January 25, 2018
On January 14, 2018, news broke that the thirteen children of David and Louise Turpin, ages 2 to 29, had been imprisoned for years in a California home-turned-prison under the guise of homeschooling. Nine days later, Brian Ray published an article on his website purporting to find that homeschooled children experience abuse at a lower rate than do other students. Ray argues that no laws should be changed to protect homeschooled children like the Turpins’ from the prolonged torture they experienced. However, to reach this conclusion, Ray both misrepresents evidence and leaves out studies that contradict his conclusions.
Before we begin, a word about Ray. Brian Ray is a former homeschool father who runs the National Home Education Research Institute, which effectively acts as a research arm for the Home School Legal Defense Association, an organization that opposes oversight of homeschooling. Ray has been widely criticized by researchers for relying too heavily on his own research and at the same time wildly misrepresenting his own findings.
Ray’s Bias
In this piece, Ray sets out to examine whether child abuse rates among homeschooled students compare to child abuse rates among other students. “A recent thorough search of available literature has resulted in identifying only three published reports relevant to whether the abuse of public school and private school children happens at a lower, similar, or higher rate than for homeschool children,” he writes. What are these three studies?
The first study Ray refers to is one conducted by Rodger Williams that Ray calls “original research.” The second study is Ray’s own survey of homeschool graduates, a study that did not use a random sample (meaning that it cannot be generalized to all homeschoolers) and asked only one question related to abuse. Ray refers to the third study, CRHE’s analysis of cases from our Homeschooling’s Invisible Children (HIC) database, as “a report using publicly available data.” But far from conducting original research, Williams actually relied on the incomplete numbers from CRHE’s analysis. Bafflingly, Ray keeps this information from his readers, presenting the two as entirely independent studies.
Ray writes that Williams “used information from one organization that promotes more government regulation of homeschooling.” After devoting ten paragraphs to discussing Williams’ analysis, Ray spends a single paragraph discussing CRHE’s treatment. He does not identify CRHE as the organization Williams drew his data from. This is important because by leaving out the fact that Williams drew on CRHE’s data, Ray leaves the impression that Williams’ analysis represents a third independent study with its own data source.
Either Ray was careless when putting together his article and did not realize that the two data sources were the same, or he left out the source of Williams’ analysis intentionally to create the impression of multiple independent studies with their own separate data sources.
CRHE’s Data
In 2013, we began collecting cases of severe and fatal child abuse in homeschool settings and posting them in a database, Homeschooling’s Invisible Children. In 2015, we tallied the homeschool fatalities in our database for each year. We then used data from the Child Welfare Information Gateway and the National Center for Education Statistics to determine the rate of child fatalities among children ages 6-17 and create an estimate of how many children were homeschooled each year. We used this data to compare child fatality rates.
We found that there were slightly more fatalities in our database than would be expected given the overall child fatality rate for their age group (84 versus 73). We then ran statistical significance testing to find out whether we could eliminate random variation as a possible cause for the higher number of fatalities we were finding. We found that the difference between the two numbers was not large enough to eliminate the possibility that our higher homeschool fatality number could be the result of random variation. Our 2015 analysis relied on figures from 2000 to 2012; we have added a number of cases since then.
As we outlined in our article, our database is not a complete catalogue of all homeschool child abuse fatalities. This is because there is no official data that provides these numbers. Statistics on the rate of child abuse are typically compiled by a state’s social services division and draw on its case files. To our knowledge, no state currently includes information on a child’s educational status when tabulating child abuse statistics. Instead of relying on a nonexistent official tally, our database is created using internet searches and is entirely dependent on what cases hit the news, and which news articles remain on news websites (many newspapers archive old pages, meaning that news stories disappear from the internet).
Ray does not mention that we found a higher number of child fatalities than would be expected given homeschoolers’ share of the population. Instead, he merely states that we “summarized various disparate sources of information” and “found no statistically significant difference between the general public and homeschool fatality rates.” Ray also does not inform his readers that our database is emphatically not comprehensive, as we stated directly in our study.
Williams’ Study
Rodger Williams is a former homeschool father and a lobbyist for the Oregon Christian Home Education Association Network. He posts his own statistical analysis on a website called “the homeschool effect,” which has no landing page or “about” section. In a posting dated July 28, 2017, Williams used our estimates (he did not try to run his own) and our database (which he did not identify as incomplete) to run his own analysis. Williams’ innovation was to remove cases from our list which he determined should not be considered to involve homeschooled children.
