Homeschooling in Minnesota continues to grow after COVID-19 uptick

Minnesota mom Jamie Wagner had expected her daughter would attend a public kindergarten – until the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They were trying to do school over Zoom or keep the kids apart, and I just figured there’s got to be a better way, and I’m already home with them,” the New Prague resident told MPR News. “So we decided for the following school year that we would homeschool her because she was preschool age.”

Five years later, Wagner is still homeschooling.

“We fell in love with it, and it’s been such a joy to us, and we kind of just never went back,” she said.

Parents like Wagner have contributed to the explosive growth of homeschooling in the Gopher State, jumping to more than 30,000 families during the pandemic – from fewer than 20,000 in 2020.

“Those numbers dipped when schools resumed in-person learning, but this year homeschooling counts are up by 2,000 students,” MPR News reports. “Since 2023 the number of homeschool students is up 18 percent while the number of public and private school students has grown less than 1 percent.” 

Homeschoolers have ‘diversified a lot’ 

Nancy Bjorkman, who runs her Heppner’s Legacy homeschool supplies business in Elk River, highlights the difference between modern-day and previous generations of homeschoolers. 

“You have this stereotype of the Christian conservative family who chooses to homeschool for those kinds of reasons. That’s really where the trend began in the modern homeschooling movement,” she said. “I’ve seen it shift a lot. It’s diversified a lot in the demographics of who’s choosing to homeschool. I love that it’s become more diverse in that way.” 

Many longtime homeschool parents recall days when this alternative educational approach was less common. 

“The community has changed dramatically,” said Jamie Lundell, a Bemidji resident who homeschools her seven children. “More (homeschool) co-ops are opening. We all have waiting lists, so we’re probably going to have to split again.” 

Bemidji has 12,000 residents and 469 registered homeschool students, according to the state’s records. But Lundell didn’t know many other families like hers when she started homeschooling her oldest child, who is now 11 years old. 

“I want to teach them a biblical worldview,” she explained about her choice to homeschool. “And I don’t believe what we’re teaching as fact in school is correct either.” 

Like many homeschool pioneers, Lundell welcomes the increased interest across a range of demographics. 

“It seems like since COVID, it gave people the confidence that, yes, I can keep my own kids home, and yes, I can actually do a really dang good job by just looking at life as school.” 

Parents shopping at Bjorkman’s store often share their reasons for withdrawing their students from public or private schools to homeschool. 

They include dissatisfaction with the existing classroom environment, such as “a concern with academics or their child’s mental health,” according to MPR. 

“A lot of (the concern) is content-based, where they have a more conservative view and want to be able to help their children to follow the values that they hold as a family,” Bjorkman noted. 

Beyond her store’s curriculum and educational supplies, Bjorkman offers walk-in consultations and seminars for parents to explore homeschooling’s legal requirements. 

“Since COVID, more and more people are exploring it, because it’s more and more common, right?” she said. “Because the trend is up, and it’s not, you know, totally weird anymore. Everybody’s got a neighbor who’s homeschooling.”