“My sister and I were fine with this at first. No school! We could spend time on the things we actually wanted to do. One thing, though, is that none of these things involved friends, at least not ones we had ever met in person.”
I was in public school up until the early 8th grade, when my dad demanded my mother take my sister and me out. It was over something I won’t go into complete detail over, but to simplify I’ll call it spiritual beliefs. I was initially very excited. When you’re that age, who wants to go to school? It is a toxic environment, with teachers that don’t respect you, an overwhelming workload, and your peers finding any little thing to make fun of you for. And at that age, I had an image of homeschooling that was pretty much all play and no work. I knew that was too good to be true, but it was fun to imagine.
Turns out, that wasn’t so far from the truth. And it wasn’t good, either.
When my mother first started homeschooling us, it wasn’t so bad. We would start at 9:00 and sit at the dining room table, and we would refer to the schedule she had written out on a whiteboard. She’d give us little lessons, then she would have us do lessons online. Some of them were below our grade level, especially for me, the older of the two. It was understandable, as she was suddenly thrown into this; you couldn’t expect it to be perfect right off the bat. But I was under the impression that this was just temporary, just something to use until she could find something for my grade level. Also, it was free, and she seemed to have no intention of spending more than the bare minimum on our education.
She didn’t seem to be in any rush to find something better suited to me, though, and she would get defensive if I mentioned it. I ended up using it for the rest of the year, and if I remember correctly, most or all of the next year, too. It should be mentioned that I was considered “gifted” in school, and was part of a special education class to keep those students stimulated and working at their level. My sister was pretty smart, too, and generally got good grades, but had areas that she did struggle in and needed special focus on.
As time went on, our schedule became looser and looser. My sister and I would ask to not do school. You can hardly blame us, we were kids who wanted to have fun. Some days our mother would still make us, but some days she would give in. As you would expect from a couple of middle school girls, we were not enthusiastic or excited about school. This made my mother lose motivation, and we started stopping school early, then going weekdays without doing school altogether. Eventually, we got to the point where we could go for two weeks with just one or two small lessons she would sit us down for.
My sister and I were fine with this at first. No school! We could spend time on the things we actually wanted to do. One thing, though, is that none of these things involved friends, at least not ones we had ever met in person.
As I moved through middle school, I started to become bitter and antisocial. All of my friends had some glaring flaw that I just could not stand. So when I was taken out of school, I made no effort to talk to any of them. To be fair, most of them made no effort to talk to me either, but the few that did didn’t get much back. I just didn’t care to talk to them; they were too annoying, or too boy-crazy, or too bitter. They were just too flawed for me. I was above them.
My sister, on the other hand, was shy, but very social. She tried to keep in touch with her friends, but her friends had just entered middle school and were trying to paint new images for themselves. They were putting a lot of effort into being cool, and were changing in ways that may not have been great, but would probably only be temporary. My mother was very unhappy with these changes, however, and would confront her friends about the new negative changes they had taken on, whether or not my sister asked her to. She eventually scared off a good deal of my sister’s closest friends, and my sister became certain that about everyone from her grade hated her. She became bitter; she did believe these kids were in the wrong, that they just cared about pointless things and that she was better than them. There were a few kids who still wanted to hang out with her, but eventually, she stopped putting in the effort. She was better than the rest of the kids her age.
I remember being pretty clearly discouraged from having friends by my mother, and when the concept of finding a homeschool co-op was brought up, she would acknowledge the thought but made little to no effort to find one. My sister did find friends online, but besides that, we were both pretty alone and cut off from the world. I had one friend who called once in a while, but that was it for a while. She did eventually start to call more often, but couldn’t have friends over, so my sister and I just sat in the house, wallowing in bitterness, hardly having anything to stimulate us.
Now, I will only make a brief mention of this, and won’t go into a lot of detail, as it is very hard for me to think about, but I went through about a year of intense mental illness, which I believe probably could have been avoided if I had something stimulating my mind. What I went through caused a lot of stress for my family, and I was not treated well. My dad was usually patient with me, but my mom guilted and screamed at me. If I remember correctly, my dad did have his moments as well, at least when it started a second time about two years later.
Because we had hardly any connections, especially with adults, abuse could go unnoticed by anyone who might have been able to stop it. I received abuse from both of my parents throughout my life, but it was most frequently from my mother. It was almost entirely emotional, so I’m not sure much would have done about it anyway. But it would have been nice to at least have people to talk to, to see if this is normal or right. My parents themselves are shy/ antisocial, so they don’t really keep any friends, meaning there wasn’t really anyone to catch or criticize their choices and behavior.
I eventually started to figure out how wrong their treatment of us was, and I started to speak up. It was not accepted well, but I knew I had to at least try to make a change. I hope to gain back the bravery I had during those days. I was treated poorly, and a lot of the time met with defensiveness. It took some time, but I was eventually able to at least get my sister to listen to me, and she started to realize how wrong so much of our childhood was. At first, she just stayed quiet and took their blows, but slowly started speaking up. These days she’s much bolder than I am.