Williams looked at 61 homeschool fatalities from 2003 to 2012 and determined that 21 were legally homeschooled, 19 were truant, and 21 were low regulation cases. He does not state how he determined this. Our HIC team relies on published news sources, legal records, and in some cases correspondence with investigating agencies to determine that a case involved homeschooling. In order to investigate the legal status of each child’s homeschool as Williams claims to have done, he would need to contact the investigating agency (child services, law enforcement, or the courts), possibly using a FOIA request, to gain access to information which is rarely made public in the media. It is unlikely that Williams did this given that he did not report his methodology.
News reports of the horrific child abuse cases we include on HIC often do not state whether state law was followed. No state offers a comprehensive list of homeschooling families, which would allow for easy verification. This is one reason we made the decision, when we created our database, to include all cases where the parents claimed to be homeschooling. We have been transparent about this; you can read our explanation in our FAQs.
Another reason we include all cases where the parents claim to be homeschooling in our database is that we created our database in order to look for themes that can help guide policies to prevent such things from happening in the future. With this in mind, it is important to understand limits in enforcement in states that do require some form of oversight, with an eye toward closing loopholes and fixing enforcement problems.
We are less concerned with determining which fatalities should “count” as homeschooled than we are in investigating the ways in which parents in our database have used homeschooling to cover up their abuse and prolong their maltreatment, and finding ways to stop future parents from doing the same. That makes cases where parents told neighbors they were homeschooling relevant regardless of whether the proper paperwork was completed.
Official Reports
Toward the end of his study, Ray states that the United States Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities did not mention the type of schooling children received or recommend regulating any type of educational environment. This is disingenuous. If no state currently collects data on a child’s educational status when tabulating child abuse statistics, how could the Commission identify any one educational environment as an area of concern?
In its report, the Commission did identify social isolation as a risk factor for abuse; as we have discussed here, there is no more effective way for an abusive parent to socially isolate a child than to homeschool. (Consider the thirteen Turpin children, raised in near complete isolation.) Furthermore, the Commission did not purport to be the official standard for child abuse prevention. Instead, the Commission called on individual states to conduct their own child fatality reviews.
In some states, child fatality review boards have already raised concerns about abusive parents’ use of homeschooling. In 2011, a review panel in Florida called on the Florida Department of Children and Families to “work with the school system and the Department of Education to devise an efficient alert system, with appropriate follow-up inspections, for at risk children removed from the school system and placed in ‘home schooling.’” Their recommendations followed a case where a child with previous contact with child welfare officials was removed from school to be homeschooled, and then tortured and killed. In 2012, Pennsylvania’s Task Force on Child Protection reported that “[t]he Task Force received testimony from prosecutors and physicians regarding specific instances of child abuse and neglect occurring in homeschool settings where families have had prior involvement in the child welfare system, which suggests that there may be instances where it would be prudent for additional safeguards to be put in place to ensure the health and safety of these children.”
The Missing Study
Ray claimed that a “thorough search of available literature has resulted in identifying only three published reports” relevant to child abuse rates among children in various school settings. The three studies were his own, CRHE’s, and Williams’ (which used our data). Ray completely leaves out Barbara Knox’s 2014 study of child torture. Either he knew about the study and decided not to include it, or his search was not as thorough as he suggests.
In her study, Knox looked at child abuse so severe that it could be termed torture. Knox found that 47% of the school-aged child torture victims in the cases she examined were removed from school to be homeschooled. Knox reported that in these cases homeschooling “appears to have been designed to further isolate the child” and that “their isolation was accompanied by an escalation of physically abusive events.”
It is possible that Ray failed to include Knox’s study because, as a non-random sample of cases, its findings cannot be applied statistically to all homeschooled children. However, this critique applies equally to the three studies Ray cites, including his own. Furthermore, Knox’s study is useful because it illuminates the fact that when abuse does occur in homeschool settings, there are fewer safeguards to catch it or prevent it from escalating.
Conclusion
In his rehashing of our data, Williams wrote that “there is no reason to impose ‘protective’ regulations on families who already are prone to a lower fatality rate than the rest of the nation.” This claim is absurd. Do we let hunger in our communities go unaddressed because the U.S. has a lower rate of food insecurity than the rest of the world? No, we do not.
Ray began his survey of research on homeschooling and child abuse by looking at abuse perpetrated by school personnel. When such abuse occurs in school settings, we as a society take steps to prevent future cases. Some states are considering improved background checks which screen for past allegations of misconduct whether or not there was a criminal prosecution, for example. All we are asking is that abuse in homeschool environments be addressed the same way—with an eye not toward accepting abuse, but preventing it.
