Kerry McDonald, who regularly writes and podcasts about homeschooling, microschools, and alternative education, features Children’s Scholarship Fund and Massachusetts learning centers in a piece in The 74 titled, “Why Church-Based Homeschool Learning Centers Are Gaining Popularity in Massachusetts.” Here’s an excerpt:
In Worcester, Massachusetts, GROW Christian Learning Center lives up to its name. A homeschool program with both full-time and part-time enrollment options, it has grown from six students when it launched in the fall of 2022 to 84 PK-12 students today, with over 40 more children on the waitlist.
“Families are looking for something different,” GROW Program Director, Elizabeth López, told me when I visited the learning center last month. Located in the New Life Worship Center, a large, fast-growing, predominantly Hispanic Christian church in New England’s second largest city, GROW is part of the congregation’s mission to support families in and around their community. Similar church-based learning centers for homeschoolers are sprouting across Massachusetts, as more families seek alternatives to conventional schools.
“These centers are inspiring not just the parents to engage more in the education of their children, but grandma and grandpa and auntie and uncle. The church is truly rallying together the family to raise up the children,” said Michael King, CEO of the Massachusetts Family Institute, a conservative advocacy organization that is helping to catalyze the creation of low-cost, church-based learning centers like GROW. Over the past three years, King’s organization has supported the launch of 15 of these learning centers across the Bay State, serving approximately 600 students.
This may help to explain why Massachusetts is one of at least 19 states reporting an increase in 2023-24 homeschooling numbers compared to the prior academic year, according to data analyzed by Dr. Angela Watson at Johns Hopkins University. While Massachusetts, like many states, experienced a large surge in homeschoolers during the pandemic and related school closures, this recent uptick in homeschooling is being caused by unknown factors.
Continue reading on The 74.