Boulder City mom Holly Wittwer doesn't set a wake up time for her kids. 

Instead, she lets her three boys — ages 2, 7 and 10 — take their time getting out of bed and have breakfast before they officially start their day of at-home learning anywhere between 8 and 11 a.m. 

The family gathers on Sunday night to write on a whiteboard their plan for learning and activities for the week. On weekday mornings, they'll usually sprawl out in the family's living room, where Wittwer reads to her kids before sitting down to learn. 

Wittwer is among the many parents who became interested in homeschooling during the pandemic, disillusioned by how traditional schools were teaching remotely or who simply think it's no longer the best option for their kids. 

"It just isn't what it used to be because they're trying to work with impossible situations," Wittwer said. "School systems have zero money, they're putting tons of kids in the classes. That's the problem."

While the pandemic surge has leveled off, Angela Watson, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and director of the institution's Homeschool Research Lab and Hub, said an analysis from her team shows the number of homeschooled students has started to grow again. She's also found that families are becoming more open to a blend of traditional and nontraditional education options. 

Her findings align with the number of homeschool notices Nevada families have turned into school districts in recent years — more students are initiating homeschooling in an average year now than before the pandemic. 

School officials caution that these are not official counts for active homeschool students because students are only required to inform about their initial decision to homeschool and aren't required to follow up if they end up enrolling in a public or private school. But the heightened interest in homeschooling in recent years has contributed at least in part to the enrollment decline many schools are facing, causing their funding to decline. 

"It's become part of the norm," Watson said. "It's become part of the fabric of the way people educate their kids."

Why are families choosing homeschool? 

Wittwer pulled her oldest son, Montgomery, out of preschool in 2020 when classes were online during COVID. Though the teacher was trying to capture students' attention from the screen through songs, she said it wasn't engaging enough for her son. 

She decided they would give kindergarten a try the next school year. But after four days, she opted to homeschool instead. 

Wittwer said she didn't like the idea of her son being away from home for so long, and she was also not a fan of the school limiting parents from the classroom. 

"The thing is our local elementary schools are highly rated. People really, really love them," she said. "That was actually why we moved out here … so it wasn't anything to do with those schools specifically. It was more just the whole infrastructure of schooling I am just not a fan of."

Henderson mom Nancy Bearden homeschooled her two sons, Paul and Silas, from kindergarten through eighth grade. She said she decided to homeschool because when her oldest son, Paul, was 3, he was ahead in reading, math and other areas compared to his preschool classmates, and by age 4, he could already read chapter books and do multiplication.  

"He was hiding the fact that he could read and he could do math or knew everything there so that he would fit in with the other students," Bearden said. 

Not wanting her son to skip grades and risk not fitting in with his peers, Bearden decided to look for alternative education options and realized homeschool was cheaper than private school. 

"I really just enjoyed doing it, and I couldn't imagine going to work just to send him to school all day long," Bearden said. "I wanted to spend time with him." 

Incline Village mom LeAndra Surprenant said she and her husband were both products of the public school system, and she assumed they'd raise their kids the same way. But she changed her mind before her daughter entered kindergarten after learning how poorly Nevada's K-12 education system ranked nationally. 

Feeling confident she could do a better job educating her daughter than Nevada schools, Surprenant pursued homeschool instead. 

Surprenant said all three of her kids, ages 8, 7 and 4, are thriving. 

"It really made me realize that a teacher who has 25 students to attend to basically can't give the type of attention the way that I can, one-on-one with my kids, and it really solidified that that was the right choice for us," Surprenant said. 

Homeschool also made sense for her middle child who was born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that causes problems with breathing and digestion. Sending her to daycare or preschool would have left her vulnerable to getting sick. 

Surprenant said her family's Christian beliefs were also a factor. She does a mini Bible study with her kids as part of their morning routine. 

Watson said technology has also made it easier for more families to be able to homeschool. 

In addition to homeschooling her kids, Wittwer works part time as an events planner. She also organizes her own annual homeschool convention where families can connect with each other, find educational resources and learn from experts on best practices. And she runs a local co-op that offers activities for homeschool students, such as chess club, and classes, such as photography and automotive repair.  

Surprenant is the CEO and founder of the Nevada Homeschool Association, a nonprofit providing support for families who are new or experienced in homeschooling. She also works with her husband for his construction companies. 

"We're able to do this in new ways, because we work remotely, because we have hybrid situations, because the technology is there, so the grandma can supervise the kid, but the child is really being instructed by a virtual teacher, or using some sort of online curriculum," Watson said. "Now with AI, who knows what this could look like in the next year or two?"

Lack of regulations

Nevada is among about two dozen states that doesn't set many expectations for homeschool families outside of notifying school districts about their initial decision to homeschool. 

Elissa Wahl, a longtime homeschooling advocate, said while other states, such as New York, require students to complete a similar amount of school days and instructional hours and learn the same subjects as their non-homeschooled peers, Nevada is one of the few states that doesn't have those rules for homeschooled students. And while the state asks for an education plan upon starting homeschooling, a family cannot be denied the opportunity to homeschool based on their plan, and there is no check on whether parents diverge from their plans.

"So when the fifth graders are learning all the states and all the capitals, we don't have to worry about doing that," Wahl said. "We're not held to that because we understand that learning happens all the time."

