More parents are homeschooling–and turning to podcasts for syllabus support

Key points:

A revolution quietly underway in American education: the rise of homeschooling. In the past decade, there’s been a 61 percent increase in homeschool students across the United States, making it the fastest growing form of education in the country. You might not have noticed (I didn’t, at first), because only about 6 percent of students are homeschooled nationally. But that number is nearly double what it was just two years ago.

Then I noticed something that made me take a closer look closer to home. At Starglow Media, the podcast company I founded in 2023, nearly 20 percent of our listenership comes from homeschool families. That substantially overindexes against the national population. In other words, podcasts were particularly popular in the homeschool community.

I was curious, for my business and in general. We make podcasts for kids (and their parents)  without any specific content for homeschool families. Why was audio resonating so well with this audience? I did some digging, and the answers surprised me.

First, I wanted to find out why homeschooling was booming. According to the Washington Post, the explosive growth is consistent across “every measurable line of politics, geography, and demographics.” Experts have offered multiple explanations. Some families started homeschooling during COVID and never went back, others want greater say in what their children learn. Some families feel their kids are safer from violence and discrimination at home, others think it’s a better environment for children with disabilities. All these reasons collectively suggest a broader motivation: people are dissatisfied with the traditional education system and are taking it into their own hands.

None of these factors, however, explained why podcasts were popular among homeschool families. So I decided to ask the question myself. I reached out to some Starglow listeners in the Starglow community to hear what about the format was appealing to them. Three main themes emerged.

Many people told me that podcasts are uniquely well-suited to address educational hurdles facing homeschool families. When you’re a homeschool parent, it can be difficult to navigate all the resources that inform lesson planning while ensuring that the content is age- and subject-appropriate. Parents have found podcasts to be an intuitive way to elevate their curricula. They can search for subjects, filter by age group, and trust that the content is suitable for their kids. Ads on the network add another layer of value–because parents can trust the content, they tend to trust further educational materials promoted via the same channels. Simply put, the podcast ecosystem offers a reliable means to supplement lesson plans.

They also offer a clear financial benefit. Homeschooling can be expensive, especially in STEM, but the majority of states don’t offer government subsidies for homeschool education. Podcasts have proven to be a cost-effective way to supplement at-home learning modules. Parents appreciate that it’s free to listen.

Lastly–and this came up in nearly every conversation–they fit in well to homeschool life. Routine is a critical part of any educational context, and podcasts are useful anchors in the school day. Parents can easily pair podcasts with lessons at any point in their day, whether it’s a current events primer paired with a news podcast over breakfast or a specific episode of “Who Smarted” (our most popular educational podcast) about how snow forms worked into a science lesson. In this way, podcasts are becoming an integral part of family life in the homeschool community. Educational content like “Who Smarted” or an age-appropriate audiobook of “Moby Dick” may be the gateway, but families tend to co-listen throughout the day, whether it’s to KidsNuz over coffee or a Koala Moon story at night.

What does all this mean? Homeschooling is growing, and with it is the need for flexible, affordable, and trustworthy educational content. To meet that demand, families are turning to audio, which offers age-appropriate solutions that can be worked into family life through regular co-listening.

I expect that the homeschool movement will continue to grow, because new formats and strategies are offering families new opportunities. That’s good news, because we need innovation in education right now. Test scores are falling, literacy is in decline, and school absenteeism hasn’t fully bounced back from the pandemic. The homeschool surge is just one indicator of our increased dissatisfaction with the status quo. If we want to course correct, we all need to embrace new resources, podcasts or otherwise, to enhance education at home and in the classroom. New media has the potential to transform how people teach–we should embrace the opportunity.