College rankings

 If you have children who are looking at going off to college in the near future, you might find this college ranking useful.

https://collegerankings.city-journal.org/

Looks like homeschooling is exploding!!!

 "According to the Johns Hopkins Institute, using census data, about 2.8% of children were homeschooled in 2019. That number is now close to 6% and continues to climb."

More than doubled in about six years.

This is great news!

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2025/11/20/homeschooling-is-booming-and-the-pandemic-has-little-to-do-with-it-n4946214

Hopefully the Federal Department of Education will finally be gone!

 Good news!

Having the Federal government involved in public education has harmed our children.  Having a few bureaucrats in Washington DC dictate how and what millions of teachers has stifled flexibility and lead to a huge work agenda.

Returning the decisions on public education to the states will allow parents to have more control over the education of their children.

https://townhall.com/columnists/starparker/2025/07/23/breaking-the-public-school-monopoly-on-education-overdue-n2660788

The Federal Government will be more friendly to homeschooling

Looks like the President Trump administration will be friendly to homeschooling! 

Parents should recognize the importance of why we need to teach our children

Nick Freitas has a great message for parents.

Ted talk - How to make learning as addictive as social media

 Luis von Ahn explains why and how he helped develop Duolingo:

Happy New Year

 We how everyone had a wonderful Christmas.

And we wish you the best in the new year.

Happy Thanksgiving

 We wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

 We hope everyone had a good Christmas.

And we wish you the best in the New Year!

Arizona gives parents choice in where their chidlren go to school

 This is good news.

https://redstate.com/carcand/2022/06/28/arizona-secures-the-biggest-school-choice-victory-in-u-s-history-n585353

Happy New Years!

 I hope everyone had a good Christmas and best wishes for the new year.

Let Parents Choose

 I like John Stossel's column on school choice.

More data on how homeschooling is growing

 Number of students being homeschooled in Colorado more than doubles starts with:

DENVER (KDVR) — New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows the number of families opting to homeschool their children is on the rise.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the rate of households homeschooling reached 11% by September 2020. Six months prior, only 5.4% of families were registered for homeschooling.

In our state, the latest data from the Colorado Department of Education shows the number of students homeschooling more than doubled last year to 15,773. In 2019, only 7,880 students were being homeschooled.

Hat tip: Instapundit

Percentage of children being homeschooled has doubled through Covid!

Just The News reports:

The percentage of children being homeschooled in the U.S. has nearly doubled since the start of the COVID-19, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report. 

The number of students increased from 5.6% in March 2020, to 11% in Sept. 2020, according to the most recent bureau report on the issue, released in March. 

Prior to the pandemic, roughly 3.3% of U.S. households homeschooled children. 

Black households saw the largest increase. Their homeschooling rate rose from 3.3% in the spring of 2020 to 16.1% in the fall according to the report.

This is great news!!!

Students do better when parents have more choices

 In Free to choose -- and learn, Joanne Jacobs reports on a study which found that:

"The more a state provides parents with the freedom to choose their child’s school the better the state’s students score on the National Assessment of Education Outcomes (NAEP)," writes Patrick Wolf on Project Forever Free.

Hat tip: Instapundit

How big will the parent revolt be against teacher unions?

 It will be interesting to see where the parent backlash against the teacher unions goes.

Parents are pushing harder to have their children taught while teachers claim special privileges.

It is not clear to me why teachers think it is OK for hospital and grocery store workers to go to work, but some how schools are a death trap.

David Catron's column The Coming Parent Revolt Over School Reopening reviews several issues on opening of public schools and concludes with:

The parents are experiencing this callous attitude first hand. As Liesl Hickey reports in USA Today, some are preparing to sue teachers unions in Arizona, California, Illinois, and Virginia. If teachers don’t go back to work, there will be many more such lawsuits. If that fails, it’s time to start firing teachers. In the end, the inflexibility of the teachers unions is a function of its individual members. There is no significant risk associated with in-person instruction. The teachers know it, and the science proves it. Most importantly, the parents know it. If teachers remain intransigent and the Democrats acquiesce in their obstinance, parents will certainly revolt at the ballot box.

Hat tip: Instapundit

Teaching your children to pass the Marshmallow test

 I like John Stossel's video on Parenting: Delayed Gratification:

If you haven't heard of the Marshmallow test, we wrote about it years ago, and a few more times.

More evidence that higher education is suffering

Colleges Have Shed 550,000 Employees Since The Pandemic Began has a nice chart showing a huge drop.  

This line is fascinating:  Colleges Have Shed 10% Of Their Employees Since The Pandemic Began

Hat tip: Instapundit

We wish you a Merry Christmas

 We wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Around 9% of children are now being homeschooled!

Reason's column on Public Schools Are Losing Their Captive Audience of Children reports that:

Homeschooling, in particular, is booming. Once regarded as a fringe choice for hippies and religious families, various approaches to DIY education pushed into the mainstream in recent decades and reached critical mass this year. An estimated 3.3 percent of children were homeschooled in 2016, up from 1.7 percent in 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That share roughly tripled this year to nine percent, in an Education Week survey. Gallup agrees, finding that 10 percent of children are now being homeschooled.

I never guessed that we'd experience a 3X jump in just a couple years.

Hat tip: Instapundit

A fun way to take care of litter

This is pretty clever:

Happy Thanksgiving

 I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving.

I felt a disturbance in the force - Colleges Have Shed 10% Of Their Employees Since The Pandemic Began

This is a pretty big shift in higher education.

Colleges Have Shed 10% Of Their Employees Since The Pandemic Began links to: Chronicle of Higher Education, Colleges Have Shed a Tenth of Their Employees Since the Pandemic Began which reports:

September, the traditional start of the fall semester, saw the continuation of historic job losses at America’s colleges just as they sought some return to normalcy amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Preliminary estimates suggest that a net 152,000 fewer workers were employed by America’s private (nonprofit and for-profit) and state-controlled institutions of higher education in September, compared with August, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates industry-specific employee figures. The net number of workers who left the industry from February to September now sits at around 484,000.

It took ten months to lose 10% of the employees.  To put this in perspective, it took about 11 years for the same number of employees to be hired.

It will be interesting to see how the next couple years ago.  I think there is a decent chance higher education could lose another 10%, especially since people are starting to look for new ways to get an education.

Hat tip: Instapundit. 

Freshmen Enrollment Is Down 16% This Fall

Freshmen Enrollment Is Down 16% This Fall links to a post at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center which reports:

Enrollment picture worsens, with more colleges reporting data. Roughly one month into the fall semester, undergraduate enrollment is running 4.0 percent below last year’s level, and the upward trend for graduate enrollment has slipped to 2.7 percent. Overall postsecondary enrollment is down 3.0 percent as of September 24. Most strikingly, first-time students are by far the biggest decline of any student group from last year (-16.1% nationwide and -22.7% at community colleges).

That is amazing.  

There was a chart with some details, breaking down the decline in enrollment by type of college and age group.  Those ages 21 to 24 entering public four year colleges declined by a whopping 40%.

Hat tip: Instapundit. 

I liked Stossel's report on Private School Success Around the World

 I think the trend to homeschooling and private school will be accelerated by Covid.  

John Stossel did a good report on Private School Success Around the World: