According to The National Home Education Research Institute, homeschoolers saved the taxpayers $16 billion in 2006.
Here is an article, Research Facts on Homeschooling, which states;
"Families engaged in home-based education are not dependent on public, tax-funded resources for their children's education. The finances associated with their homeschooling likely represent over $16 billion that taxpayers do not have to spend since these children are not in public schools."
How About In 2008
That was in 2006, today there are an estimated 2.2 million homeschooled children and the average cost of government spending per student is nearly $12,000. Therefore, homeschoolers are saving taxpayers $26.7 billion in 2008.
The public education systems budget has doubled over the last twenty years. According to the book “Home Schooling The Right Choice”, the current cost of public education is $6000-$8000 per pupil without including teacher pensions, social security, text books, administrative costs, school district labor relations, judicial costs and non-educational agencies performing K-12 services. Taken together, the average cost of each student in the public educational system is nearly $12,000.
To give this number more confidence, I found another source of information. According to the Center for Education Reform the cost of public education in 2007 was $10,770.
Compare that to the average cost of home-education, which is $500. Obviously there is a tad bit of government waste in the process of funneling money through the tax system and into the educational system.
Homeschooling is currently saving the average taxpayer, (26.7 billion / 100 million working taxpayers) = $267 per year.
What About Loss of Income?
At this point, some may not think this is an accurate comparison because homeschooling also costs a family by reducing its income – from a dual-income to a single-income. In most cases, the expenses associated with a second working parent out way the savings produced by the second parent staying (working from) home. Despite popular opinion, the homeschooling family with one parent working at home is much more productive than both parents working outside the home, while funding a government educational system through the tax system. I talk more about this in my ebook and within other articles on this blog.
Potential Savings
We will always need the public school system because many students don’t have parents willing or able to homeschool them. According to the Center for Education Reform, of the total number of K-12 students, 2.2% are homeschooled. This number is based on the 2004 statistics from the National Center for Education, which estimated homeschoolers to be about 1 million. Today, there are an estimated 2.2 million homeschoolers, which brings the percent of homeschooled children to 4% of the total 55 million students.
If homeschooling continues to grow at 7-12% per year for the next 5 years, we could see the percent of homeschooling students increase to 5 million which is about 10% of the total children in K-12 education. That transition would also save the nation an additional $33.6 billion dollars per year. Bringing the total per year savings to 5 million x $12,000 = $60 billion per year.
With the pending recession upon us, I don't see the government would try to stop the increase of homeschoolers without costing them money that they don't have. If anything, the govenment may encourage homeschooling to further lower the Department of Educations' 400+ billion dollar budget.