When It Comes to Choosing Schools, Families Are Mixing It Up
A New Study on Sector Mixing and Homeschooling
For many years, conversations about school choice have treated education as a single, all-or-nothing decision. Families send their children to public school, enroll them in private school, choose a charter school, or decide to homeschool. Once a family chooses a path, the assumption is that the decision applies to every child in the household.
New research suggests that this picture is incomplete.
A 2026 study by Angela R. Watson, Matthew H. Lee, Albert Cheng, and colleagues examines a practice known as sector mixing: families educating different children in different schooling environments at the same time. A family might homeschool one child, send another to a public school, and enroll a third in a private or charter school.
The findings challenge the assumption that families must commit to a single educational model. Instead, parents may be making individualized decisions based on each child's needs, family circumstances, and available educational opportunities.
What Is Sector Mixing?
Sector mixing occurs when children within the same household receive their education through different sectors, such as homeschooling, traditional public schools, public charter schools, or private schools.
Consider a family with three children. One child might thrive in a traditional classroom, another might benefit from the flexibility of homeschooling, and a third might attend a private school that offers a specialized academic program. Rather than choosing one approach for the entire family, parents combine several.
This distinction matters because education policy and public discussion often classify families by a single schooling choice. Such classifications can obscure how families actually organize their children's education.
Source: Cheng, Watson, Hopkins, and Lee, “An Analysis of Educational Sector Mixing Among US Homeschooling Families from Three Waves of the National Household Education Survey” (2026). Read the study.
In their 2026 article, “An Analysis of Educational Sector Mixing Among US Homeschooling Families from Three Waves of the National Household Education Survey,” Watson, Lee, and coauthors investigate how frequently families mix educational sectors and which household characteristics are associated with the practice.
Their research offers a more nuanced understanding of homeschooling—not simply as an alternative to conventional schooling, but as one option that can coexist with other educational arrangements.
What Does the New Research Find?
The study analyzes nationally representative data from the 2012, 2016, and 2019 waves of the U.S. Department of Education's National Household Education Survey. The researchers focus on households with more than one school-aged child.
One of their central findings is that sector mixing is far more common among families that homeschool at least one child than among families that rely exclusively on conventional schooling.
Across the three survey waves, approximately 2.5% to 2.6% of all eligible households practiced sector mixing. However, the picture changes considerably when researchers look specifically at homeschooling households.
Among households with multiple school-aged children that homeschooled at least one child, approximately 53% also enrolled at least one child in a public or private school. In other words, roughly half of these homeschooling households did not homeschool all their school-aged children.
The researchers also found that sector mixing was more prevalent in the 2016 and 2019 survey waves than in 2012. Although the changes were not statistically significant across every comparison, the results suggest that families' educational arrangements may be more varied than traditional school-sector categories imply.
These findings are important because they challenge the familiar idea that homeschooling is necessarily a household-wide commitment. For many families, it is a decision made child by child.
Why Would Families Mix Educational Sectors?
The reasons families combine schooling options are likely to be as varied as the children themselves. The new research offers evidence that household circumstances and parental motivations are associated with whether families practice sector mixing.
One important distinction is between parents who homeschool because of a conviction that applies to the entire household and parents who homeschool to address a particular child's needs.
For example, some families may homeschool because of a broader religious, moral, or educational philosophy. If that philosophy shapes how parents believe all their children should be educated, they may be less inclined to enroll any child in a conventional school.
Other parents may choose homeschooling because one child needs a different learning environment. A child might benefit from a flexible schedule, a more individualized pace, or an approach that better accommodates specific academic or developmental needs. That same family may decide that a sibling is better served by a traditional classroom.
The study also finds that families with both parents employed and families with more children are less likely to practice sector mixing in the researchers' sample. These associations suggest that practical considerations, including time and household resources, may influence how easily parents can combine educational arrangements.
Importantly, these findings describe associations rather than proving that any one factor causes a family to choose a particular schooling arrangement.
Still, they reinforce a broader point: parents are not necessarily choosing between homeschooling and conventional schooling as competing ideologies. Sometimes, they are selecting different tools for different children.
A Broader Pattern in School Choice
The 2026 study builds on earlier research suggesting that educational choices are more fluid than conventional categories indicate.
A related analysis highlighted by Johns Hopkins University's Institute for Education Policy reported that, in a separate national survey of more than 3,000 parents of school-aged children, 44% of homeschooling households with multiple school-aged children had at least one child enrolled in a traditional public school. The analysis also found that many families using private and charter schools enrolled siblings in other educational sectors.
These figures come from a different data source and should not be confused with the estimates from the 2012, 2016, and 2019 National Household Education Survey. Nevertheless, both sets of findings point in the same direction: families frequently combine educational options rather than relying on a single model for every child.
Source: Johns Hopkins University, Institute for Education Policy, Homeschool Hub.