Homeschooled students are also not required to take annual standardized tests like their public school peers to demonstrate their proficiency in core subjects such as math, English and science. 

Instead, Wittwer said she tests her kids' understanding through everyday activities, such as cooking, and gets them to understand how math concepts apply in their everyday lives. 

"I'll be like, 'Hey, this recipe calls for 1/4 [cup] of oil, but I'm doubling it. Can you tell me what do I do for that?'" she said.

Still, some in the traditional education system worry homeschooling can be too haphazard. In a statement to The Nevada Independent, White Pine County School District Superintendent Adam Young said he questioned the lack of the state standards for homeschooled students compared with the accountability and standards school districts are held to. He said families that homeschool have told him standardized tests and other state mandates were a factor in their decision to educate their children from home. 

He said some homeschooled children have come back to the district unsocialized, significantly behind academically and occasionally suffering from neglect. 

"I don't want to say this is all homeschool families or even a majority, but it's a noticeable enough number to have me concerned," Young said in an April 29 email statement. "Our state's commitment to children must be for each and every child." 

Watson, the Johns Hopkins researcher, said there isn't reliable data that can prove whether one school choice is better than the other — particularly because advocacy groups for or against homeschooling are involved in the research that does exist. 

"We do have reason to believe that homeschooling done well is probably good for kids," Watson said. "This is like a tutoring situation where you've got some kind of a … very small group intensive learning situation … and these are things that we think could produce really outpaced results if they're done well, but that's not necessarily how it looks in every household that's homeschooling." 

Surprenant is confident that she can do a better job at educating her kids than Nevada's public education system. 

"I don't want the state to tell me how to educate my child when they can't even educate the children they're in charge of," she said. "So in my opinion, the state staying out of homeschoolers' business is a good thing." 

What does a day in homeschooling look like? 

When they first began to homeschool, Wittwer said she tried hard to recreate an average school day, starting at 8 a.m., having her kids recite the pledge of allegiance and sitting them down to learn the materials she had prepared the night before. But she quickly realized it wasn't working. 

"It was just fighting all the time," Wittwer said.

Now, she's more flexible on how long her kids do traditional sit-down learning. 

"Cooper was telling me one of his favorite things about homeschooling is that … it doesn't take all day, and I'm like … we can finish it in like an hour or two, and then we can go do all the things that we actually want to do, because we're not dealing with 30 different kids and only one teacher," Wittwer said.

This frees up her kids' time to explore their interests. Her oldest son, Monte, 10, has a weed-pulling business, and her middle child, Cooper, is exploring a 3D printing business idea. 

The Surprenant family homeschools four days a week from Monday through Thursday, about three to four hours a day. Her kids don't follow the typical school calendar, and instead learn year-round, which she said allows them to get more rigorous education. 

Bearden said her kids end up doing the majority of their learning through reading books or studying math on the computer rather than learning through textbooks or worksheets. 

"I realized you don't … need curriculum to learn," Bearden said. "You just need to know how to read, and you need to know how to write, and you need to know how to do mathematics, and pretty much from there you can do anything." 

Bearden said there were days when her kids didn't want to study what she had planned for them, but she addressed this by not letting them watch TV, which meant they had no choice but to pass the time.

"So they were learning anyway. It just wasn't what I had planned for them," Bearden said. 

Supplementing homeschool education 

Recent data from Johns Hopkins University and the Rand Corp. found that a majority of homeschool families are also supplementing their child's at-home learning with some kind of additional support, such as a tutor, online curriculum, a co-op with other families or a microschool. 

Wittwer supplements her kids' education with YouTube videos and teaches them through their everyday experiences. 

Wittwer used the interview with The Nevada Independent as an opportunity to teach her kids about the role of a journalist and the media. She also uses their business ventures as an opportunity to teach them about what it takes to be an entrepreneur and financial skills by urging them to save a portion of their funds, reinvest back into their business, make donations and spend a little bit on themselves. 

Bearden enrolled her sons in geometry and algebra classes at their local middle school so they could earn high school credits to get ahead when they eventually enrolled in the Clark County School District for ninth grade. Today, Bearden's son Paul is a senior at Las Vegas Academy for the Arts and is a National Merit Scholar — recognized as being one of the top academic performers in the U.S. 

"I think for earlier ages, homeschool is definitely better," Paul said. "I think the way we did it was probably for the best because we learned a lot more through play which, I think was a lot healthier for us. But going through public school for grades nine through 12 makes it a little easier to get into college." 

Watson said she thinks it is going to become more common to see students such as Paul who take an a la carte approach to their education. She said it's also evidence that homeschool families aren't completely against traditional schooling. 

"I think we're going to see less and less students who are always homeschooled or always publicly schooled or always private schooled," Watson said. "It's going to become a scenario where most students are a little of this in some years, or a little of that." 

Surprenant's advice for parents to get the most out of homeschooling is to work on having a good relationship with their kids. 

"You have to have a really good, solid, trusting, loving relationship with your child in order to make homeschool work," Surprenant said. "If you have a broken relationship with your children, nothing is going to work. They're not going to learn if they're feeling stressed out about how their parent views them, or what their parent thinks about their performance."