SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31

Happy Halloween, Eddies!

Before the candy sorting starts tonight, I want to share a stat that landed in my inbox: the growth of homeschooling is slowing down.

It’s true.

Angela Watson and her team at the Johns Hopkins Homeschool Research Lab just published three years of data showing that after several years of growing at roughly 6% a year – three times the pre-pandemic rate – year-over-year homeschool growth cooled to 1.5% across early-reporting states this fall. In other words, homeschooling is “still growing, but not the way it was.”

But Watson also notes that her figures represent the minimum.

For one, states only count families as homeschoolers if they file official paperwork – not those educating at home through programs like OpenEd.

More importantly, the raw numbers don’t capture how fluidly parents are mixing, matching, and switching across the old boundaries and categorizations. Watson highlights another study showing that more than half of households homeschooling one child simultaneously send another sibling to a public or private school.

All of this underlines something we keep hearing from families: if your neighborhood school is working well for your kids, that’s a gift! And if one child hits a wall, making a change for them doesn’t mean overhauling your whole family’s identity forever.

Our podcast guest this week, Colleen Dippel, makes the same point. Traditional school works well for many kids – which is why our goal isn’t tearing down classrooms, but giving parents honest options when one size doesn’t fit.

If you (or a friend) have a child who hits that wall this fall, you don’t have to wait until next September. Take or forward our 2-minute Switching Quiz to see how 15 real families adjusted mid-stream – and if you’re ready for a January reset, midyear enrollment is open through November 13.

Let’s dive in.

– Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)

ON THE PODCAST

When fifth-grade teacher Colleen Dippel told parents in her Houston classroom about two new charter schools opening nearby, her principal called her in the next morning: “Never do that again.”

She went on to start Families Empowered, helping 100,000+ Texas families find a school that fits. Colleen isn’t anti-public school – she thinks most kids can thrive there when the fit is right. But she warns about one-size-fits-all classrooms and grade inflation: Learning Heroes found that 88% of parents get A’s and B’s on report cards while fewer than a third of students read or do math at grade level. When letter grades blend effort, attendance, and polite behavior into a single mark, a rushed 15-minute parent-teacher conference rarely catches a gap until a child is years behind.

Most OpenEd families don’t rely on traditional report cards, but this is a great episode to forward to a friend who suspects their kid might be slipping behind in the traditional system:

DEEP DIVE

For our first decade, most families who joined OpenEd were already homeschooling when they joined.

But just last year, the balance flipped: most incoming OpenEd families now arrive directly from a public, charter, or private school (and many of these will switch back, or alternate back and forth).

What stands out from our Switching Stories collection is how rarely these switches look like the old stereotype of quitting the world to teach seven subjects alone at the kitchen table. A small sampling:

Even Colleen Dippel noted on the podcast above that her own household split tracks – her son thrived in his traditional school, while her dyslexic daughter needed a different path.

Most families seeking a change aren’t signing an ideological pledge against classrooms – they’re discovering that with today’s mix of co-ops, microschools, and tutors, customizing a child’s week is far more doable than they ever realized.

LATEST IN OPEN EDUCATION

Free day-after-Halloween Candy Lab: sort, weigh, and graph leftover candy in 30 minutes. (Google Doc)

Printable Halloween movement cards for wiggly kids burning off sugar between lessons. (Raising Lifelong Learners)

A 10-minute Friday Freewrite prompt (“a leaf caught in a spider’s web”) with zero red-pen corrections. (Julie Bogart)

UFLI’s free, rule-based phonics toolbox for reluctant readers who refuse the app. (UFLI Foundations)

Burning out on daily prep? Book a free 30-minute curriculum consult with our team. (OpenEd Consultations)

Monthly recipe boxes that got picky kids eating olives and homemade pesto. (Raddish Kids)

Crumpled-paper autumn tree art painted with cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice from the pantry. (Hands On As We Grow)

Thinking about a mid-year reset? A free December 10 workshop on choosing your homeschool approach. (HSLDA)

Why kids’ progress looks less like a staircase and more like leapfrogging. (Brave Learning)

Stuck on a hard math unit? When to study worked examples vs. grind cold. (Scott H. Young)

What a yellow or red K–3 reading score actually means – and a calm 30-day plan. (Savvy Learning)

The unstressed “uh” sound in about and pencil that trips up early spellers. (Phonics Hero)

How teachers use a single out-of-state race to teach the midterms without a food fight. (EdSurge)

Why sanitized modern readers fall flat – and Andrew Pudewa’s case for classic fairy tales. (Christy-Faith)

Weak pencil grip? Skip standard pencils for playdough, tweezers, and short carpenter pencils. (From our teachers’ Slack)

Why not all Alpha School students are doubling their learning rate on AI apps. (Joanne Jacobs)

Parent support for classroom AI dropped 8 points this year while learning games held steady. (EdChoice)

What happens to a student’s brain when AI writes the first draft for them? (The Learning Scientists)

How one Texas microschool delivers private-school small groups on a three-day schedule. (Cato Institute)

Who feels the most toxic school pressure? Peter Gray’s answer isn’t who you’d expect. (Peter Gray)

Can a school ace standardized testing and real teaching at the same time? (Michael B. Horn)

One last thing: We believe families should customize their education, so why not your inbox, too? Set your email preferences to choose which emails you get. (Note: Enrolled OpenEd families will still receive required program updates.)

Have a great weekend!

– Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)