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Homeschooling in Minnesota

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Growth in the Number of Minnesota Homeschoolers

Minnesota, the state of the United States in which I attended public school while growing up, and the state of my domicile, is the first state for which I obtained official figures on the number of homeschoolers. Minnesota's homeschooling statute requires notice of intent to homeschool filed with local school districts, which in turn pass on their counts of homeschooled children to the state. The official figures from the Minnesota Department of Children, Families, and Learning for earlier years were reported in the April 26, 1996 Star Tribune: Newspaper of the Twin Cities on page B10. I later obtained from the department figures for the most recent two years, including in the total number of homeschoolers a small number of homeschoolers reported as "not in compliance" with one aspect or another of Minnesota's homeschooling law (a figure school districts are required to gather by statute). I do not know whether figures for earlier years include that (small) category of homeschoolers not in compliance. My own family appeared nowhere in Minnesota's official figures before my December 1998 move to Taiwan, as my oldest child was then still below Minnesota's compulsory instruction age.

**Homeschooling Growth in Minnesota**
School Year	Official # H's'ed Children	Increase
1987-1988	2,322	N/A
1988-1989	2,900	25%
1989-1990	3,538	22%
1990-1991	4,418	25%
1991-1992	5,086	15%
1992-1993	6,149	20%
1993-1994	7,671	25%
1994-1995	9,135	19%
1995-1996	10,519	15%
1996-1997	12,168	16%
1997-1998	13,081	08%
1998-1999	13,459	03%

Minnesota now has more than 1 percent of its schoolchildren in homeschooling. There are homeschoolers in every county in Minnesota. These official figures suggest the annual growth in homeschooling in Minnesota is 19 percent, with a slower growth rate in recent years.

Minnesota Home Schooling Organizations

Minnesota has two statewide organizations, both of which have informative Web sites.

Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators (MACHE): MACHE is Minnesota's oldest statewide homeschooling organization. The organization holds an annual conference that is Minnesota's largest gathering of homeschoolers, in recent years attracting more than 3,000 attendees to the St. Paul Civic Center (which is now called RiverCenter). MACHE publishes a newsletter, the Paper Mache.
Minnesota Homeschoolers Alliance (MHA): MHA is a newer, inclusive homeschooling organization of which I was once president. MHA holds public information meetings about homeschooling and publishes a newsletter, the Grapevine.

Other Pages of This FAQ

Feel free to browse the other pages of the Homeschooling Is Growing Worldwide FAQ, besides this Homeschooling in Minnesota page, for more detailed information. The overall structure of the FAQ is like the outline below:

Homeschooling Is Growing Worldwide (main page of homeschool growth FAQ)

Overview of growth trends in the number of home-schooled children around the world.

Homeschooling in Minnesota [this page]: Official statistics on homeschooling in Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Homeschoolers, with links to state organizations.
Homeschooling in Missouri: Links to resources on homeschooling in Missouri.
Homeschooling in North Carolina: Official statistics on homeschooling in North Carolina.
Homeschooling in Virginia: Official statistics on homeschooling in Virginia, with links to state organizations.
Homeschooling Growth in the 1980s: Homeschooling growth trends in the United States in the 1980s, as recorded in a 1990 research paper.
Homeschooling in the United Kingdom: Basic information about homeschooling in The United Kingdom, a country with thousands of homeschoolers.
Homeschooling in Canada: Basic information and links about homeschooling in Canada, a country with thousands of homeschoolers.

This Homeschooling in Minnesota page can also be considered a subpage of the Learn in Freedom! Internet Resources Hot-List (links) page on this site. More specific pages for states of the United States and for countries around the world will be added as my schedule permits. Please send me any information you have about the number of homeschoolers in any place you know about. [Homeschooling in Minnesota page last revision 22 August 2000]

webmaster@learninfreedom.org

Karl M. Bunday
Minnetonka, MN 55345

Please write with your comments, especially with news about homeschooling in Minnesota! I really appreciate your comments. All E-mail to the Web master with a valid return address receives an immediate, automated reply with answers to the questions readers have most frequently asked me about this site. Please note that my E-mail address in the link on this page is protected against robots collecting addresses for junk E-mailers by adding the characters "%20" before the actual E-mail address in all my E-mail links. You can simply remove those characters from the beginning of the address line on your E-mail program if they appear on the address line, to ensure you send E-mail to the real Web master address for this site. You can usually get fast and helpful answers to specific questions about education policy, homeschooling, or other issues brought up on this site from public discussion groups where many people participate, because "in multitude of counselors there is victory."

Feel free to come back to the Learn in Freedom! ^TM page (http://learninfreedom.org) and to this "Homeschooling in Minnesota" page (http://learninfreedom.org/sidlifMNhmsc.html) again soon!

So far I think Google is the best full-text search engine for searching the whole World Wide Web, so I've decided to let everyone who visits my site know about it by putting a Google search box right here on this page. If you want a tough on-line search challenge, try a Google search for official statistics on the number of home-schooled children in a place you are interested in. I'll think you'll find Google generally produces very good search results, but this kind of search is just plain tough. Please let me know what you find.

. . . and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
2 Corinthians 3:17b