For us, the question has never been whether abuse overall is more common among children who are homeschooled or children who attend school, but rather what happens when abuse does occur. CRHE Executive Director Rachel Coleman spoke recently with a crime reporter at a large regional newspaper who said that of all of the cases of abuse and child fatality she had investigated, the homeschool cases were by far the more horrific. This is because, as Knox’s study underlined, homeschooling allows abusive parents to isolate their children and conceal their abuse to a greater extent than they could if their children attended school.
Every child, no matter how they are educated, has the right to be protected against abuse and neglect. This is not about singling anyone out—we already take steps to identify abuse of children who attend public school. It is about ensuring that the same laws that give dedicated homeschooling parents the ability to create positive, innovative learning environments do not also allow parents like the Turpins to create houses of horror.
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.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
Hawaii SB 2323 Is a Positive Step toward Protecting Homeschooled Children
For Immediate Release: Senate Bill 2323 is a productive response to a nationwide pattern of abusive parents misusing homeschooling to hide abuse
Canton, Ma. 02/07/2018—This week, Hawaii State Senator Kaiali’i Kahele introduced Senate Bill 2323, which would create a screening process designed to ensure that children with elevated risk factors are not removed from school to be homeschooled. Kahele told reporters that he introduced the bill in response the tragic 2016 starvation death of 9-year-old Shaelynn Lehano, who lived in his Hilo district. “We are pleased with Sen. Kahele’s proposal and urge the Hawaii legislature to put homeschooled children first by supporting SB 2323,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit organization that advocates for homeschooled children. “Homeschooling should be used to lovingly prepare children for an open future, and not as an avenue for abusive parents to isolate children and conceal torture and abuse.”
Under SB 2323, the complex area superintendent would run a background check on each individual residing in a home upon the receipt of a notification of intent to homeschool; families with a history of child abuse or neglect would have their notification of intent denied. In the bill’s introduction, Kahele references “Peter Boy” Kema, who died in 1997 after his parents were allowed to homeschool him despite their history of child abuse and neglect. Shaelynn’s case was eerily similar. 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 had been removed from school to be homeschooled, an act “designed to further isolate the child” that “typically occurred after closure of a previously opened CPS case.”
CRHE maintains the Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database, which catalogues cases across the country where abuse and neglect occur under the guise of homeschooling. In many of these cases, parents withdrew a child to homeschool after teachers demonstrated a willingness to report signs of abuse, thus preventing future reports. “We have seen case after case where abusive parents have used homeschooling to conceal abuse,” said Coleman.
Currently, two states bar homeschooling based on certain risk factors. Pennsylvania bars parents from homeschooling when an adult in the household has committed a crime that would prevent them from teaching in a public school; Arkansas prohibits homeschooling when there is a registered sex offender in the home. SB 2323 would make Hawaii a national leader in the protection of homeschooled children. The background check and flagging process proposed by Sen. Kahele is in line with CRHE’s recommendations.
“Previous child welfare services involvement is one of the top risk factors for future abuse,” said Coleman. “Children at elevated risk of child abuse should have access to mandatory reporters and a support 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: 30 October, 2023 by CRHE
New Hampshire: Don’t Exempt Homeschooled Children from the Protection of Child Labor Laws
For Immediate Release: Exempting homeschooled children from the state’s child labor laws renders them vulnerable to exploitation
Canton, Ma., 01/25/2018—Lawmakers in New Hampshire are considering legislation—House Bill 1321—that would exempt homeschooled children from the bulk of the state’s child labor law. “Homeschooled children, like other children, need time for their studies,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for homeschooled children. “Work experience is not a substitute for K-12 education. Children’s education and opportunities should not be limited by formative years spent working instead of studying.”
HB 1321 exempts “youth receiving home education” pursuant to the state’s homeschool law from sections IV, VI, and VIII of the state’s child labor law. These sections lay out the hours children may work. Children 15 and under are barred from working before 7 a.m. or after 9 p.m. in order to protect their sleep, and may work no more than three hours per school day, 23 hours per week during school weeks, and 48 hours per week during school vacations. Children ages 16 and 17 from may work no more than 30 hours per week during school weeks and 48 hours per week during school vacations (with no limits on when they can work). HB 1321 would exempt homeschooled children from these protections entirely.
“We understand that children who are homeschooled are often able to work different hours from other children,” said Coleman. For homeschooled children ages 16 and 17, she noted, state law already allows for this flexibility. “This bill is not about acknowledging different school hours,” Coleman added. “HB 1321 would allow a child of 14, 15, or 16 to work full time, 40 hours per week or more, for the entire year, allowing little or no time for their education.”
CRHE is aware of multiple cases of child labor violations in homeschool settings, including teens required to work full time year round in farm labor, construction, or house-cleaning businesses. In numerous cases CRHE is familiar with, these children have not had adequate time to complete their studies, resulting in educational neglect that followed them long into adulthood, limiting their career options. Under HB 1321, such situations would not be child labor violations; instead, they would be legal.
HB 1321 would turn homeschooling from a child-centered educational option into a loophole from child labor protections, to the detriment of vulnerable teens. This is especially the case in a state like New Hampshire, where parents are not required to show evidence that they are providing their children an education. “If HB 1321 becomes law, there would be nothing in in the state’s statutes to prevent a parent from homeschooling solely so that they could require a child of fourteen or fifteen to work full time,” warned Coleman.
“Children who are homeschooled may receive their education at home, but they still need time to receive an education,” said Coleman. “We urge the lawmakers of New Hampshire not to exempt homeschooled children wholesale from the state’s child labor protections.”
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: 9 June, 2023 by Rachel Coleman
Homeschooling and Child Abuse: A Response to Ray and Other Apologists
January 25, 2018
On January 14, 2018, news broke that the thirteen children of David and Louise Turpin, ages 2 to 29, had been imprisoned for years in a California home-turned-prison under the guise of homeschooling. Nine days later, Brian Ray published an article on his website purporting to find that homeschooled children experience abuse at a lower rate than do other students. Ray argues that no laws should be changed to protect homeschooled children like the Turpins’ from the prolonged torture they experienced. However, to reach this conclusion, Ray both misrepresents evidence and leaves out studies that contradict his conclusions.
Before we begin, a word about Ray. Brian Ray is a former homeschool father who runs the National Home Education Research Institute, which effectively acts as a research arm for the Home School Legal Defense Association, an organization that opposes oversight of homeschooling. Ray has been widely criticized by researchers for relying too heavily on his own research and at the same time wildly misrepresenting his own findings.
Ray’s Bias
In this piece, Ray sets out to examine whether child abuse rates among homeschooled students compare to child abuse rates among other students. “A recent thorough search of available literature has resulted in identifying only three published reports relevant to whether the abuse of public school and private school children happens at a lower, similar, or higher rate than for homeschool children,” he writes. What are these three studies?
The first study Ray refers to is one conducted by Rodger Williams that Ray calls “original research.” The second study is Ray’s own survey of homeschool graduates, a study that did not use a random sample (meaning that it cannot be generalized to all homeschoolers) and asked only one question related to abuse. Ray refers to the third study, CRHE’s analysis of cases from our Homeschooling’s Invisible Children (HIC) database, as “a report using publicly available data.” But far from conducting original research, Williams actually relied on the incomplete numbers from CRHE’s analysis. Bafflingly, Ray keeps this information from his readers, presenting the two as entirely independent studies.
Ray writes that Williams “used information from one organization that promotes more government regulation of homeschooling.” After devoting ten paragraphs to discussing Williams’ analysis, Ray spends a single paragraph discussing CRHE’s treatment. He does not identify CRHE as the organization Williams drew his data from. This is important because by leaving out the fact that Williams drew on CRHE’s data, Ray leaves the impression that Williams’ analysis represents a third independent study with its own data source.
Either Ray was careless when putting together his article and did not realize that the two data sources were the same, or he left out the source of Williams’ analysis intentionally to create the impression of multiple independent studies with their own separate data sources.
CRHE’s Data
In 2013, we began collecting cases of severe and fatal child abuse in homeschool settings and posting them in a database, Homeschooling’s Invisible Children. In 2015, we tallied the homeschool fatalities in our database for each year. We then used data from the Child Welfare Information Gateway and the National Center for Education Statistics to determine the rate of child fatalities among children ages 6-17 and create an estimate of how many children were homeschooled each year. We used this data to compare child fatality rates.
We found that there were slightly more fatalities in our database than would be expected given the overall child fatality rate for their age group (84 versus 73). We then ran statistical significance testing to find out whether we could eliminate random variation as a possible cause for the higher number of fatalities we were finding. We found that the difference between the two numbers was not large enough to eliminate the possibility that our higher homeschool fatality number could be the result of random variation. Our 2015 analysis relied on figures from 2000 to 2012; we have added a number of cases since then.
