After a Sept. 4 school shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia left 4 dead and 9 wounded at the hands of a 14-year-old, gun violence and solutions to school shootings surged once again to the top of national conversation.
Colt Gray, who was investigated for posting online threats of a school shooting last year, has been charged with four counts of murder in the case. His father Colin is also facing charges of involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder for allowing his child to have a weapon.
Only recently have parents of school shooters been held responsible for their children’s action. Just five months ago, Jennifer and James Crumbley, parents of a Michigan school shooter, became the first convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting.
With no clear resolution to preventing gun violence in schools, parents are exploring all their options to educate their children while keeping them safe. Many are turning to homeschooling.
Conservatives continue to deflect when questioned about gun control. On Sept. 5, one day after the first school shooting of the 2024-2025 academic year, Ohio senator J.D. Vance said this at a rally in Phoenix: “I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life, but if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines you realize that our schools are soft targets and we have got to bolster security at our schools so that a person who walks through the front door… and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to.”
Vance also stated that gun control isn’t the answer as school shootings occur in states with both loose and strict gun policies.
The Harris campaign quickly responded on Twitter: “School shootings are not just a fact of life. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children – and we will,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a post.
The fact is that gun violence has become prominent in the American school system. As of Sept. 6, there have been 46 school shootings this calendar year, according to CNN. In 2023, there were 346 school shootings across the country, according to U.S. News. This means that there were more school shootings than days in the academic year, and almost one for every day of the calendar year.
With Democrats and Republicans remaining divided on gun control, with no clear path towards addressing the issue, parents are left to their own devices to protect their children from potential gun violence.
While the debate continues, research provides insights into the effectiveness of various measures. Gun safety advocates Everytown reported this year that the states with the loosest gun safety laws, including Idaho, Mississippi, and Arkansas, have some of the highest gun violence rates per 100,000 residents.
A 2020 JAMA Pediatrics study found a 15% reduction in firearm homicides and 12% reduction in suicides by firearm in states requiring safe storage between 1991 and 2016. However, RAND Research published in July found that child access protection laws have uncertain effects on mass shootings, drawing that the evidence they investigated was inconclusive.
A video posted to TikTok on Sept. 12 shows Eeka McLeod coaching her 7-year-old daughter how to play dead.
“As a single mom you better believe I come packin’. You CAN support stricter gün regulations & laws AND be a gün owner. No parent should have to even think [of] discussing with the children what many of us are actively forced to practice with them. This doesn’t feel real. ELLA IS 7,” McLeod said in the caption.
Others have committed to leaving the school system altogether.
“Why do we homeschool? Yesterday a student was shot waiting by his school bus stop. Today there was the first school shooting of the school year. It is only the first week of September,” Tiktoker @teachathomemommy wrote over a video of her child doing school work.
Other parents shared similar sentiments online.
“There was a school shooting 30 minutes from us today. I made the decision to start homeschooling two days ago. I’m worried about being able to teach them everything but one thing I’m not worried about… is keeping them safe,” content creator Victoria Danielle, who pulled her children from the public school system this month, wrote in a Sept. 4 video.
Last year, the Washington Post conducted a survey of 1,027 parents who homeschool their kids. About 62% said school shootings were their primary reason for choosing to homeschool.
It’s a growing trend.
According to Outschool, an online education company, the number of kids being homeschooled in the past 5 years has risen from 2.8% to 4.2%. The National Home Education Research Institute found that 3.1 million students were homeschooled during the 2021-2022 academic year.
Jen Lumanlan, M.S., M.Ed., researcher and host of Your Parenting Mojo podcast, says homeschooling is a great option for parents to address concerns with standardized assessments and schools not preparing students for real world issues – but not for fear of gun violence.
“We shouldn’t need bulletproof backpacks to protect our children at school, but we cannot harden all schools against all forms of attack. As long as there are guns essentially freely available to pretty much anyone who wants to buy one, we will continue to see attacks on schools, movie theaters and workplaces,” she wrote in her blog. “It’s natural to want to avoid things that scare us and things that might hurt us. And at the same time, we want the best for our child.”
As parents wrestle with how to manage the reality of sending their kids to school, experts warn that homeschooling is not an alternative to ending/preventing gun violence.
“I don’t know what the solutions are. But I know even as a homeschooling parent – that homeschooling is NOT the solution to school shootings. Homeschooling does not insulate our children from mass shootings. Mass shootings happen at the mall, at super markets, at the bowling alley, at church! That is not the flex to name. Ever. Please stop.” Nikolai Pizarro, founder of Raising Readers, which works to equip parents to provide trauma-informed, culturally relevant, science-based teaching said in an Instagram post Sept. 6.
The 2024 Homeschooling’s Invisible Children report revealed that children aren’t always safe at home. Since 2000, of 500 cases of abuse the report found, 200 resulted in deaths. The report also revealed flaws in policy surrounding who’s allowed to homeschool. 47 states don’t prevent caregivers who have been convicted of crimes against children from homeschooling, and no states require that homeschooled children come in contact with a mandated reporter.
In a statement following the Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde, Texas– which continues to make headlines two years later– The Coalition for Responsible Home Education also stressed that homeschooling is not a solution to gun violence.
“Removing children from school does not guarantee they will not encounter gun violence elsewhere; in fact, homeschooled children like Isaac Miller, Mallory Evans, and Olivia Huggler have been killed by mass shooters in their own homes. Instead, the removal of children from schools only guarantees they will lose access to the services and community schools provide.”
Additionally, homeschooling may not be accessible to everyone. According to Parents, homeschooling costs can range from $500 to $2,500 a year per student with great variances in the price of curriculum, participation in learning pods, field trips and other elements which are up to the family. Loss of income when one parent chooses to leave their career and teach is another cost factor.
“When I think about how I am able to homeschool her, it’s because I am able to essentially support us working part-time or freelance,” homeschooling mom Lisa Quattlebaum told Parents last week. “If that were not an option, I don’t know if homeschooling would have been an option.”
It also just isn’t an easy transition for everyone.
“The personal costs to homeschooling are more than just tuition,” Nat Malkus, a senior fellow and deputy director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, told the Washington Post in 2023. “They are a restructuring of the way your family works.”
The verdict on the long term effects on students’ academic achievement is a bit shifty. According to Psychology Today, while homeschooled kids tend to score higher on tests, there isn’t a direct way to correlate them to national averages. Studies find that homeschooled kids have higher GPAs in college, and the quality of social schools children developed is variant on in parent facilitating experiences with peers.
Homeschooling remains the fastest-growing form of education. After a dramatic peak following the pandemic, the Washington Post says experts predicted most students would return to public school. However, with 51% growth in enrollment over the past six school years– compared to 7% growth in private school enrollment and a 4% decrease in public school enrollment– it doesn’t show signs of slowing down.
