Many CRLS students have spent years entering school buildings, standing in lines, and asking to use the bathroom. For a growing number of Cambridge students and families, however, this is not the choice. In the past few years, the number of registered Cambridge homeschoolers has increased from 32 students in the academic year 2015-2016 to 68 in 2022-2023. The change is tangible, too: “I keep meeting homeschoolers who will tell me ‘Oh, yeah, I just started homeschooling in 2020 or 2021,’” Molly Roughan, a lifelong Cambridge homeschooler who would be a senior this year, told the Register Forum.
Matt Dunkel, a Cambridge math teacher and former CPS parent, began homeschooling his son this year. He credits the social distancing mandates back in 2020 as a turning point for his family. “What [the mandates] did was break down the barrier to the concept of homeschooling,” he told the Register Forum, “I think it opened our eyes to the idea that homeschooling was even possible, that if we had to, we could probably figure it out.”
Similar trends are unfolding across the US. Following the pandemic, homeschooling (learning a curriculum at home) and unschooling (self-directed learning) have grown by 50%. Previously regarded as an ideologically fringe approach, these forms of nontraditional schooling are now the fastest-growing form of education in the US.
Many Cambridge parents felt their children weren’t treated fairly or represented well in CPS classrooms. “I homeschool because I don’t trust that my child with dark skin and ADHD would not be exposed to educational trauma in traditional schools,” Ashley Herring, a Cambridge homeschool parent and founder of the homeschooling nonprofit Blackyard, told the Register Forum. “I’m in [a] community with families that are Black and brown and are saying, ‘Your schools don’t treat our children well.’ And that is not only us.”
Amara Donovan, a Latina mom of a currently homeschooled 5th grader, relayed to the Register Forum that she’d faced similar challenges, “The school was building a paper trail of his discipline, while at the same time, I saw that other children were not getting reprimanded for the same behaviors in the same way.” She added, “It scares me to send him back to a school.”
Both mothers told the Register Forum that they expect this exodus of Black and brown families from CPS to continue. “I think we’re going to see more and more families of color pulling out of traditional schools,” Donovan told the Register Forum.
Several current CRLS students shared their previous experiences in homeschooling with the Register Forum. Keira Ventola ’25 was homeschooled until 9th grade when she made the decision to return to traditional school. “I loved the freedom [of homeschooling] and the time to learn whatever I wanted,” she discussed, “But I began to feel kind of isolated, especially because the quarantine had just ended and I wanted something bigger.”
Aya Riman ‘25, who homeschooled for several grades before high school, explained her view on homeschooling. “One thing that homeschooling really gets at is that each student learns differently,” she told the RF. She says that as the number of homeschoolers continues to grow, Cantagrigians should remember that, “The public school system works wonderfully for some people, but for other people, it’s made against them.”
This article also appears in our January 2024 print edition.