The COVID-19 pandemic provides additional context for understanding why families may reconsider their educational arrangements. A 2022 study by Tareena Musaddiq, Kevin Stange, Andrew Bacher-Hicks, and Joshua Goodman, published in the Journal of Public Economics, examined changes in school-sector choices during the pandemic.
Using Michigan administrative data and nationally representative survey data, the researchers found substantial declines in public school enrollment in fall 2020, with homeschooling accounting for much of the shift among elementary-school-aged children. They also found that changes in schooling choices varied with the instructional arrangements offered by schools.
That research does not directly measure sector mixing within households. However, it demonstrates that educational decisions can change in response to circumstances and that families respond differently to the options available to them.
What Does This Mean for Homeschooling?
The findings invite a reconsideration of what it means to be a homeschooling family.
Homeschooling is often discussed as though it defines an entire household's educational identity. Yet parents may view it more pragmatically: as an approach that works well for one child at one stage of life, without necessarily being the best choice for every sibling.
A child may homeschool for several years and later enroll in a conventional school. Another may move in the opposite direction. Siblings may follow different paths simultaneously, and a family's arrangements may change as children grow or circumstances evolve.
This flexibility can make it possible for parents to respond to individual differences without treating every educational decision as a permanent commitment.
At the same time, sector mixing may create logistical challenges. Parents must coordinate schedules, transportation, instructional responsibilities, and potentially different academic calendars. Access to resources and the demands of employment can affect whether combining educational settings is feasible.
The study therefore does not suggest that sector mixing is necessarily the right approach for every family. Rather, it demonstrates that the assumption of a single educational path for every child is too simplistic.
Implications for Schools and Education Policy
Sector mixing also raises questions for policymakers, school administrators, and educators.
If families combine educational settings, systems designed around mutually exclusive school-sector categories may fail to capture the full range of their experiences. Policymakers may need a clearer understanding of how families use different educational options, how those arrangements change over time, and what kinds of support families need.
For public schools, the findings highlight the importance of understanding why some families enroll one child while homeschooling another. The answer may not be a wholesale rejection of public education. It may reflect a judgment that different children benefit from different arrangements.
For private and charter schools, sector mixing raises similar questions about how schools can serve children whose siblings learn elsewhere and whose families may move between educational settings.
For homeschool organizations and support networks, the findings suggest that homeschooling families should not automatically be understood as a uniform group with identical motivations or needs.
The evidence does not establish that sector mixing improves academic achievement, student well-being, or educational outcomes. Those questions require additional research. But it does show why educational systems should pay attention to how families actually make decisions, rather than assuming that every household fits neatly into one category.
What We Still Need to Learn
The study is an important contribution, but it also has limitations.
Its main estimates draw on survey waves from 2012, 2016, and 2019. They therefore provide a historical picture of sector mixing rather than a definitive measurement of current prevalence in 2026. The study also focuses on households with multiple school-aged children, so its estimates do not describe every homeschooling household.
Future research could examine how frequently families move between educational sectors, what happens when siblings follow different educational paths, and how these arrangements affect academic progress, social experiences, family finances, and parental workloads.
Researchers could also investigate whether sector mixing is more common in areas where families have greater access to charter schools, private schools, homeschool resources, and other educational alternatives.
Such research would help distinguish between families that mix sectors by preference and those that do so because their circumstances leave them with limited alternatives.
Conclusion: Education Is Not Always an Either-Or Decision
The emerging research on sector mixing offers a useful reminder that families do not always organize their children's education according to the categories used by policymakers and researchers.
For many households, homeschooling and conventional schooling are not mutually exclusive choices. Parents may combine them, adjust them, and reconsider them as their children’s needs change.
The new study by Watson, Lee, and their coauthors provides evidence that this practice is particularly common among families that homeschool at least one child. Its findings challenge the assumption that choosing homeschooling means choosing it for every child in the household.
Ultimately, understanding school choice requires looking beyond the question of which sector a family selects. We also need to understand how families combine educational options, why they make those decisions, and whether the available systems support their ability to meet each child's needs.
The most important insight may be that educational choice is not always a single decision. Sometimes, it is an ongoing process of finding the right fit for each child.
Sources and further reading
Cheng, A., Watson, A. R., Hopkins, J., & Lee, M. H. (2026). “An Analysis of Educational Sector Mixing Among US Homeschooling Families from Three Waves of the National Household Education Survey.” Read the study.
Johns Hopkins University, Institute for Education Policy. Homeschool Hub: Dynamic Homeschooling. Read the research overview.
Musaddiq, T., Stange, K., Bacher-Hicks, A., & Goodman, J. (2022). “The Pandemic’s Effect on Demand for Public Schools, Homeschooling, and Private Schools.” Journal of Public Economics, 212, 104710. Read the article.
Watson, A. R. (2026). “When It Comes to Choosing Schools, Families Are Mixing It Up: A New Study on Sector Mixing and Homeschooling.” EdChoice, October 5, 2026. Read the original commentary.