By Michael Leppert
Many highly-educated, tech-employed, affluent families in the San Francisco Bay area are turning to homeschooling to ensure that their children are well-educated in being people – not just in academics. Thoughtful parents can instill positive social values in their children to augment their mastery of math, reading and other standard subjects.
Artificial Intelligence is a major tool in designing custom curricula and planning for the children of these families. Subjects such as STEM and phonics lend themselves to AI use. But history and most other academic subjects using AI applications, greatly benefit the students, as well.
The usual shortcomings of conventional schooling are cited by many families – rigid, non-functional schedules, limited time spent educating and lack of individual time vis-a-vis teacher/student, due to having to conduct crowd control and other non-teaching activities. (Previous studies have consistently shown that 60 to 80% of each classroom day was spent in non-teaching activities.) If a classroom day is 6 hours long, non-teaching equals 3.6 to 4.8 hours academically lost.
The failure of public school districts nationwide is feeding the renewed interest in homeschooling. New York City Public Schools lost 70,000 students between 2020 and 2025, while homeschoolers rose to over 15,000 in the same period. Los Angeles Unified School District is also experiencing emptying classrooms, having lost 16,765 students in the 2025-26 school year. LAUSD does not track where those exiting students go; not all of them turned to homeschooling, but the decline in enrollment will cost the district large amounts of Average Daily Attendance money.
The AI-positive parents do not intend to avoid conventional school for the entire 8 to 12 years of their children’s basic education. If a child wishes to attend school in the future, many parents are open to that. In the meantime, AI will enhance traditional education (homeschooling) and propel the next generation of homeschoolers into the future! Ω
