What are Hybrid Schools, Who Participates, and Why? Annual Hybrid Schools Census

• In Event: Factors That Influence Today's Homeschool Participation

Abstract

One schooling sector that had been growing before the pandemic, hybrid schools, in which students attend physical classes fewer than five days per week and are homeschooled on the other days, has seen recent growth (Wearne & Thompson, 2024).  This movement is several decades old and its rise increased with the onset of COVID-19 and American schools’ reactions to the pandemic.  These schools may be public or private, or simply collections of homeschoolers.  Given this arrangement, the universe of hybrid schools is not well-collected by any large-scale datasets.  This paper reports descriptive results from the fourth annual census of hybrid schools conducted by the National Hybrid Schools Project, which attempts to describe the landscape of schools using this model.  This presentation will also report out the results of an experiment conducted as part of this census, in order to understand hybrid school leaders' perceptions of student success.  We find that hybrid school leaders consider a broad range of student outcomes, including labor market, civic, and family life outcomes. Religious observance produced the largest effects, while testing outcomes and college matriculation did not contribute meaningfully to perceived success.

Author

• Matthew H Lee, University of Arkansas
  Presenting Author