Homeschooling continues to grow across the United States years after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted traditional education.
Homeschooling continues to grow across the United States years after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted traditional education, with families increasingly turning to alternative models that offer greater flexibility, parental involvement and personalized instruction.
The trend has been particularly pronounced in New York.
New York recorded 53,905 homeschooled students during the 2025-26 school year, more than triple the number reported during the 2009-10 school year. New York City alone now has more than 14,000 homeschooled children.
The shift comes as families cite a wide range of reasons for pursuing education outside traditional schools, including individualized instruction, academic rigor, flexibility and greater control over how and what their children learn.
Adam Mangana, CEO and co-founder of education technology company OptimaEd, joined The National News Desk to discuss why he believes homeschooling and other alternative education models are continuing to gain ground.
"You really hit the nail on the head," Mangana said. "People are moving away from standardization because there are two winds."
Mangana said one of those forces is technology, which has made it easier to tailor instruction to individual students. The other, he said, is the expansion of education savings accounts and other school-choice programs that allow eligible families in some states to use public funds for approved educational expenses outside their assigned public school.
"You have a technological wind that's allowing for hyper-personalization, and you have a policy wind around educational savings accounts that's allowing every parent to become the CEO of their own education and allocate parent-directed funding," Mangana said.
School-choice policies vary widely across the country. Some states have expanded programs with broad or universal eligibility, while others offer more limited programs or no education savings accounts at all.
"When you combine this technological innovation with this policy innovation, there's a real incentive here for people to be able to do what works for their child," Mangana said.
The COVID-19 pandemic marked a turning point for many families, as school closures and remote learning gave parents an unusually close look at their children's daily lessons.
Mangana said that experience contributed to a lasting change in the relationship many parents have with schools.
"Parents were able to see the veil lifted," Mangana said, arguing that some families encountered curriculum or teaching approaches that did not align with what they wanted for their children.
"What has changed now is that parents are much more active and engaged, and thus the children are more engaged," he said.
Homeschooling itself has also changed substantially as families gain access to online courses, virtual instructors, learning cooperatives, microschools and increasingly sophisticated education technology.
Mangana argues those tools mean parents who choose a home-based education no longer necessarily have to serve as their child's primary classroom teacher.
"It's not your grandmother's homeschool," Mangana said. "You don't actually have to do the teaching."
His company is one example of that changing model.
OptimaEd operates programs that use virtual reality and other immersive technology to connect students with teachers and classmates remotely. Mangana describes the approach as "school from home" rather than conventional homeschooling.
The company's virtual model can take students inside historical settings, scientific environments and other simulated spaces while they interact with instructors and classmates.
"What we're doing is essentially turning teachers into Miss Frizzle and taking students into the parts of a cell or back into ancient Rome," Mangana said in a separate interview earlier this year.
Mangana said these technologies are part of a larger shift in which instruction no longer has to happen in the same physical location where children spend their school day.
"You're seeing custodial care decoupled from instruction," Mangana told The National News Desk. "So you're seeing the rise of microschools, homeschools."
He said families can increasingly seek specialized instruction from teachers regardless of where they live.
"You can use resources like OptimaEd to get world-class instruction, regardless of what ZIP code you live in," Mangana said.
One longstanding concern surrounding homeschooling and virtual education is socialization.
Critics have questioned whether children educated primarily at home have enough opportunities for regular interaction with peers, while homeschooling advocates argue students can socialize through sports, religious organizations, clubs, co-ops and other activities.
Mangana said his company has tried to address that concern by using immersive technology to create a greater sense of interaction among remote students.
"The biggest misconception out there is that it is inherently not social," Mangana said.
"So many families say it's lonely," he added. "Optima set out to solve the loneliness problem."
Mangana has said his own two children participate in virtual schooling while also socializing through church and athletics, illustrating what he sees as a model in which academics and other parts of a child's day can be separated rather than bundled into a traditional school schedule.
He also argues technology can make academic instruction more efficient and give families additional time to pursue activities outside the classroom.
"We've been able to condense the school day, really give people the core content — reading, writing, arithmetic," Mangana said.
That additional flexibility, he said, allows families to organize the remainder of the day around their children's interests.
"Now they can really personalize what's happening outside of that eight-hour day around sports or their religious community or music," Mangana said.
New York's rules illustrate how homeschooling remains subject to state oversight even when students do not attend a traditional school.
Families homeschooling in New York City must submit a letter of intent to the Department of Education and comply with state requirements governing instruction and reporting.
For Mangana, the continued expansion of homeschooling, microschools and virtual education points toward a future in which families have more options for assembling an education around an individual student's needs.
"Giving people more time, coupled with going back to the basics and really delivering the core content much more efficiently," Mangana said, "has been what the market has demanded."
