‘Pushed or Pulled to Homeschool’ by Mahala Stewart

While families of color make up 41 percent of homeschoolers in America, little is known about the racial dimensions of this form of education. This talk draws from interviews with Black and white homeschooling mothers living in one Northeastern city to examine how they come to this alternative schooling option.

Rather than choosing to homeschool based on religious or political beliefs, many mothers explain their decisions through the logic of “best fit,” yet underlying these decisions are racially implicated push-pull factors. Black mothers explain being pushed out of public schools due to their child’s experience of racial discrimination. Conversely, white mothers are pulled to individualize their child’s learning, exposing the privilege of not having to consider race in their decision-making.

In this talk Mahala Stewart, assistant professor of sociology at Hamilton College, will discuss these findings within the context of her new book, “The Color of Homeschooling: How Inequality Shapes School Choice” (New York University Press 2023), which offers a fresh look at this increasingly common form of education. The research highlights how homeschooling serves as a canary in the coal mine, highlighting the perils of school choice policies for reproducing, rather than correcting, long-standing race, class, and gender inequalities in America.