Things did start to get a little bit better after about a year of nearly nothing education-wise. My sister and I eventually met a family who attended a local homeschool co-op and invited us to join, and our parents let us attend. Though I had a very hard time interacting with the others, it was still beneficial to have some kind of socialization. School became slightly more organized by the time I graduated but was still extremely lackluster. As of right now, my sister insists on directing her own education, where she can escape my mother’s blaming and mocking for the things she struggles with. She has more resources than we ever had in previous years, and she’s using things closer to her grade level, desperately hoping to catch up.
As for me, I started working my first and current job a few months after graduating, and have been putting off starting college, as my parents talked frequently how they believed college was usually a waste of time and money. I believed this for most of my life and didn’t think I’d go, and by the time I decided I needed to go in order to pursue the things I wanted to do, I was almost graduated and was clueless about how to prep for it, with no one I felt comfortable having an open conversation about it. I am also trying to work on finding myself after being made to repress my personality and interests for so long. I’m trying to figure out how life and society functions, and I’m trying to build connections and make friends. I have a very difficult time opening up and making close friendships, but I’ve made a lot of progress. I’ve also moved out of my parents’ house which has been very healing.
I was homeschooled in West Virginia, which definitely has better oversight than some other states, but I still believe it needs to be improved. My mother submitted portfolios with our elementary/ middle school-level work, and we always passed just fine. There needs to be a way to verify that the child is working at their ability level, and it must be seen that there is progress being made. There also needs to be a way to check on students to make sure that they are not being abused and have everything they need, physically, mentally, emotionally, educationally, and spiritually.
Brittany Randolph was homeschooled in West Virginia from 2012 to 2017. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 6 February, 2020 by CRHE
Brittany Randolph: “As time went on, our schedule became looser and looser”
“My sister and I were fine with this at first. No school! We could spend time on the things we actually wanted to do. One thing, though, is that none of these things involved friends, at least not ones we had ever met in person.”
I was in public school up until the early 8th grade, when my dad demanded my mother take my sister and me out. It was over something I won’t go into complete detail over, but to simplify I’ll call it spiritual beliefs. I was initially very excited. When you’re that age, who wants to go to school? It is a toxic environment, with teachers that don’t respect you, an overwhelming workload, and your peers finding any little thing to make fun of you for. And at that age, I had an image of homeschooling that was pretty much all play and no work. I knew that was too good to be true, but it was fun to imagine.
Turns out, that wasn’t so far from the truth. And it wasn’t good, either.
When my mother first started homeschooling us, it wasn’t so bad. We would start at 9:00 and sit at the dining room table, and we would refer to the schedule she had written out on a whiteboard. She’d give us little lessons, then she would have us do lessons online. Some of them were below our grade level, especially for me, the older of the two. It was understandable, as she was suddenly thrown into this; you couldn’t expect it to be perfect right off the bat. But I was under the impression that this was just temporary, just something to use until she could find something for my grade level. Also, it was free, and she seemed to have no intention of spending more than the bare minimum on our education.
She didn’t seem to be in any rush to find something better suited to me, though, and she would get defensive if I mentioned it. I ended up using it for the rest of the year, and if I remember correctly, most or all of the next year, too. It should be mentioned that I was considered “gifted” in school, and was part of a special education class to keep those students stimulated and working at their level. My sister was pretty smart, too, and generally got good grades, but had areas that she did struggle in and needed special focus on.
As time went on, our schedule became looser and looser. My sister and I would ask to not do school. You can hardly blame us, we were kids who wanted to have fun. Some days our mother would still make us, but some days she would give in. As you would expect from a couple of middle school girls, we were not enthusiastic or excited about school. This made my mother lose motivation, and we started stopping school early, then going weekdays without doing school altogether. Eventually, we got to the point where we could go for two weeks with just one or two small lessons she would sit us down for.
My sister and I were fine with this at first. No school! We could spend time on the things we actually wanted to do. One thing, though, is that none of these things involved friends, at least not ones we had ever met in person.
As I moved through middle school, I started to become bitter and antisocial. All of my friends had some glaring flaw that I just could not stand. So when I was taken out of school, I made no effort to talk to any of them. To be fair, most of them made no effort to talk to me either, but the few that did didn’t get much back. I just didn’t care to talk to them; they were too annoying, or too boy-crazy, or too bitter. They were just too flawed for me. I was above them.
My sister, on the other hand, was shy, but very social. She tried to keep in touch with her friends, but her friends had just entered middle school and were trying to paint new images for themselves. They were putting a lot of effort into being cool, and were changing in ways that may not have been great, but would probably only be temporary. My mother was very unhappy with these changes, however, and would confront her friends about the new negative changes they had taken on, whether or not my sister asked her to. She eventually scared off a good deal of my sister’s closest friends, and my sister became certain that about everyone from her grade hated her. She became bitter; she did believe these kids were in the wrong, that they just cared about pointless things and that she was better than them. There were a few kids who still wanted to hang out with her, but eventually, she stopped putting in the effort. She was better than the rest of the kids her age.
I remember being pretty clearly discouraged from having friends by my mother, and when the concept of finding a homeschool co-op was brought up, she would acknowledge the thought but made little to no effort to find one. My sister did find friends online, but besides that, we were both pretty alone and cut off from the world. I had one friend who called once in a while, but that was it for a while. She did eventually start to call more often, but couldn’t have friends over, so my sister and I just sat in the house, wallowing in bitterness, hardly having anything to stimulate us.
