Child Abuse in Public Schooling, Private Schooling, and Homeschooling: A New Study and Past Research

Published: Wed, 07/07/21

Hello, , from NHERI and Dr. Ray.

Child Abuse in Public Schooling, Private Schooling, and Homeschooling: A New Study and Past Research

The Context

One new study and a review of previous work offer new insights on abuse and neglect of children in public schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Various scholars and others have claimed that either homeschool children are at more risk than other children of experiencing child abuse or neglect or that whatever the risk is to homeschool children, the government should control (regulate) parent-led home-based private education – homeschooling – more (e.g., Bartholet, 2020) [endnote/reference]. These claims have been made, however, without any empirical evidence that home-educated are at any more risk than public school and private (independent) school children.

At the same time, there is limited evidence that home-educated students are less likely to be abused than are public school and private school children (e.g., Ray, 2015; Williams, 2018) [endnote/reference]. Also, one study revealed that whatever the apparently low rate of abuse and neglect of homeschool there is, more government control over homeschooling is not associated with lower rates of abuse or neglect (Ray, 2018) [endnote/reference].

On this topic, the recent series of weekly presentations entitled, Post-Pandemic Future of Homeschooling,” was sponsored by the Harvard Kennedy School, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and included a session in June 2021 entitled, “Is child abuse greater at school or homeschool?”

The session description also included the questions, “What do we know about the incidence of child and sexual abuse that occurs in schools and in homeschool households?” [endnote/reference].

The panelists were Dr. Charol Shakeshaft, professor, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Dr. Angela Dills, professor, Western Carolina University, while the commentator was Dr. Martin West, professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. Shakeshaft’s presentation was entitled, “How widespread is school employee sex abuse?” on public and independent schools, and researcher Dills presented “Homeschooling and child safety: Are kids safer at home?”

The Research

Shakeshaft summarized that 9.6 percent of all school students in grades 8 to 11 report contact and/or non-contact educator sexual misconduct that was unwanted. Some 8.7 percent report only non-contact sexual misconduct (e.g., lewd behavior or transmittal of sexual photos via the Internet by school employees, taking pictures of the students) while 6.7 percent report contact (i.e., physical contact) sexual misconduct.

. . . . . [continue research article] And please see comments below.

--Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.

National Home Education Research Institute

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Public school, independent school, private school, homeschooling, home education, child abuse, child neglect, law, legal, research, statistics

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