More Rhode Island Families Homeschooling Since Pandemic

The pandemic sparked a nationwide rise in homeschoolers and many families in Rhode Island have turned that COVID experiment into a way of life.

“People’s eyes have been opened to what is possible, how learning can be done differently,” said Janet Kasenga, who homeschools her children.

Kasenga’s living room functions more like a classroom. Her 6-year-old daughter, Lucie, practices her multiples of five there as she hops onto the right answer. It’s also where her 9-year-old son, James, learns the different parts of speech through a game of Mad Libs.

“He’s really into Minecraft. So he’s got Minecraft Mad Libs, and it asks you to put down a noun, an adjective and a verb,” Kasenga said. “And at the beginning he struggled with it. But what I did is I sat on my couch, and I’d look at the room and I’d say, ‘What’s that TV? Describe the TV. It’s a rectangle, it’s black.’”

By teaching her son at home in a relaxed, fun way, Kasenga said she helped him learn faster than he would have in a traditional school. She began home-schooling during the pandemic. The mother of three said the biggest appeal is getting to customize her children’s curriculum. She purchases them online.

“It can be so overwhelming of how much is available out there for curriculums that I just picked one,” Kasenga said.

If not for the pandemic, Kasenga said she would not be homeschooling.

“I had asked my husband when my oldest was 2 if I could homeschool, and he said no, he wanted him in school,” she said. “And then once the pandemic hit, I knew it was something that I’d always wanted to do, but then my husband didn’t have any issues with it because we didn’t want him in school or at public schools with masks.”

Kasenga said she and her family are vaccinated, but added that she worried about her children being on the computer too much while doing remote learning.

“Now a lot of homeschoolers are moving away from something,” said Melissa Robb, the advocacy director for ENRICHri, the largest secular homeschooling organization in Rhode Island. Robb said many parents were frustrated during the pandemic as they watched their children struggle with remote learning.

“They saw that that wasn’t working and they just said, ‘We need something else,’” Robb said.

“(The pandemic) gave people a real chance to regroup and reassess their family and have that bond that they didn’t know they were missing,” said Jen Curry, the state coordinator for the Rhode Island Guild of Home Teachers, a Christian-led support group for homeschoolers.

Robb and Curry said there is one main message they have heard from many parents who began educating from home after COVID-19 hit.

“I always wanted to homeschool. I didn’t know how or I didn’t take the time to figure out how,” Robb said, reflecting on the parents’ response.

The number of homeschooled students in Rhode Island surged during the pandemic. It has declined since its COVID-era peak but is 67% higher than pre-pandemic numbers.

Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green said the uptick in homeschooling is aligned with the rest of the nation.

“I would rather that they be in our school system, but I think parents make different kinds of choices for different reasons,” Infante-Green said. “Many of the parents are now working remotely, and many of them prefer the convenience, prefer the way that they teach their kids.”

James Dwyer, a professor of law at William & Mary, has been studying home education for decades and co-authored a book on the subject.

“I think people that had strong religious convictions that would support homeschooling were already doing it pre-pandemic. So the new people are mostly not doing it for that reason,” he said. “It’s mostly that they have enjoyed the educational experience and the side benefits of greater freedom, flexibility, you can do it while you’re traveling.”

Kasenga said religion and politics did not factor into her decision to teach at home. She worries about school shootings and bullies. She and her husband agreed that she would teach their children while he worked outside of the home.

Kasenga lives in East Greenwhich, which has one of the best-performing school districts in the state. When asked why she did not want to take advantage of that, she said, “We did move to East Greenwich for the public schools when we thought we were going to be putting them in public school.”

“I see that they get so much more of a benefit being home than if they were in a public school.”

But Infante-Green said there are many benefits to having children in school that cannot be replicated at home.

“Our concern because we saw this during the pandemic is the kids socializing, the kids having the interactions because school is about the academics, but it’s the social-emotional piece as well,” Infante-Green said.

Kasenga said the biggest misconception that people have of families who homeschool is that they are not social. She said the opposite is true.

“We are too social,” she said with a laugh.

Kasenga said many homeschooled families form close relationships with one another. It is a way for both parents and children to develop friendships.

The growth in homeschooling since the pandemic is the latest part of a long-term trend. There are nearly 1,400 more students homeschooled in Rhode Island now than there were in 2013.

When asked what the increase in homeschooling says about the quality of public schools in Rhode Island, Infante-Green said, “I don’t know if it actually says anything related to the quality … It’s not only in Rhode Island. It is a nationwide increase that we saw happen during the pandemic and in many places it has not gone down.”

Infante-Green said the growing group of homeschoolers is affecting funding for local school districts, but added that it was difficult to identify the full extent.

“Even if you lose, let’s say 20 kids, that’s a classroom. But, you don’t usually lose them all in one class on the same grade,” she said. “You lose two here, three there. So you feel the financial impact, but you can’t actually consolidate or figure another way out to budget because it is not all in one shot.”

As more parents nationwide opt to educate at home, Dwyer wants lawmakers to tighten regulations. He is worried about parents who have a history with Child Protective Services (CPS).

“You would just check CPS records and make sure this isn’t a parent who’s seriously CPS involved and perhaps removing the child from school for that reason,” Dwyer said. “There’s a huge downside potential in the absence of any kind of state oversight that some children are terribly disserved by the practice.”

Parents do not need to have a teaching certificate to homeschool in Rhode Island. They have to agree to provide thorough and efficient instruction. Dwyer said that is not enough.

“Parents ought to have accomplished something academically themselves, either (a) high school diploma or a GED,” he said. “I think if you can’t complete that minimal academic program yourself, then entrusting you completely with the education of your child is unwarranted.”

Amanda Campbell said more families are discovering what she has long loved about homeschooling.

“We refer to ourselves as secular homeschoolers,” Campbell said. “So we don’t teach from a Christian worldview. We teach very open, all knowledge is encouraged and open to my kids.”

Campbell began educating from her home in Cumberland a decade ago, when her oldest daughter, Willow, was 5.

“I just kept looking at her thinking, ‘I don’t want to put you on a bus and send you away for the whole day and miss the joy really of watching you learn,’” Campbell said.

One of Campbell’s philosophies is letting her two children, 8-year-old Elowyn and 15-year-old Willow, lead with their interests while working to mastery. Campbell’s husband works full-time while she focuses on teaching her daughters. She said people often assume only wealthy people are homeschooling.

“We have lots of friends who consciously choose to live in smaller houses in less nice neighborhoods because they don’t care about the school system, so that they can live on one income so that they can homeschool,” Campbell said.

She offers her daughters the option to go to a traditional school but neither one is interested in it right now.

“We’re different. We’re quirky. We like to learn. We like to do weird things,” Willow Campbell said. “Right now I’m really into science and nature specifically biology and also in the marine field.”

Elowyn Campbell loves math but worries if she would be challenged enough in a traditional school setting.

“If I’m in school, I’d be stuck doing the same stuff that all the other third graders are because it’s hard to teach different people to do different maths at the same time,” she said.

In East Greenwich, Kasenga also said she has not ruled out eventually sending her children to public school.

“I think my husband would like them in school by sixth grade,” Kasenga said. “If it goes with that, my son will be in school in two years. My daughter, she wants to be with us, so her opinion might change in a year or two, but right now she says, ‘I don’t ever want to go to school. I want to stay homeschooling.’”

Infante-Green said she would like to hear from homeschooling parents who are considering putting their children in public schools.

“If there are things that would bring them back into the system, we would love to hear it,” she said. “We would love to hear what those things are and try to provide them as much as possible.”