Now, I will only make a brief mention of this, and won’t go into a lot of detail, as it is very hard for me to think about, but I went through about a year of intense mental illness, which I believe probably could have been avoided if I had something stimulating my mind. What I went through caused a lot of stress for my family, and I was not treated well. My dad was usually patient with me, but my mom guilted and screamed at me. If I remember correctly, my dad did have his moments as well, at least when it started a second time about two years later.
Because we had hardly any connections, especially with adults, abuse could go unnoticed by anyone who might have been able to stop it. I received abuse from both of my parents throughout my life, but it was most frequently from my mother. It was almost entirely emotional, so I’m not sure much would have done about it anyway. But it would have been nice to at least have people to talk to, to see if this is normal or right. My parents themselves are shy/ antisocial, so they don’t really keep any friends, meaning there wasn’t really anyone to catch or criticize their choices and behavior.
I eventually started to figure out how wrong their treatment of us was, and I started to speak up. It was not accepted well, but I knew I had to at least try to make a change. I hope to gain back the bravery I had during those days. I was treated poorly, and a lot of the time met with defensiveness. It took some time, but I was eventually able to at least get my sister to listen to me, and she started to realize how wrong so much of our childhood was. At first, she just stayed quiet and took their blows, but slowly started speaking up. These days she’s much bolder than I am.
Things did start to get a little bit better after about a year of nearly nothing education-wise. My sister and I eventually met a family who attended a local homeschool co-op and invited us to join, and our parents let us attend. Though I had a very hard time interacting with the others, it was still beneficial to have some kind of socialization. School became slightly more organized by the time I graduated but was still extremely lackluster. As of right now, my sister insists on directing her own education, where she can escape my mother’s blaming and mocking for the things she struggles with. She has more resources than we ever had in previous years, and she’s using things closer to her grade level, desperately hoping to catch up.
As for me, I started working my first and current job a few months after graduating, and have been putting off starting college, as my parents talked frequently how they believed college was usually a waste of time and money. I believed this for most of my life and didn’t think I’d go, and by the time I decided I needed to go in order to pursue the things I wanted to do, I was almost graduated and was clueless about how to prep for it, with no one I felt comfortable having an open conversation about it. I am also trying to work on finding myself after being made to repress my personality and interests for so long. I’m trying to figure out how life and society functions, and I’m trying to build connections and make friends. I have a very difficult time opening up and making close friendships, but I’ve made a lot of progress. I’ve also moved out of my parents’ house which has been very healing.
I was homeschooled in West Virginia, which definitely has better oversight than some other states, but I still believe it needs to be improved. My mother submitted portfolios with our elementary/ middle school-level work, and we always passed just fine. There needs to be a way to verify that the child is working at their ability level, and it must be seen that there is progress being made. There also needs to be a way to check on students to make sure that they are not being abused and have everything they need, physically, mentally, emotionally, educationally, and spiritually.
Brittany Randolph was homeschooled in West Virginia from 2012 to 2017. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
Jones Case Highlights Lack of Homeschool Oversight in Oklahoma
For Immediate Release: Oklahoma parents who nearly starved their 15-year-old son to death used lax homeschooling laws to hide their abuse
Canton, Ma., 07/20/2018—This week, the 15-year-old son of Jimmy and Amy Jones was rescued from starvation and imprisonment in his parents’ barn. The boy weighed only 80 lbs. and investigators believe that if a passerby hadn’t noticed and reported the boy’s condition, he would have been dead within a week. “This boy is far from the first homeschooled child to be starved and abused by their parents,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit organization founded by homeschool alumni that advocates for homeschooled children. “Oklahoma should enact basic legislation to protect children like this boy from horrific abuse.”
CRHE runs a database that tracks cases of abuse and neglect of homeschooled children across the country. That database, which is not comprehensive, contains 13 other cases of severe or fatal abuse of homeschooled children in Oklahoma alone, including the case of Marcus Holloway, a homeschooled 10-year-old who was imprisoned in a “dungeon” in Fort Sill and starved to death in 2011. “Our goal is to identify themes that will help us prevent these tragedies before they happen,” said Coleman. “The Jones case has many characteristics in common with the cases we have observed, such as prior social services involvement, starvation, torture, and scapegoating.” While many parents use homeschooling to provide children with an individualized education in a nurturing home environment, Oklahoma’s lax homeschooling laws allow abusive parents to effectively hide their abuse without the intention to provide an education.
In the Jones case, the boy was removed from a prior home by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services; children who have had prior involvement with child services are at greater risk of abuse and neglect and are in need of closer monitoring. It appears that the boy was scapegoated by the Joneses, whose other children were well-fed and lived in the house with them. The Joneses tortured the boy, deprived him of medical care, and starved him, all forms of abuse that would have been much more difficult to hide if he attended school. “When children are enrolled in school, they have access to school meals, a school nurse, and trusted adults they can tell if something is wrong at home,” Coleman said. “But children homeschooled in Oklahoma are not required to be seen by anyone outside the home, allowing abusive parents to isolate their children from anyone who could help them.”
