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Homeschooling in Virginia

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Growth in the Number of Virginia Homeschoolers

Virginia, the state famous for the slogan "Virginia is for lovers," is a state for which I have obtained official figures on the number of homeschoolers. Virginia homeschoolers can make use of either of two main state statutes when homeschooling. One is a general homeschooling statute, the other a religious exemption from compulsory school attendance statute. Local school authorities in Virginia are the counties or the various independent cities and towns. In former years, some of those local school authorities were reluctant to grant exemptions under the religious exemption statute. Thus the proportion of homeschoolers registering under the religious exemption statute is not an accurate measure of the proportion of Virginia homeschoolers who may be homeschooling for religious reasons in whole or in part. The Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Education began gathering figures about the religious exemption in a later year than when it began gathering figures about the general homeschooling statute, so the data series below begins with figures reporting the number of children registered under the general statute, followed by one year (1993-1994) in which both the aggregate figure of all homeschooled children and the number of children using the general statute are shown, followed by recent years showing only the aggregate figure of all homeschooled children registered with local school authorities. The official figures from the state government of Virginia were kindly mailed to me by a state official whom I contacted by telephone in 1998.

**Homeschooling Growth in Virginia**
School Year	Official # H's'ed Children	Notes	Increase
1991-1992	4,558	(w/o relig. cat'y)	N/A
1992-1993	5,842	(w/o relig. cat'y)	28% (this cat'y only)
1993-1994	8,454	(7,009 w/o relig. cat'y)	20% (above cat'y only)
1994-1995	9,796		16% (all categories)
1995-1996	10,862		11% (all categories)

These figures show about 1 percent of Virginia's school-aged children are homeschooled. These official figures suggest the recent annual growth rate in homeschooling (under both Virginia statutes pertaining to homeschooling) is about 13 percent.

Virginia Home Schooling Organizations

Virginia has various statewide organizations, with informative Web sites.

Virginia Home Education Association: The Virginia Home Education Association (VHEA) keeps a very interesting, often visited Web site, and has provided support to Virginia homeschoolers for a long time.

Other Pages of This FAQ

Feel free to browse the other pages of the Homeschooling Is Growing Worldwide FAQ, besides this Homeschooling in Virginia 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: 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 [this page]: 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 Virginia page can also be considered a subpage of the Learn in Freedom! Education Reform, Home-Schooling 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 Virginia page last revision 22 August 2000]

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Karl M. Bunday
Minnetonka, MN 55345

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Feel free to come back to the Learn in Freedom! ^TM page (http://learninfreedom.org) and to this "Homeschooling in Virginia" page (http://learninfreedom.org/sidlifVAhmsc.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