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Child Abuse and Neglect of the Homeschooled Versus the Conventionally Schooled: A Groundbreaking Study

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Context

Professor Elizabeth Bartholet called for a ban of homeschooling just three years ago (2020). She called it a presumptive ban and based her proposed government regime on several claims regarding the negative impact and harm of homeschooling. The professor included assertions about child abuse in her rationale. Bartholet is not the only one to have brought abuse, neglect, and other maltreatment charges against the homeschool community. The claims and allegations have often flown too fast and loosely and without empirical evidence for substantiation.

This groundbreaking study addresses many of the topics important to a careful consideration of the debate about whether homeschool children are at any more risk of abuse and neglect than conventional (public school and private school) children. Scant empirical evidence has existed until the present study by Brian D. Ray and M. Danish Shakeel (2022).

Methods

Ray and Shakeel have carefully addressed pieces that have been missing in many previous studies on homeschooling. First, they obtained a nationally representative sample. Second, they collected data from the adult sample that included the full year-by-year 13-year schooling history and demographics during both childhood and adulthood, and the experiences of abuse and neglect, the categorical identity of the perpetrators of maltreatment, and when the maltreatment was committed.

Findings

Cross-sectional findings suggest that school sector is a non-issue after considering the role played by demographics. That is, child abuse and neglect are significantly associated with family structure, years in foster care, large family size, and household poverty. 

Homeschooling and child abuse is not the issue, and conventional school and child abuse is not the issue; rather, demographics are the key to explaining differences in rates of maltreatment.

If anything, the weak incidences of child abuse among homeschoolers

. . . . . [For more findings and the full article, continue here]   And please see comments below.

--Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.

National Home Education Research Institute

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