Oklahoma’s homeschooling law exempts students for whom “other means of education are provided” from compulsory school attendance, requiring only that homeschooling parents provide 180 days of instruction. Parents are not required to register their homeschooled children with the district, so school officials have no way of checking up on them to ensure they are receiving instruction, and there is no requirement that students ever be assessed academically. What’s more, there is no requirement that homeschooled children receive medical care or interact with mandatory reporters. There is no law barring Oklahoma parents who have been convicted of child abuse from homeschooling. CRHE maintains a list of policy recommendations that would close these loopholes and prevent homeschooled children from slipping through the cracks.
“Oklahoma’s laws are among the worst in the country for providing protections for homeschooled children,” said Coleman. “It’s not surprising that cases like this keep occurring. Oklahoma’s lawmakers should include homeschool alumni in the conversation about how to best prevent things like this from happening.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 6 February, 2020 by CRHE
Rebecca F.: “The physical abuse and neglect was obvious to me from a very early age”
“Although parents had to submit lists of textbooks that they were using for each grade as part of their report to the local school district, it became apparent that the school district didn’t know what to do with this, and didn’t read the reports at all.”
I was homeschooled from first grade through most of high school, and then went to public school very briefly after moving. Although homeschooling was effective in helping me get a very strong math and science education, and we were in New York—a state that, according to my parents’ homeschool group and organizations like HSLDA, had very “restrictive” homeschooling laws—there were many major gaps in my education that still affect me today.
As I grew up, I saw that these “restrictive” laws still translated into practically no oversight as to either the quality of the education or of the well-being of children who were homeschooled.
The physical abuse and neglect was obvious to me from a very early age: One little girl in our homeschool group nearly died of pneumonia at age four, due to her mother’s refusal to seek medical attention, even when she had difficulty breathing. She wasn’t taken to the dentist until age six, at which point it was discovered that her teeth were so decayed, she needed multiple root canals. Parents “spanked” their children all the time, which in reality often meant outright beating them with tree branches or plastic pipes. I clearly remember overhearing adults having conversations about how they hid these items, and what excuses they used to keep their children out of swim lessons or in long pants or sleeves on occasions that suspicious bruises would be visible. I remember children who were deprived of food for days, with their parents telling them that they had to eat a specific food item or part of their meal before getting any further food, even when the food they were being coerced into eating made them ill.
The next thing I noticed was the educational neglect. One family “unschooled” their children, which to them meant they counted allowing their children to play with American Girl dolls as “history” and handling cash while they purchased items at the grocery store as “math.” Although these children could pay for a purchase, by middle school they were lagging far behind their peers. I personally experienced this somewhat later: My parents had no idea how to write, and taught me English using a curriculum that only went to 8th grade, and past that, allowed me to read books and do nothing more for “English Literature.” I had no idea how to structure a paper or even what a “thesis sentence” was until a college professor actually sat me down and asked me what I knew about writing.
The lack of oversight was also quite obvious: Although parents had to submit lists of textbooks that they were using for each grade as part of their report to the local school district, it became apparent that the school district didn’t know what to do with this, and didn’t read the reports at all. Standardized testing was required, but parents were allowed to administer it themselves, in their homes, and there was no safeguard to ensure that the parents themselves adhered to time rules and didn’t assist their children. The quarterly progress reports we had to make were similar, and parents who didn’t feel like properly grading their children’s work would simply estimate grades or use a pass/fail system, making accurate estimates of the students’ progress nearly impossible.
As an adult, I also saw that there had been a near complete failure for children to be tested for learning disabilities or other developmental delays. I showed clear signs of autism from an early age, yet my parents were angered at a suggestion that I get assessed, and looking back I can remember many other children who showed clear signs of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more who were neither assessed or treated, whose parents were at best blissfully unaware, and at worst bragged about how homeschooling meant their children would have been “labelled” if they had been in a public or even private school, unaware of the resources that their children so desperately needed in order to succeed.
The last issue that I experienced was transitioning from homeschooling to the professional workforce. Due to a disconnect between the homeschooling graduation requirements and public school graduation requirements in my state, although I completed every class necessary to “graduate” as a homeschooler, I didn’t complete them all while homeschooled, and didn’t complete enough to graduate from a public school. As a result, I don’t have a high school diploma. I was discouraged from taking the GED, which has left me with no proof of having graduated high school. This has occasionally presented a difficulty when applying for jobs that want proof of high school completion regardless of college degrees. (I was able to attend college as a legacy admission.)
I strongly support better oversight of homeschooling—regular contact with mandated reporters, academic assessments that aren’t administered by parents—because for many years now I have seen that it would have helped uncover or prevent many of the dozens of cases of child abuse and neglect that I saw around me growing up, and would have left many of us homeschooled students better prepared for our own independent adult lives.
Rebecca F. was homeschooled in New York State from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by CRHE
Fairfield Abuse Case Highlights Lack of Oversight for Homeschooling
For Immediate Release: The rescue of ten homeschooled children from a life of torture comes following other concerning cases and a new provoking study
Canton, Ma., 05/21/2018—Officials are accusing Ina Rogers and Jonathan Allen, of Fairfield, California, of torturing their ten children, ages 4 months to 12 years, for “a sadistic purpose.” The children did not attend school; Rogers reports that she was homeschooling them. The couple stands accused of shooting the children with pellet guns and crossbows; strangling and scalding them; and waterboarding them. “This case in Fairfield fits many of the themes we have seen in child abuse cases that occur in homeschool settings nationwide,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit organization that advocates for homeschooled children.
“Cases like the one in Fairfield, California, need to be understood within a wider context in which abusive families routinely use homeschooling to hide abuse,” said Coleman. “Many individuals have rightly noticed similarities between this case and the Turpin case and expressed concern,” said Coleman. “But the use of homeschooling to conceal child abuse and neglect is neither new nor isolated or rare.” CRHE has been cataloging similar cases in the Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database since its founding in 2013; the earliest case in the database is from 1986. “Inadequate homeschool laws that offer no safeguards are easily manipulated by parents who want to escape the legal consequences of child abuse,” Coleman explained.
In April, the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) released a report finding that 36% of children withdrawn from school to be homeschooled in six school districts between 2013 and 2016 lived in families subject to prior accepted child abuse and neglect reports. The majority of these children (88%) lived in families that were subject to multiple prior accepted reports or had been the subject of at least one substantiated report.
“The OCA report is not the first study to raise concerns about homeschooling being used to conceal child abuse,” noted Coleman, referencing a 2014 study of child torture in which 47% of school-age victims examined had been withdrawn from school to be homeschooled and another 29%, like the Fairfield children, had never been enrolled in school.
According to the California Department of Education, Rogers and Allen did not register their homeschool with the state. However, this does not necessarily mean their homeschool was not operating legally. Many homeschooling parents in California enroll their children in private “umbrella schools” which allow them to avoid providing their information to the California Department of Education. These umbrella schools often offer little to no oversight of their students. It is also possible that Rogers and Allen were operating their homeschool in violation of the education statues — homeschoolers often refer to such truancy as “homeschooling under the radar.”
“If state laws were not being followed, that ought to have surfaced when the family was investigated by social services three years ago,” said Coleman. “Unfortunately, we have found that social services does not always verify whether a family that claims to be homeschooling is doing so in accordance with the law. We need both good laws and effective enforcement.”
Following the Turpin case, in which 13 homeschooled children were rescued from decades of imprisonment and starvation in a Perris, California home, two bills designed to improve the state’s oversight of homeschooling were introduced in the California Assembly. Both bills were opposed by organizations representing homeschooling parents and neither made it out of committee. “It is our hope that the Fairfield case and the growing attention being paid to this issue nationwide will bring the California Assembly back to this subject in the next legislative session,” said Coleman. “There are homeschooled children out there today who need help.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
Many Homeschool Families Have Past Child Welfare Reports, CT Study Finds
For Immediate Release: New data suggests cases where homeschooling is used to hide child abuse or neglect are disturbingly common
Canton, Ma., 05/18/2018—Last month, the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) released a report finding that 36% of children withdrawn from school to be homeschooled between 2013 and 2016 lived in families with at least one prior accepted report of child abuse or neglect. “This finding backs up concerns we have voiced about lax homeschool laws for years now,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit organization that advocates for homeschooled children. “While opponents of oversight claim that homeschool abuse cases are isolated or rare, the OCA report suggests they are much more common than anyone realized.”
In Connecticut, reports to Department of Children and Families (DCF) are either accepted or “non-accepted” based on whether an allegation meets the state’s definition of abuse and neglect.) Since 2012, accepted reports have entered a two-tier system: lower-risk reports are assigned to a Family Assessment Response (FAR) track that connects families with services while higher risk concerns are investigated and given a finding of substantiated (when investigators find evidence to support the allegations) or unsubstantiated (when they do not).
In order to conduct their study, the OCA obtained lists of all students withdrawn to be homeschooled between 2013 and 2016 from six school districts and cross-referenced these names with records from DCF. The OCA found that 36% of these children lived in families with at least one prior accepted report of abuse or neglect, and that the vast majority of these children (88%) had families with multiple reports or a single report that was substantiated. Of the 380 students withdrawn to be homeschooled in these school districts, the OCA found that:
“It is well known that abusive parents can and sometimes do use homeschooling to isolate children and conceal child abuse,” said Coleman, pointing to a 2014 study of child torture in which 47% of the school-age victims examined had been withdrawn from school to be homeschooled. In that study, researchers found that this homeschooling was “designed to further isolate the child”; that it “typically occurred after the closure of a previously opened CPS case”; and that it “was accompanied by an escalation of physically abusive events.”
CRHE’s policy recommendations, which are based on patterns observed in the cases of severe and fatal abuse and neglect catalogued in the Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database, include creating a screening system to catch cases where a child has been withdrawn from school to be homeschooled following a concerning history of child welfare reports. No state currently has such a screening system.
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 18 May, 2018 by Rachel Coleman
Connecticut Study Finds High Rates of Past Child Welfare Reports Among Homeschooling Families
In late April, the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate released a report based on data from six school districts, finding that 36% of students removed from school to be homeschooled from 2013 to 2016 lived in families subject to past accepted reports of child abuse or neglect. This report followed a case where a child was removed from school to be homeschooled despite past abuse allegations, with tragic results. The study was conducted as part of the Office of the Child Advocate’s investigation of the case.
We have been asked whether we found these findings surprising. We did not. This is not the first time we have seen numbers like these. A similar study conducted in another school district in another state — but not publicly released — had comparable results.
One of first themes we noticed when we began logging cases in our HIC database involved families who pulled their children to homeschool after the closure of a child protective services investigation, to avoid further scrutiny. This research does not reflect concern about parents who remove their children from school to provide them with an innovative, child-centered, educational environment in the home. Instead, it points to inadequate laws that offer no safeguards and are easily manipulated by parents with abusive motivations.
Child protective services cannot conduct an investigation if there are no allegations, and no allegations can be made if a child is isolated from contact with adults outside of the family, as often happens in cases where parents remove their children from school after the closure of a child protective services case. We need a screening system to catch these cases.
How many reports were substantiated?
One question that has followed the report released by the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) is this: How many of these children lived in families subject to allegations that were substantiated? We wondered this too! When a report of child abuse or neglect is screened in, it is typically investigated and found either “substantiated” or “unsubstantiated.” When we started asking questions, however, we learned that the system works slightly differently in Connecticut.
As in other states, allegations of child abuse are either accepted or screened out. However, in Connecticut, unlike in many other states, accepted reports then enter a two-tier system: lower-risk families are assigned to a Family Assessment Response (FAR) track and connected to services while higher risk concerns (such as allegations of physical or sexual abuse) are investigated and the allegations are either substantiated or unsubstantiated.
The FAR system was created in 2012. While accepted reports made before 2012 received a substantiated or unsubstantiated designation, after that year roughly 40% of accepted reports have been tracked into the FAR system and thus have not received either a substantiated or unsubstantiated designation. To avoid confusion over this change, the OCA report focused on children in families subject to multiple reports rather than on whether the reports were substantiated.
How do the numbers break down?
The OCA obtained lists of all students withdrawn to be homeschooled between 2013 and 2016 from six school districts and compared the names with records from the Department of Children and Families. They found that 36% of the 380 students removed from school to be homeschooled lived in families subject to at least one prior accepted report of abuse or neglect. The vast majority of these children (88%) lived in families subject to multiple reports or a single report that was substantiated. Furthermore, the majority of these families (75%) were subject to an accepted report dated 2013 to the present.
The OAC released the following breakdown of all students removed from school to be homeschooled in these six school districts during this period (chart created by CRHE):
Here is the same data in bullet points:
There is currently no screening system to catch cases like these or to otherwise prevent fraudulent homeschooling. Removing a child from school to homeschool them after a concerning history of child abuse and neglect allegations, cases, and even convictions is not prohibited by law, and families that do so do not receive additional monitoring.
Do we have other data?
To our knowledge, there have been only two studies of the rate of past child abuse allegations among homeschooled children, each conducted locally — the OCA’s study, and a second that we are aware of in another state, but whose findings have not been released publicly. However, there are a few other data points that can be useful in considering this issue.
In 2014, Barbara Knox and a group of researchers published a study of child abuse so severe it could be rightly termed child torture. Of the school-age cases Knox examined, 47% of victims were removed from school to be homeschooled. Knox writes that this homeschooling “appears to have been designed to further isolate the child” and that it “typically occurred after the closure of a previously opened CPS case.” Knox also found that these students’ removal from school “was accompanied by an escalation of physically abusive events.” Knox’s finding that the children in her study were generally removed from school “after the closure of a previously opened CPS case” should raise concern.
In April, six children of Jennifer Hart and Sarah Hart died when their family’s van plummeted from a cliff in an apparent murder-suicide following years of abuse. The children had been removed from school years before, days after the conclusion Sarah Hart’s prosecution for physical abuse. By isolating their children, Jennifer Hart and Sarah Hart were able to carry out years of physical and emotional abuse undetected. Removing children from school after the conclusion of child protective services scrutiny can offer parents a way to avoid being subject to future reports.
Children who have been the subject of previous abuse or neglect reports are at elevated risk of future abuse. The Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities (CECANF), which was commissioned by Congress in 2012 to make recommendations for decreasing child maltreatment fatalities, found that “a call to a child protection hotline, regardless of the disposition, is the best predictor of a later child abuse or neglect fatality.”
Concluding Thoughts
Parents with a concerning history of child protective services reports should not be permitted to use homeschooling to remove themselves and their children from the radar of child protective services. And yet, this is what we currently see on a regular basis. These cases are not hypotheticals or rare instances. The OCA’s report suggests that homeschooling is used to conceal child abuse far more frequently than has been commonly thought.
An estimated 1.7 million children are being homeschooled today. If the OCA’s findings hold true across the country, the implications are massive: We are looking at hundreds of thousands of children who are very likely in abusive situations. Creating a screening system that flags cases where children are pulled from school after a history of child protective services involvement is crucial.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by CRHE
California Assembly Bills 2756 and 2926 will improve protections for homeschooled children in CA
For Immediate Release: CRHE and homeschool alumni support CA AB-2756 and AB-2926, which would improve protections for homeschooled children in California.
Canton, Ma., 04/16/2018—Two bills proposing homeschool regulatory reform were introduced to the California state legislature on February 16, 2018. AB-2765 was brought by Assembly Members Medina, Eggman, and Gonzalez Fletcher, and co-authored by Assembly Member Rodriguez. A second proposal, AB-2926, was introduced by Assembly Member Eggman.
