The Smear Campaign Against Homeschooling

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At The Spectator, Amber Duke discusses a recent series by The Washington Post on homeschooling. Duke explains that while the series began with data-driven journalism, it has since become a way to smear homeschooling. She writes:

The Washington Post’s coverage of homeschooling, though, quickly turned dark. In early December, the paper published an article claiming that abusive parents exploit homeschooling laws to avoid public intervention. “What home schooling hides: A boy tortured and starved by his stepmom,” the Post warned. The paper went on to cite cherry-picked study of six school districts across several years that claimed about half of students withdrawn from school for home education during that period lived in homes with prior founded or unfounded allegations of abuse. Why would unfounded cases be included here? Especially considering that homeschooling parents might face accusations of abuse merely because they are homeschooling. I appeared on a panel for the Hill’s Rising last week during which one of the hosts said that “many people” would say homeschooling — particularly for the purpose of getting around childhood vaccine mandates — is abuse. You can watch it here. There is a common misconception that homeschooling parents are all religious nut jobs who keep their kids from socializing with their peers. The Post, in its article linking homeschooling to child abuse (and a subsequent article about a homeschool researcher we will talk about in a bit), falls into this narrative trap even though they previously collected data disproving that notion. The study is also problematic because the authors did not provide their raw data, and other studies lump homeschool kids and truant kids into one category.

A wider group of studies suggest there is not an increased risk of abuse among homeschooled kids. The only study using empirical data found that child abuse rates have fallen as homeschooling becomes more popular, and another review of states that relaxed their homeschooling laws found “no clear evidence of an increase in reported incidents of maltreatment in states that relaxed legal controls or bans on homeschooling.” Even groups that claim to find a higher rate of abuse among homeschooled children admit that their results are not statistically significant. Perhaps it’s true that if a homeschooled kid is abused, it‘s less likely to be reported. But we don’t see anti-homeschoolers advocating for random home checks or registration for children below school age or children who are out of school for summer vacation. We also hear little from the mainstream press about the fact that children are most likely to be sexually abused in the public school system.

Moving on to the Post’s latest article in its homeschooling series, which goes after the research of Brian Ray, a homeschool advocate and president of the National Home Education Research Institute. In addition to questioning his research tactics, the Post also accuses Ray of abuse because his daughter says she was spanked with a wooden spoon as a child. There are reasonable limitations to Ray’s studies on homeschool outcomes because homeschool parents have to opt-in to having their kids take the same standardized tests offered to public school students. The studies are naturally self-selecting. But Ray’s critics are hardly acting in good faith, either. The Post, for example, quotes Samantha Field, government relations director for the nonprofit Coalition for Responsible Home Education. The Post says the CRHE is founded by former homeschool kids who want more oversight over home education. They also run Homeschooling’s Invisible Children, which they claim is a database of documented cases of child abuse and neglect among homeschoolers. They include Elizabeth Smart in their database because her kidnappers, who stole her from her actual home and beat and raped her daily, instructed her to tell inquiring adults that she was homeschooled. It doesn’t take a genius to see why Smart doesn’t belong in their data set.

My friend Bethany Mandel, who homeschools her six children, offered her thoughts on the Washington Post’s homeschooling series:

“The problem with the Post’s coverage is it treats homeschooling as a monolithic institution. That’s the traditional public school model; where everyone has the same experience. Everyone reads the same books, uses the same curriculum, no matter their needs or learning styles or interests. This idea that we don’t have to exist in a box is threatening to people and institutions that want us all to remain on the conveyor belt system of public education. Homeschoolers have freed themselves from that; and that’s a threat to many people who prefer kids be educated by the state in only a certain way.”

Read more here.

For more on homeschooling your child, read more here about Ron Paul’s Homeschool Curriculum.