Schools Lose Increasing Number of African-American Students to Home-schooling, Safety and School Discipline Often Cited as Reasons for Parental Choice

African-American students now comprise the fastest-growing segment of home-school attendees.  There are now approximately 220,000 African-American students out of the more than 2 million students who were home-schooled last year according to the National Home Education Research Institute. 

In an interview with Fox News, George Noblit, who serves an education sociologist at U.N.C, Chapel Hill, indicated that many African-American parents have opted for home-schooling to protect their children from drugs and bullying in addition to a perception that they would receive a better education suited to the needs of their children

With the overall per capita rate of home-schooling nearly doubling in the United States from 1999 to 2007, this aspect of why some parents choose this approach to educate their children bears careful consideration by educators.  Keeping in mind this data does not reflect situations where students drop out of school or change from one school to another, school discipline, safety, security, climate and culture are core competency issues for educators. 

 

About Michael Dorn

Michael Dorn serves as the Executive Director of Safe Havens International, a non-profit school safety center. The author of 27 books on school safety, Michael’s campus safety work has taken him to 11 countries over the past 34 years.