“I was homeschooling before I knew I was homeschooling,” said Mallory Tay of Washington, D.C., who is homeschooling her young children.
Tay is among a growing number of Black parents taking their children’s education into their own hands.
“I never put their academic future in the hands of someone else. Those are my kids,” said Elijah Muhammad of Oklahoma City, who also homeschooled his children. They have gone on to break academic records, among them Shania Muhammad, who previously held the title of the youngest person to enroll at Oklahoma City Community College at 13 years old, until her younger brother, Elijah Muhammad, broke her record when he was accepted into OCCC at 12 years old this past summer.
Since 2020, census data confirms Black families adopting homeschooling methods grew from 3 percent up to 16 percent, higher than any other race or ethnic group.
Tay is a mother of two, and she says she took her daughter out of public school after just one semester because she felt students surrounding her daughter were not a good fit for the education she wanted her daughter to have, one filled with self-affirmation and lessons surrounding her interests.
“It took three years to break her out of some of the traumas that happened in that one semester as a 4-year-old,” Tay said.
Tay is one of the many Black parents participating in the Deliberated Minds Black Homeschool Education Institute, which provides an African-centered curriculum, trainings, support and resources to Black families homeschooling their children. The program is run by Queen Taese, who says, unlike in traditional public-school curriculums, she taps into children’s interests and bases learning around their interests.
“I would look for internships because these are practical ways for them to exercise what they’re learning because we have to bringing education to life because education has to be a living and breathing curriculum,” said Queen Taese, Founder of Deliberated Minds, Black Homeschool Education Institute.
Homeschool does not come in one form, while some parents prefer managing the entirety of their child’s education from home, others use homeschool as an addon to supplement traditional public education, this was Elijah Muhammad’s pathway into homeschooling his children.
“I just did it in addition so similar to what an afterschool program would be, we would always do work after school, work during the summers, work over the holidays, work on the weekends, I just added it to what was already existing,” said Muhammad.
Like Taese’s program, Muhammad’s homeschool program, Prep One Collegiate Academy, also customizes curricula around a child’s interests to keep him motivated while learning.
“Once I find out what you do well, we do a lot of exploration, skill exploration, career exploration to see what clicks and once we find out what clicks, that’s what we focus on and develop that,” said Muhammad.
Within the past year, Atlanta Black Star has highlighted several exceptional Black students, many accepted into college at a young age. They include Caleb Anderson, 13, attending Georgia Tech, Elijah Preiccely, 15, accepted into Southern University, Hayley Taylor Schlitz, 19, the youngest African-American to graduate from her law school, and Alena Analeigh, the youngest African-American to be accepted into medical school. The common thread each of the young people featured share is they were all homeschooled at some point during their academic careers.
“You’d hear about these child prodigies and these children getting accepted into college at 12, and I’m thinking how, how do they have time to do anything else, and I’m a student and I get straight A’s. The how is they’ve been homeschooled, they’re being taught the way they learn, they’re being taught things that are necessary for their growth,” said Tay.
Joyce Burgess is the program director of the National Black Home School Association and says growth among Black families in homeschooling can be attributed to several reasons. “They’re making these conclusions that peer pressure, they don’t have to be bothered with unnecessary racism, they don’t have to be bothered with bullying, they don’t have to be bothered with negative peer pressure,” Burgess explained.
Despite the advantages of Black families homeschooling, money and time holds back some parents from considering home school as a viable option. Tay says her advice to Black parents aspiring to embark on a homeschool journey for their children is they must take advantage of resources available at little to no cost online and within their communities.
“For the parent that’s overwhelmed or unsure of themselves, I would say, find a community, join a community no matter what it is,” Tay said.
“A lot of times I talk to different families and they’re trying to homeschool alone, and it’s not meant to be done alone,” Taese said. “Sometimes it’s co-ops, sometimes it could be different collectives, sometimes it might be your neighbor or someone you meet up with at the library and you do trips together and build curriculum together, there’s so many ways it can be done and a lot of what has to happen is we have to detoxify from our own curriculum trauma so it’s a journey we have to take together,” Taese continued.
While no federal laws regulate homeschooling children, students must meet state regulations that include subject-based testing. According to the National Home Education Research Institute, 3.1 million students were homeschooled in the U.S. in 2021 in grades K-12, and a 2015 study found, Black homeschooled students scored 23 percent to 42 percent higher than Black public school students on standardized tests.