As we outlined in our article, our database is not a complete catalogue of all homeschool child abuse fatalities. This is because there is no official data that provides these numbers. Statistics on the rate of child abuse are typically compiled by a state’s social services division and draw on its case files. To our knowledge, no state currently includes information on a child’s educational status when tabulating child abuse statistics. Instead of relying on a nonexistent official tally, our database is created using internet searches and is entirely dependent on what cases hit the news, and which news articles remain on news websites (many newspapers archive old pages, meaning that news stories disappear from the internet).
Ray does not mention that we found a higher number of child fatalities than would be expected given homeschoolers’ share of the population. Instead, he merely states that we “summarized various disparate sources of information” and “found no statistically significant difference between the general public and homeschool fatality rates.” Ray also does not inform his readers that our database is emphatically not comprehensive, as we stated directly in our study.
Williams’ Study
Rodger Williams is a former homeschool father and a lobbyist for the Oregon Christian Home Education Association Network. He posts his own statistical analysis on a website called “the homeschool effect,” which has no landing page or “about” section. In a posting dated July 28, 2017, Williams used our estimates (he did not try to run his own) and our database (which he did not identify as incomplete) to run his own analysis. Williams’ innovation was to remove cases from our list which he determined should not be considered to involve homeschooled children.
Williams looked at 61 homeschool fatalities from 2003 to 2012 and determined that 21 were legally homeschooled, 19 were truant, and 21 were low regulation cases. He does not state how he determined this. Our HIC team relies on published news sources, legal records, and in some cases correspondence with investigating agencies to determine that a case involved homeschooling. In order to investigate the legal status of each child’s homeschool as Williams claims to have done, he would need to contact the investigating agency (child services, law enforcement, or the courts), possibly using a FOIA request, to gain access to information which is rarely made public in the media. It is unlikely that Williams did this given that he did not report his methodology.
News reports of the horrific child abuse cases we include on HIC often do not state whether state law was followed. No state offers a comprehensive list of homeschooling families, which would allow for easy verification. This is one reason we made the decision, when we created our database, to include all cases where the parents claimed to be homeschooling. We have been transparent about this; you can read our explanation in our FAQs.
Another reason we include all cases where the parents claim to be homeschooling in our database is that we created our database in order to look for themes that can help guide policies to prevent such things from happening in the future. With this in mind, it is important to understand limits in enforcement in states that do require some form of oversight, with an eye toward closing loopholes and fixing enforcement problems.
We are less concerned with determining which fatalities should “count” as homeschooled than we are in investigating the ways in which parents in our database have used homeschooling to cover up their abuse and prolong their maltreatment, and finding ways to stop future parents from doing the same. That makes cases where parents told neighbors they were homeschooling relevant regardless of whether the proper paperwork was completed.
Official Reports
Toward the end of his study, Ray states that the United States Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities did not mention the type of schooling children received or recommend regulating any type of educational environment. This is disingenuous. If no state currently collects data on a child’s educational status when tabulating child abuse statistics, how could the Commission identify any one educational environment as an area of concern?
In its report, the Commission did identify social isolation as a risk factor for abuse; as we have discussed here, there is no more effective way for an abusive parent to socially isolate a child than to homeschool. (Consider the thirteen Turpin children, raised in near complete isolation.) Furthermore, the Commission did not purport to be the official standard for child abuse prevention. Instead, the Commission called on individual states to conduct their own child fatality reviews.
In some states, child fatality review boards have already raised concerns about abusive parents’ use of homeschooling. In 2011, a review panel in Florida called on the Florida Department of Children and Families to “work with the school system and the Department of Education to devise an efficient alert system, with appropriate follow-up inspections, for at risk children removed from the school system and placed in ‘home schooling.’” Their recommendations followed a case where a child with previous contact with child welfare officials was removed from school to be homeschooled, and then tortured and killed. In 2012, Pennsylvania’s Task Force on Child Protection reported that “[t]he Task Force received testimony from prosecutors and physicians regarding specific instances of child abuse and neglect occurring in homeschool settings where families have had prior involvement in the child welfare system, which suggests that there may be instances where it would be prudent for additional safeguards to be put in place to ensure the health and safety of these children.”
The Missing Study
Ray claimed that a “thorough search of available literature has resulted in identifying only three published reports” relevant to child abuse rates among children in various school settings. The three studies were his own, CRHE’s, and Williams’ (which used our data). Ray completely leaves out Barbara Knox’s 2014 study of child torture. Either he knew about the study and decided not to include it, or his search was not as thorough as he suggests.
In her study, Knox looked at child abuse so severe that it could be termed torture. Knox found that 47% of the school-aged child torture victims in the cases she examined were removed from school to be homeschooled. Knox reported that in these cases homeschooling “appears to have been designed to further isolate the child” and that “their isolation was accompanied by an escalation of physically abusive events.”
It is possible that Ray failed to include Knox’s study because, as a non-random sample of cases, its findings cannot be applied statistically to all homeschooled children. However, this critique applies equally to the three studies Ray cites, including his own. Furthermore, Knox’s study is useful because it illuminates the fact that when abuse does occur in homeschool settings, there are fewer safeguards to catch it or prevent it from escalating.
Conclusion
In his rehashing of our data, Williams wrote that “there is no reason to impose ‘protective’ regulations on families who already are prone to a lower fatality rate than the rest of the nation.” This claim is absurd. Do we let hunger in our communities go unaddressed because the U.S. has a lower rate of food insecurity than the rest of the world? No, we do not.
Ray began his survey of research on homeschooling and child abuse by looking at abuse perpetrated by school personnel. When such abuse occurs in school settings, we as a society take steps to prevent future cases. Some states are considering improved background checks which screen for past allegations of misconduct whether or not there was a criminal prosecution, for example. All we are asking is that abuse in homeschool environments be addressed the same way—with an eye not toward accepting abuse, but preventing it.
For us, the question has never been whether abuse overall is more common among children who are homeschooled or children who attend school, but rather what happens when abuse does occur. CRHE Executive Director Rachel Coleman spoke recently with a crime reporter at a large regional newspaper who said that of all of the cases of abuse and child fatality she had investigated, the homeschool cases were by far the more horrific. This is because, as Knox’s study underlined, homeschooling allows abusive parents to isolate their children and conceal their abuse to a greater extent than they could if their children attended school.
Every child, no matter how they are educated, has the right to be protected against abuse and neglect. This is not about singling anyone out—we already take steps to identify abuse of children who attend public school. It is about ensuring that the same laws that give dedicated homeschooling parents the ability to create positive, innovative learning environments do not also allow parents like the Turpins to create houses of horror.
Last Updated: 30 October, 2023 by CRHE
West Virginia Lawmakers Should Grant Homeschooled Students Sports Access
For Immediate Release: Access to public school athletics programs provides homeschooled students with substantial benefits
Canton, Ma. 01/25/2018—On January 10th, West Virginia lawmakers again introduced legislation designed to grant homeschooled students access to public school athletic programs. Currently, the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission requires student athletes to be enrolled in the public school they represent, thereby preventing homeschooled students from participating. Senate Bill 130 and House Bill 4007 would change this. “We urge West Virginia lawmakers to support Senate Bill 130 and House Bill 4007,” said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a national nonprofit organization that advocates for homeschooled children. “It is well-documented that access to public school athletics programs benefits homeschooled students without creating problems for either public schools or other students.”
SB 130 and HB 4007 require homeschooled students who participate in public school athletic programs to demonstrate adherence to the same academic standards of public school students and bars. Some critics allege that allowing homeschooled students to participate in public school athletics programs takes opportunities away from other students, but the evidence for this is sparse. “A 2012 survey of state athletic associations that had granted homeschooled students access found that doing so had not caused problems in those states,” said Coleman. “Further, research suggests that homeschooled students tend to gravitate toward activities without a limit on participants, such as cross country running or tennis.”
In 2016, CRHE conducted a survey of 150 homeschool graduates’ athletics experiences and found that participants overwhelmingly believed that athletic participation was beneficial to homeschooled students (87%) and that public school athletics should be made available to homeschooled students (80%). Many participants noted that community athletics programs were often limited: “Once I reached junior high age there were no longer any community sports available,” wrote one participant; another noted that public school athletics programs “are very often the only access for students like myself who grew up in underprivileged areas.”
Currently, 30 states grant homeschooled students access to public school athletics programs, putting West Virginia in the minority. “Granting homeschooled children access to public school athletics improves homeschool outcomes,” said Coleman. “We urge West Virginia lawmakers to support the state’s homeschooled students by supporting SB 130 and HB 4007.”
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.