling methods out of fear of school shootings, because only in America do lawmakers ignore the root causes of school-based gun violence or take steps to prevent gun violence from entering our children’s schools in the first place,” Andrews wrote.

After the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Stewart, who was homeschooled, said the Coalition for Responsible Home Education sent a note to families telling them not to rush into homeschooling out of fear, but it made sense that “people are scared… people are trying to reclaim agency when they don’t see change happening.”

‘I feel safer at home’

Homeschooling wasn’t Frallicciardi’s first choice and she doesn’t recommend it to everyone. She would reconsider traditional school if she thought the teachers and staff could get to know every student. But that’s not the reality, and kids are facing an unmitigated mental health crisis.

“The beauty of microschools or homeschool(ing) is we have a community to know what’s going on in the kids’ lives,” she said. “I think we’re at a point where we really need that.”

Her son Eden, whose brother’s campus went on lockdown after the Parkland shooting, still remembers the collective fear he witnessed that day.

“The staff were crying,” he said.

He’s a high school senior studying to be a welder and was grateful his parents pulled him out of school after what happened. He’d felt unsafe on his elementary campus before the Parkland shooting and the lockdown he witnessed. Fights happened frequently on his elementary campus.

“I feel safer at home,” he said.

Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.

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Mass shootings cause parents to choose homeschooling

Homeschooling impacts other decisions families make

Homeschooling in the U.S.

How many parents are choosing homeschooling?

What should parents know about homeschooling?

‘Only in America’

‘I feel safer at home’

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Mass shootings cause parents to choose homeschooling

Homeschooling impacts other decisions families make

Homeschooling in the U.S.

How many parents are choosing homeschooling?

What should parents know about homeschooling?

‘Only in America’

‘I feel safer at home’

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