GRAND FORKS — From the 2007-2008 school year to 2025-2026, the number of homeschooled students in North Dakota has increased 756%, a trend some experts expect to continue.

According to Arlene Wolf, the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction director of school approval and opportunity, from 2007 to 2025, there were no significant changes in state policy regarding homeschooling. Despite that, homeschooling numbers have skyrocketed.

Liz Buck, the North Dakota Home School Association office administrator and editor, said factors outside of policy have contributed to the rise, including changes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the creation of new educational technology and short staffing in public schools. She said many parents have turned to homeschooling to teach their children their own values and to have more freedom in terms of scheduling and content.

“Parents that pulled their student out during COVID stuck with it. They didn’t actually re-enroll their students back into the public school after the pandemic was over. So what did these parents and others discover about homeschooling that made them continue?” Buck said. “Many of the things that they discovered is that you have a lot more freedom when you’re homeschooling. You’re not tied to the school schedule. You can tailor your students’ education to exactly what they need and what their strengths are and you can shore up their weaknesses a lot easier.”

According to data from the NDDPI, 694 North Dakota students were homeschooled in the fall of 2007. In the fall of 2025, the number was 5,943. The data over the 18 years shows a fairly steady increasing trend, with a large spike — one that has since been surpassed — during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the pandemic, according to Buck, some parents turned to homeschooling after disagreeing with teachers’ “worldviews” and others because they saw what they believed to be “wasted time” in the classroom.

“I think for the first time, parents were watching what their students were doing in the classroom. You know, it was right there on the laptop,” she said. “They were building some confidence as they were watching what the teacher was doing. They were thinking to themselves, I can surely do this.”

Buck also mentioned that multiple parents cited bullying concerns as the reason they decided to educate at home. Particularly for students in rural school districts, she said public schools often do not have the funding and staffing to properly address all student behavior.

“Parents are taking matters into their own hands, and they’re pulling their students out to keep them safe,” Buck said. “It’s not really something they ever really intended on doing, but when they see what’s happening, they realize this is probably the best option that they have.”

According to a study by the National Home Education Research Institute, homeschooled students typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public school students on standardized tests, regardless of the parent’s level of education or the family’s household income.

In North Dakota, a parent does not need a high school diploma to home educate. According to Wolf, parents who haven’t graduated from high school can educate their children if they agree to be monitored by the district for up to two years.

“We believe that (parents) know their children best and can educate them in a way they feel is best for them,” she said.

Buck said she expects the rise of increasing home-schooled students to continue. The rise likely be fueled by the aforementioned factors but also, she believes, by an increase in popularity of home-schooling on social platforms.

“I really expect to see it continue. … The rise of social media has allowed a lot of information sharing,” she said. “These parents, they’re seeing social media influencers that home-school do day-in-the life kind of videos. All of that leads parents to look at it and go, ’You know what? I can do this. This seems like a really awesome lifestyle to choose.’ ”

Sophia is the K-12 education reporter for the Grand Forks Herald.

GRAND FORKS — New research and correlating data used to measure financial hardship are coming to North Dakota this year.

“It’s very important data for our Grand Forks community, and for the families that we’re specifically working with,” said Heather Fuglem, executive director of the United Way of Grand Forks, East Grand Forks & Area, a division of the United Way organization, which assists community members facing financial insecurity throughout more than 1,000 locations worldwide.

Fuglem said her organization hasn’t been involved in the data collection, but recently reached out in hopes of being part of the effort moving forward. She feels localized data is greatly beneficial to her work, because having numbers to show the magnitude of a problem can help motivate community members to get involved in the solution.

“The more data we have, the better it is,” Fuglem said. “The more we can show what that need is.”

United For ALICE

— ALICE standing for “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed” — was established by the United Way of Northern New Jersey.

“It describes the households that have incomes above the federal poverty level, but below the cost of household basics,” said Laura Bruno, senior director of marketing and communications at the United Way of Northern New Jersey.

ALICE data collection started in New Jersey after United Way staff discovered Morris County’s 4% poverty level was not an accurate representation of how many people were struggling to get by. Over more than a decade, the project has expanded to include at least 40 states. During the National ALICE Summit, held from Jan. 5 to 7 in Miami Beach, Florida, United For ALICE leadership met with media partners, including the Grand Forks Herald, to explain their data and what they hope it can accomplish.

Leadership confirmed ALICE data for North Dakota and its counties is coming this year, hopefully by the fall, and their goal is to have partnerships and comprehensive data for all 50 states within the next couple years.

Data collection is a collaborative effort. Stephanie Hoopes, director of United For ALICE, said there’s a small research team within the organization, but there are also research advisory committees in every partner state whose members are identified on the United For ALICE website.

“These are external experts, and they bring local expertise, often reflecting the different elements of the budget,” Hoopes said.

Christine Aromando, United For ALICE’s director of brand engagement and strategic communications, said 55 million or 42% of households in the nation are below the ALICE threshold. This includes 17 million households that fall below the federal poverty line, and 38 million that are above the poverty line but meet the definition of ALICE.

The federal poverty line was created based solely on food costs and, though regularly updated, is the same for the entire nation — $15,650 for an individual, with approximately $5,500 added for each additional member of the family unit, according to Healthcare.gov. The income level doesn’t take into consideration varying costs of living or other expenses.

ALICE data considers the costs of housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, technology, taxes and miscellaneous cost overruns for one-time, unexpected expenses. These expenses, calculated for states and counties based on their individual rates, are used to create a survival budget that shows the minimum wage necessary to meet all basic needs.

