Why is homeschooling becoming fashionable?

Circumstances can drag you into it.

I had trouble in the public schools because of bullying linked to my schizotypy (then undiagnosed despite what I'm told later was an exceptionally good psych eval for the late 1970s) They were going to drug me so my parents took me out for two years, I skipped three and was successful in high school. (In the single year my parents were able private school I was treated as I had some rights and dignity)

My son struggled in elementary school in a different way. Our school got labeled as a "persistently dangerous school" because we had an principal who, unlike others in the district, filled out the paperwork honestly (and got fired for it.) I lost faith in the superintendent when he first words in a meeting were "we're going to appeal it" as opposed to something like "we're going to do everything in our power to make this school safe".

I was active in the PTA (maybe the only dude; that same superintendent was dismissive of my wanting to be active in my son's education at the same time he welcomed the mother of a 'special' child who could call the state and light a fire under his ass to do so) and was very impressed with the teachers for one year, but the next year they seemed disorganized and the precipitating incident was when my son made a horribly violent doodle and the teacher wrote "Great!" with an underline on it. We didn't take him back the next day and kept him out for two years. We couldn't get him on a good reading program but we got him far above grade level on math with Kahn Academy. (As an adult circumstances got him interested in reading, now he's reading The Economist every week, books on chess openings, psych textbooks I loan him, etc.)

We never quite filled out the paperwork but two years later we slotted him into middle school where he was successful.

We are in an age where people who watch a youtube video think they know more than the experts. Being a good teacher is a skill and understanding childhood development is something that requires proper education. I'm not saying there is never a good reason to home-school your kid, but most people who do it are unqualified and from my limited experience the kids who are home schooled have huge holes in their education. Surprisingly, they do seem to be fine socially which is what you hear many people worry about.

Personally, I have high functioning autism. I would do terrible at interpersonal relationships, but then get near perfect scores on all the tests.

Teachers would anticipate that I would be terrible and then when I got perfect scores on all the tests, they would be pissed off.

I think there are a lot of tech people that are neurodivergent and had terrible experiences in school and would love to avoid my child having that experience.

Also, I’m not super happy about the extreme views on race, sex and religion that are going through the school system. I would like the opportunity to teach a more moderate view. I feel like people who don’t have kids who make comments about this trully don’t understand many parents perspectives on this.

Also, when you are a parent, you find that you have to move to specific areas to get good schooling and homeschooling would allow you to live where you want to and not pay and go through the application for private school.

It’s interesting that everything in this article that’s anti-homeschool relies on the parents not doing something correctly, which I think most people just assume they correct for that. I’m not worried about abusing my own kids, because I’m not going to abuse them. Honestly, my mom was a teacher and she was anti-homeschool and many of the anti-homeschool bullet points were provided by the union and I think she just wanted to get full funding for the school and the state wouldn’t provide funding to the school when the homeschoolers didn’t show up and wasn’t really caught up in those arguments.

However, my wife is never going to homeschool our kids or allow me to do it, so it’s just not going to happen.

Covid and the school shutdowns, did create a real boost in the homeschooling. Exacerbated by the particularly draconian shutdowns and masking in areas where there are a lot of tech workers like the Bay Area.

One thing I've never understood with homeschooling: How come parents think they have the competence to be a teacher? Just because you are educated doesn't mean you are a good (pedagogical) educator.