CRHE members and homeschool alumni support both these proposed California homeschool legislative reform bills.
AB-2756 would allow the California Department of Education to more effectively gather information on the state’s homeschools by creating different categories for different types of private schools. It would also ensure that local school districts receive full contact information for students being homeschooled locally. We support these proposals without reservation.
We also applaud AB-2926, which would create an advisory committee to assess the state’s oversight of homeschooling and make recommendations. We commend the intent of this bill and would urge an advisory committee to consider (1) requiring homeschooled students to receive an annual physical by a practicing physician and (2) requiring these students to take an annual standardized test or have an academic portfolio reviewed by a certified teacher unrelated to the family.
While we recommend that certain academic standards be met by homeschooling parents, such as having a high school diploma or GED, we do not find that requiring homeschooling parents to have a teaching certificate is an effective way to ensure that homeschooled children are educated. We strongly suggest that lawmakers amend the current text of AB 2926 to remove its mention of a possible teacher certification requirement, instead considering other alternatives to ensure that academic standards are met in homeschooling families, such as annual academic assessments.
AB-2926 would open a much-needed larger conversation on homeschooling oversight in the state of California.
We at CRHE support and applaud the legislative efforts to evaluate and improve homeschool oversight in California currently under consideration. We are passionate about preventing children from falling through the cracks and ensuring that homeschooled children receive an adequate education. These proposals uphold the spirit of our work to make homeschooling safe.
Background
California has no specific codified legal process for homeschooling. Instead, homeschooling parents register themselves as private schools and are obligated to do little more than record how many days they participated in “schooling” (what “schooling” looks like is determined by the parents). This system fails to provide homeschooled children with effective protections or oversight to prevent abuse or ensure they receive a basic education.
These bills were introduced in response to revelations that David and Louise Turpin isolated, starved, and imprisoned thirteen homeschooled children in their Perris, California, home. The Turpins took advantage of the laxity of current law, but they were far from the first California parents to use homeschooling to hide abuse. Indeed, the story did not come as a surprise to us. Our database of homeschool abuse cases contains dozens of other cases of severe and fatal abuse in homeschool settings in California alone.
In a 2014 study of child torture, Barbara Knox, a pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin, found that 47% of the school-aged victims she examined were withdrawn from school to be homeschooled. As Knox explained: “This ‘homeschooling’ appears to have been designed to further isolate the child and typically occurred after closure of a previously opened CPS case.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 23 March, 2021 by CRHE
Hart Children’s Deaths Raise Questions about Homeschool Law
For Immediate Release: The Hart case fits a pattern of abusive homeschooling following child abuse convictions, cases, and reports
Canton, Ma., 04/04/2018—On March 26, a van sped off a cliff and into the Pacific Ocean. California Highway Patrol reports that the speedometer was stopped at 90 mph, suggesting that the crash was intentional. Inside the van were the bodies of parents Sarah and Jennifer Hart, and three of their six adopted children. Their other three children are missing but presumed dead. Investigation revealed that the children were homeschooled after Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to assaulting 6-year-old Abigail in 2011. The abuse had been reported by school officials after Abigail showed them her bruises.
The Hart children’s deaths occurred two days after a child protective services official visited their home following a report made by a neighbor that one of the children had come by her home a dozen times asking for food, stating that he was being starved as punishment.
Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit that advocates for homeschooled children, did not find the details of the case surprising. “The Hart children’s abuse and tragic death fit many of the themes we have identified since we began maintaining our Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database in 2013,” said Coleman. “A disproportionate number of severe and fatal child abuse cases in homeschool settings involve adoption.” Many of the cases in CRHE’s database, such as the high-profile deaths of Lydia Schatz in 2009 and Hana Williams in 2011, also involve interracial adoption, as in the Harts’ case.
This is not the only theme Coleman noted. The food deprivation suffered by the Hart children fits into a common pattern in CRHE’s database. “Children who are homeschooled do not have access to food at school like other children,” Coleman noted. “Abusive parents wield food as a weapon; homeschooling allows them to do so with sometimes deadly efficiency.”
Sarah Hart’s 2011 domestic assault conviction for abusing her daughter also does not come as a surprise to Coleman. “We have seen other cases where individuals who pleaded guilty to child cruelty, often after a report made by school employees, subsequently homeschooled and abused their kids,” said Coleman. “In these cases, homeschooling is frequently used to deliberately hide abuse.”
In a 2014 study of child abuse so severe that it could be termed torture, researcher Barbara Knox of the University of Wisconsin found that 47% of the school-aged victims she studied had been removed from school to be homeschooled. “This ‘homeschooling’ appears to have been designed to further isolate the child and typically occurred after closure of a previously opened CPS case,” Knox wrote. The abuse typically intensified after homeschooling began.
Only one state — Pennsylvania — currently bars convicted child abusers from homeschooling, and then only if the conviction is in the past five years. No state has any system to flag cases where parents pull a child to homeschool after a child protective services case is closed, or after a series of concerning child abuse reports. Coleman, however, is hopeful. “We are seeing more legislation designed to protect at-risk homeschooled children introduced this year than we have any year since our founding in 2013,” she notes.