“Our mission is for the ALICE threshold to become the standard measure used by nonprofits, government, businesses and academic institutions alike to define financial insecurity, and to move away from the outdated federal poverty level,” Aromando said. “Our vision that drives our mission forward is that all households have enough income to afford safe housing, adequate food, reliable transportation, quality child care and health care and sufficient technology — and can also save and invest in their future.”

Hoopes noted that a majority of ALICE individuals are working, living paycheck to paycheck. She feels the issue is that the cost of basics and hourly wages do not align.

“This is a structural economic problem,” she said. “Wages don’t match costs.”

Shrinking profit margins, aging ownerships and headaches from factors beyond their control like postal delays continue to strain local newspapers across North Dakota.

While some of the 73 local newspapers in the state are in critical condition, the bigger picture is not one of dying out, but of hope for the future anchored by their importance to local communities.

A two-year effort to gather data called the Future of Local News Initiative, led by the North Dakota Newspaper Association and the Rural Development Finance Corporation, finds some reasons for optimism and several paths forward for journalism prosperity.

The effort, supported by a grant from the Bush Foundation, brought together journalists and publishers from across the state to gather a rare data set through surveying newspaper owners, journalists and consumers.

The group released a final report of their key findings on Jan. 29, with the data paving the way for pilot programs to address challenges going forward.

“This has been the most focused effort that the North Dakota Newspaper Association has ever done to quantify where we are at as an industry,” said Cecile Wehrman, NDNA’s executive director.

The data gathered includes finding that nine out of 10 news consumers believe having a local newspaper is important, with a similar amount saying that losing a paper harms local communities.

Newspapers are also the most trusted local news source, according to the data gathered by research partner Coda Ventures.

Chris Gessele, a development specialist with the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives who was involved with the effort, said that struck him most about what the research found.

“People trust newspapers,” Gessele said. “They view them as one of the more accurate media outlets or media forms out there.”

Residents of the three counties where papers no longer exist — Sioux, Dunn and Slope — value papers even more, showing how those losses impact communities.

In those counties, 96% said having a newspaper is important, 87% said they would subscribe to a paper if it existed, and 21% said they would be willing to donate to help fund a newspaper beyond subscribing.

“The absence of papers is really noticed in those communities,” Gessele said.

Joy Schoch, publisher of the Dickinson Press, a Forum Communications newspaper, said having data to back up the vital importance of newspapers has been an important outcome from the project.

“It’s essential,” she said. “It’s essential to keep people informed. It makes a healthy community.”

The next step in the effort is to pilot several solutions that tap into the deep reservoirs of trust, demand and opportunity while acknowledging the current structural risks many newspapers face.

“This is a vital, trusted, necessary industry that people want and need, and we need to find a way collectively forward that benefits society,” Wehrman said.

Currently, 24% of households across the state are reached by a newspaper, but looking deeper at county-level data shows much deeper penetration.

Out of 53 counties, 20 have over 75% of households receiving a local newspaper and 15 more show figures of between 50-75%.

Wehrman said those numbers more accurately reflect the impact newspapers have locally, and losing them means communities lose out.

With the $199 million in federal Rural Health Transformation funding being

rolled out in the coming year,

the importance of local newspapers in communicating what programs are available and how the funding can be used in those communities is crucial, Wehrman said.

People need to understand newspapers are “not a public utility,” she said. “These are individual businesses that need the support of their local communities in order to continue doing the work people value so highly.”

That disconnect between valuing newspapers and being willing to support them through subscriptions or donations is something both newspapers themselves and the communities they serve need to tackle if their survival is to continue.

“People aren’t seeing newspapers as a business like they see their hardware store as a business, and they may not be aware of their struggles,” said Ellen Huber, rural development director for NDAREC.

“We talk a lot about retaining and growing other kinds of businesses in the state, but I don’t think anyone has thrown newspapers in that bucket of important, vital businesses, and ones that are worthy of focusing on, retaining and strengthening and growing,” Huber said.

The real value of local newspapers needs to be better communicated to the wider public, participants in the initiative said.

“People think it should be free,” Schoch said. “I think people forget about us. People forget about it until they really need us.”

The next step for the initiative is taking forward several pilot projects centered on succession planning, exploring new revenue models, providing print and digital samples for the next generation of news consumers, and developing ready-made promotions and content that can be adopted statewide.

Whether those have a deep impact or not depends on securing grant funding to take them forward, Wehrman said.

The hope is that these don’t become moonshots, but practical, replicable interventions.

One of the most immediate concerns is the

succession planning component,

since so many independent publishers are close to retirement age.

Currently, while group-owned newspapers show stronger margins and sustainability, independent, family-owned papers are under pressure from owners nearing retirement, the high cost of printing and distribution, and the heavy reliance on revenue from public notices.

Younger journalists are interested in taking over the reins of these papers, but are constrained by a lack of training and the need for financing to sustain operations, the research found.

“Succession planning is something that we need to offer newspapers, because there is an urgent need for newspapers to change hands,” Wehrman said.

Another aspect those involved in the initiative hope can gain traction is to meet demands of news consumers, particularly younger Gen Z and Millennial ones, for both digital and print versions of a newspaper.

Offering samples of those to non-subscribers may be one way to boost circulation.

“I think there’s a lot of optimism coming out of this about all of the different ways the data gathered for this can be used, and a lot of excitement about the positive momentum going forward,” Huber said.