Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars

Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars, LLC (BFHES) is a United States–based research and education organization focused on Black family homeschooling. It was founded in 2020 by Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman and Cheryl Fields-Smith, an associate professor of elementary education at the University of Georgia.^[1] The organization has been described as the first U.S.-based research and education group dedicated specifically to Black family homeschooling.^[2]

History

BFHES was founded in April 2020 amid a rise in homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic, initially to connect researchers with the small number of Black homeschooling families Ali-Coleman and Fields-Smith had encountered through their academic research.^[3] What began as a small Facebook group grew to more than 1,000 members within its first year.^[3] Ali-Coleman is described as the organization's founding director and, as of 2023, its sole owner and managing director.^[1][4] According to UMBC, she founded BFHES shortly after defending her doctoral dissertation on dual-enrolled African American homeschool students, just days before the onset of the pandemic, after recognizing an urgent need for support among families navigating homeschooling for the first time.^[5]

Founders' prior experience with Black homeschooling

Both founders had studied and, in Ali-Coleman's case, personally practiced Black homeschooling before starting BFHES, and this background is frequently cited as the origin of the organization.

Fields-Smith has researched Black family engagement in education since the mid-2000s. She began studying homeschooling among Black families in 2006 with a two-year study of 46 African American homeschooling families, funded by a Spencer Foundation grant, and in 2009 co-authored what has been described as the first empirically based published study focused specifically on Black homeschooling families, “Motivations, Challenges, and Sacrifices: Black Parents' Decisions to Homeschool.”^[6][7] She has since written or edited several books on the subject, including Exploring Single Black Mothers' Resistance Through Homeschooling and, with Ali-Coleman, Homeschooling Black Children in the US: Theory, Practice & Popular Culture (2022).^[6]

Ali-Coleman's 2020 doctoral dissertation at Morgan State University, Dual Enrolled African American Homeschooled Students' Perceptions of Preparedness for Community College, was a phenomenological study based on interviews with eight African American teenagers who had been homeschooled for high school while dual-enrolled in community college in Virginia, Texas, and Maryland.^[8] She defended the dissertation shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began, and has said that seeing families navigate education inequities during the pandemic's early months led her to co-found BFHES that year.^[5][9]

Alongside this academic research, Ali-Coleman homeschooled her own daughter, Khari Dawson, intermittently throughout Dawson's P–12 education, from 2008 to 2021.^[1][4] Dawson was homeschooled for high school and began taking classes at Prince George's Community College during ninth grade as a dual-enrolled student.^[4] She was later admitted to nearly 20 colleges and universities and offered more than $500,000 in combined scholarships, ultimately attending the University of San Francisco on a full-tuition and housing scholarship and graduating with honors in 2024 with a major in creative writing and a minor in film studies.^[4] Dawson subsequently worked with BFHES as a program coordinator for its annual teach-in.^[4]

Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman

Ali-Coleman is a 1995 graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where she completed a self-designed interdisciplinary studies major; she went on to earn a master's degree in mass communication from Towson University and a doctorate in education from Morgan State University.^[5][10] She has taught at Coppin State University, a historically Black university in Baltimore, where she was an associate professor of English as of late 2024.^[5] In June 2026, Coppin State announced her promotion to full professor of humanities, alongside two other Black scholars.^[10]

Beyond her academic and BFHES work, Ali-Coleman is a poet, playwright, and singer-songwriter who has served as the second poet laureate of Prince George's County, Maryland, and is the author of several poetry collections, including A Park Stands on All of Our Graves (Black Writers for Peace & Social Justice, 2025).^[10][5] She founded the arts organization Liberated Muse in 2008 and later founded the nonprofit Black Writers for Peace and Social Justice.^[5] UMBC named her an Outstanding Alumni Award recipient in 2024.^[5]

Since 2020, BFHES has organized an annual virtual “teach-in” bringing together homeschooling families, along with a podcast, Contemporary Perspectives on Black Homeschooling, and other online programming.^[2] According to a 2025 profile, the organization had by then provided a supportive space for over 3,000 families, and its associated Facebook group had grown to more than 4,000 members.^[4] The same profile reported that BFHES was launching a microschool in Baltimore, operating under the name American Institute of Homeschool Education.^[4]

In 2022, Ali-Coleman and Fields-Smith co-edited Homeschooling Black Children in the US: Theory, Practice & Popular Culture (IAP, 2022), an anthology examining Black families' experiences with homeschooling before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.^[2] A follow-up volume, Homeschooling Black Children on a College Pathway, focused on preparing homeschooled students for college, has also been published under the organization's imprint.^[2]

Mission and activities

BFHES describes its mission as fostering community for Black homeschooling families by connecting scholarly research with practical application, through teach-ins, publications, and virtual platforms.^[2] According to Wired, the organization has offered free virtual skill-share workshops on topics such as homeschooling children with special needs and homeschooling while maintaining outside income.^[3]

Reporting on the broader growth of Black homeschooling has frequently referenced BFHES and its founders. In a 2023 CNN article, Fields-Smith characterized the rise in Black families choosing to homeschool as a form of resistance to disproportionate discipline rates, school resegregation, and unequal access to gifted programs, among other systemic issues affecting Black students.^[1] The same article noted that BFHES was created to help families who want to homeschool but do not know where to start, and that Ali-Coleman advises new homeschooling parents to begin with a mission statement outlining their goals for their children's education.^[1]

Ali-Coleman has also been quoted, in her role with BFHES, in coverage of the shift to remote instruction during the pandemic. A 2021 Associated Press article carried by Today and other outlets identified her as co-director of BFHES and quoted her stating that racism in schools plays a substantial role in Black families' decisions to homeschool.^[11] A 2022 WJLA (ABC7 Washington) report likewise quoted her describing homeschooling as something that should be shaped around each family's individual needs and goals, though the segment identified her only as “an educator who studies homeschooling” rather than by her BFHES title.^[12]

Further reading and coverage

BFHES and its founders have been referenced in broader press coverage of the growth of Black homeschooling in the United States, including in The Guardian, The Final Call, Wired, Today/AP, and The Baltimore Times.^{[13][14][3][11][4]}

Additional national coverage of the broader Black-homeschooling trend — including pieces in The Washington Post, Slate, and USA Today — quotes Ali-Coleman or Fields-Smith on the subject but does not name BFHES directly in the passages reviewed.

References