The Pentagon could soon expand homeschooling resources for military families, according to a memo written by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth released Tuesday.
Military families homeschool their kids at about twice the rate of civilians, which has seen wider adoption among parents, frustrated by increased remote learning during the pandemic and debates over school curricula.
“Homeschooling offers an individualized approach for students and highlights the significant role parents play in the educational process,” according to the Department of Defense memo dated May 15.
A Johns Hopkins analysis in March found that active duty military families homeschool their children twice as much as civilians — or 12% between 2023 and 2024, compared to 6% of civilian families. Before the pandemic, around 2 to 3% of civilian families chose to homeschool their children.
Military family advocates say that many turn to homeschooling because of the frequent moves or extended family separation when one parent is deployed or when a parent is assigned to a duty station that their family chooses not to follow.
“Because of the frequent moves, we see twice as many military families choose to homeschool their children, and the reasons why, in a lot of cases, is related to that transience of military life,” Shannon Razsadin, CEO of Military Family Advisory Network, told Task & Purpose. “Helping their kids have consistent education and not necessarily struggle with some of the things that can be inherent with frequently being the new kid at school.”
In the memo, Hegseth ordered defense officials “to conduct a Department-wide review of its current support for homeschooling military-connected families, as well as best practices, including the feasibility of providing facilities or access to other resources for those students.”
Homeschool advocates who spoke to Task & Purpose said they had high hopes that Hegseth’s review might lead to access to on-base facilities for homeschool activities and better relationships with the officials who oversee the traditional schools on military posts.
A 2017 Military Family Advisory Network survey of 5,650 service members and veterans found that 43% of families elected to live separately from the active duty service member during their career, with 21% citing continuity in their children’s education as the reason.
The Hegseth memo also follows a push by President Donald Trump in a Jan. 29 executive order to expand education beyond public K-12 through options like homeschooling and private school.
“The military is a microcosm of the broader population. The military is feeling a lot of the same things that a lot of Americans are feeling post-pandemic,” Razsadin said.
The current landscape
Even before COVID ruptured societal thinking around public education, homeschooling was popular among full and part-time military families.
In 2019, 11% of military families homeschooled their children, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. Similar rates existed among children of National Guard or reserve service members, despite fewer major lifestyle factors compared to active duty families. In 2023, 11% of reserve and guard families homeschooled their children.
Natalie Mack is the spouse of a retired Navy chaplain who has been homeschooling her five children for 23 years and the founder of The Military Homeschoolers Association. Her oldest daughter pursued Russian and is fluent in Mandarin “just because of homeschooling, just giving her that ability to pursue interests and passions,” she told Task & Purpose.
She founded the association, she said, to advocate for home schooling and help military families with resources on common issues like navigating laws in different states and countries and figuring out credit transfers to make sure students switching to homeschool can graduate on time.
In 2024, the Military Homeschoolers Association surveyed around 760 spouses and service members who homeschooled their children and found that the majority cited the pandemic, opportunities, school violence or bullying, especially for children with special needs, as reasons to homeschool their children.
The type of homeschooling situation can depend on the resources at an installation or within the community. Families sometimes have their children follow the curriculum of private company lesson plans like Miacademy or Time for Learning. The survey found that almost two-thirds of families were using group homeschooling methods, which can be spouse-led co-ops or “pods” which Mack said thrived during the pandemic, referencing the concept of “being in someone’s bubble.”
Still, around 66,000 children of active duty parents attend schools run by the Department of Defense Education Activity, or DoDEA, in the U.S. and abroad. Johns Hopkins researchers noted that the rates of homeschoolers were “fascinating” since DoD-run schools are considered higher quality than the majority of public schools, with one 2024 annual assessment of American K-12 education finding that 4th and 8th grade DoDEA students outperformed all states in reading and math.
However, the Military Homeschoolers Association survey found that 58% of military parents had religious reasons for homeschooling or wanted their children “exposed to education that had content aligned with their personal worldviews.” Some respondents said they wanted to go beyond the required subjects in DoD schools and have taught lessons on other topics like the Bible, finances, life skills, coding, culinary arts, home economics and theology.
“We’re seeing a community that was very much a pretty traditional, Christian conservative community, and those are still significant numbers of families who are choosing to homeschool for their religious beliefs,” Mack said. “But you also see a lot of families who are choosing to homeschool just because their school isn’t meeting what they want. It’s not meeting the needs that they have.”
Expanding resources
The DoD memo called for personnel to look at the potential of bringing in more resources for homeschooled students.
Razsadin said MFAN would like to see the DoD expand the type of support that DoDEA school liaison officers can provide for homeschool parents.
Mack said it could look like similar projects she’s done for military children at Fort Belvoir, Virginia where she got permission for local military homeschooled children to access facilities on base like the pools or gyms and use empty buildings to host holiday parties, book clubs and science fairs.
“They are choosing homeschool but it doesn’t mean that they don’t want to get together in a social environment,” she said. “Homeschool is very socialized.”
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