“Public education is not perfect, but attending school does offer children access to a support system outside of the home,” Coleman stated. “Prior involvement with child protective services is one of the strongest predictors of future abuse. We as a society need to protect children who are especially vulnerable, not abandon them.”
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by CRHE
California Assembly Bill 2756 Opens Conversation on Homeschooling
For Immediate Release: As long as homeschooling takes place under the private school law, homeschools should be required to follow that law
Canton, Ma., 02/21/2018—Last week Assemblyman Jose Medina introduced Assembly Bill 2756, which would require homeschools in California to be inspected annually by the local fire department or the State Fire Marshal, in keeping with the requirements of the state’s private school law. “We applaud Assemblyman Medina for taking action to protect homeschooled children like those rescued from a Perris, California, ‘house of horrors’ last month,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, which advocates for homeschooled children. “This is a conversation lawmakers need to be having.”
In California, homeschooling takes place under the state’s private school law. The private school law requires annual fire inspections, but this requirement is typically not enforced for homeschools. The discovery of the thirteen starved, imprisoned children last month has lawmakers rethinking this exemption. “As long as parents in California homeschool under the state’s private school law, they should have to follow that law,” said Coleman. “Assemblyman Medina’s bill would ensure fairness, requiring families that teach their children at home under the state’s private school law to follow the same rules as any other private school.”
“It is our hope that Assemblyman Medina’s bill will open a larger conversation about homeschooling in California,” stated Coleman. “Both parents and children would be best served by the creation of a dedicated homeschool statute.” California’s private school law was not created with homeschooling in mind; efforts to apply requirements written for traditional private schools to homeschools are confusing to parents and district superintendents alike. Currently, parents face uncertainty when laws that weren’t designed for homeschooling are interpreted and enforced differently depending on the district where they live.
“A dedicated homeschool statue would cut through confusion and give lawmakers an opportunity to create a law that protects all children from the outset,” said Coleman.
Families homeschooling in California could avoid a potential fire inspection requirement by enrolling their children in a private school satellite program that allows them to homeschool without filing as an individual private school with the state. While some of these programs offer tutoring or classes, many of them exist only for paperwork purposes; in some cases, parents can enroll their children online, without ever having in-person contact with those operating the program. “Any effort to effectively support homeschooled children in California needs to create requirements for private school satellite programs,” said Coleman.
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education is a national organization founded by homeschool alumni and dedicated to raising awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, providing public policy guidance, and advocating for responsible home education practices.
Last Updated: 6 February, 2020 by CRHE
Jennifer I.: “All that was required was a note every year”
“Most of my homeschooled peers were much like me, in that they were handed a textbook and then expected to essentially teach themselves from grade eight on.”
I was homeschooled from K-12 alongside my siblings by my mother, initially due to concerns about the quality of the local school district, and then due to religious reasons. We tried many different versions of homeschooling, from unschooling, to support groups, and pre-packaged curriculums like Sonlight. While my parents chose to homeschool out of a desire for the best for us, the experience left me essentially playing catch-up to this day, even as I pursue my masters degree after successfully obtaining my bachelor’s from an accredited university.
Rhode Island state law is extremely lax when it comes to regulating homeschooling, and leaves much of it up to individual school superintendents. This led to the superintendent in my district being pressured into not providing more than minimal oversight due to the small size of the town, and the homeschooling community essentially threatening to block the school budget vote from going through. All that was required was a note every year confirming that you were homeschooling, and a “transcript” of what the child had done the last year, which was rarely accurate and was never challenged by the school.
These lax regulations lead to the first standardized test I ever took being the SATs at 18, and my learning disabilities being undiagnosed and unaddressed until college. Gaps in oversight led to a great deal of “freedom” in my self design of my entire high school curriculum, namely I primarily “studied” what I pleased unless my mother felt up to fighting with me to get me to try and learn algebra.
While it sounds impressive that I completed a western civilizations course focused on unifying trends in mythological narratives around the world and completed two national novel writing challenges before the age of 18, what that description hides was my complete lack of scientifically based science classes, my minimal mathematics abilities, inability to diagram a sentence or define an adverb, and complete lack of study skills.
My first year of college was a struggle because of these gaps in my base education, and to this day I find myself attempting to self educate to hide these gaps as they affect my ability to complete higher level education. Any level of oversight may have helped prevent that, and I feel fortunate that my parents were prosperous enough and invested enough to help give me the resources I had growing up, since my education was still miles ahead of some of my homeschooled peers in terms of content and instruction. Most of my homeschooled peers were much like me, in that they were handed a textbook and then expected to essentially teach themselves from grade eight on.
My father has a Master’s degree and my mother is a brilliant computer programmer, but their intelligence and education did not adequately prepare them to teach mathematics, biology, chemistry, or even basic grammar for the most part.
Standardized mandatory testing once a year and yearly physicals would provide a level of accountability for homeschooling parents that would ensure that students are not deprived of their right to a education, while still allowing parents the freedom to choose the method and location of that education.
Jennifer I. was homeschooled in Rhode Island from 2001 to 2013. For additional thoughts and experiences from other homeschool alumni, see our Testimonials page.