How many unschooling children go on to homeschool or unschool their own children?

Shawna of The Homeschooling Experiement asked:

"How many unschooling children go on to homeschool or unschool their own children?"

I left an answer as a comment on her post, and then thought others might like to know:

Dr. Brian Ray does research on homeschooling. He works at the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI). In 2003 he did a survey of 5,524 people who had been homeschooled seven or more years and were now adults. He published the results of this survey in Home Educated and Now Adults. I heartily recommend the book.

In the abstract Dr. Ray reports that of those who had school age children, 74% were educating their children at home. At first I was a bit surprised that it was this low. It has been a year or two since I read the report, but I thought the number was higher. I skimmed through the report and found on page 47 that only 9% were sending their children to public schools. The other major categories were private schools, or homeschooling/private school combinations.

It seems that into the next generation homeschooling has a good retention rate.


----------
Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education