Homeschooling rates have increased dramatically in recent years, surging to historic highs since the onset of COVID-19. Census data shows the percentage of Connecticut families who homeschooled increased from 2.5 percent in spring 2020 to 7.5 percent in fall 2020. The increase seems to have staying power; nationwide, the number of children estimated to be homeschooled is 3.7 million as of Oct. 2023, a 219% jump from the 1.69 million estimated to be homeschooled in 2016.

With increased numbers, homeschooling has come under increased scrutiny by state legislatures. West Virginia and Michigan legislators recently considered more stringent oversight bills, inciting furor from homeschool advocates. The last time Connecticut lawmakers tried to pass a homeschooling oversight bill was in 2019, which failed after eliciting a similar response. 

Is there truly a need for greater oversight in Connecticut, or does it amount to overreach by government officials? Why are both sides so far apart on the issue? What does homeschool look like when it’s done correctly, and what are its impacts when it goes wrong? These are the questions Inside Investigator has attempted to answer after speaking with state stakeholders in the fields of education and child services, former and current home educators, and pro- and anti-regulation advocates.

The last time Connecticut tried to pass meaningful legislation to increase homeschool oversight was in 2019. At the time, Governor Lamont proposed an omnibus education bill containing language which would have made all homeschooling families register yearly with their school districts. While the language was supported by Education Committee Chair, Rep. Liz Linehan (D-Cheshire) and Child Advocate Sarah Eagan, it was eventually stripped from the bill due to the significant backlash it received from homeschool advocates.

The bill was brought forward following a December 2017 report by Eagan that investigated the circumstances surrounding the death of Matthew Tirado. Tirado was an intellectually disabled and autistic teenager who died in February 2017, after suffering horrific abuse and neglect at the hands of his mother, Katiria Tirado, who was later found guilty of first-degree manslaughter and intentional cruelty. Matthew and his younger sister had both been the subject of multiple DCF reports for physical abuse and emotional neglect and although Matthew himself had not been officially pulled from school at the time of his death, he had not been to school in months beforehand and his sister was removed from Hartford Public Schools, ostensibly to be “home-schooled.”

Eagan has released multiple reports related to homeschooling in Connecticut, and in April 2018, shared a paper that studied the state of homeschooling in Connecticut at large. The report studied six school districts throughout the state from 2013-2016 and found that 36 percent of students withdrawn from these districts for the purpose of homeschooling in this period had been the subject of at least one prior accepted report to DCF for suspected abuse or neglect. Of this percentage, 75% of these reports had been accepted by DCF, though it is unclear how many of those were substantiated.

“The majority of these families had a history of multiple prior reports to DCF of suspected child abuse or neglect,” read the report. “OCA also learned that none of the six districts had protocols to conduct follow up with the withdrawn student or his/her family, such as an assessment of academic progress or a portfolio review of work, as suggested by the State Department of Education in previously issued agency guidance.”

The report found that Connecticut was one of eleven states with the least government oversight of homeschooling. The report based its conclusion on several criteria:

“According to home-schooling law/regulation clearinghouse sites and OCA’s own review, certain states require a parent to keep records of a child’s progress, submit an affidavit regarding intent to home school, require annual renewal notifications, or other requirements. Several states have a form of ongoing assessment requirement, qualifications of proposed home-school teacher (typically a high school diploma or equivalent), or other requirements for special-needs students,” read the report. “Connecticut statutes are silent on all of the elements identified herein.”

Essentially, school districts have no guidelines or legal jurisdiction to follow up with students once they are withdrawn, and because notices of intent are optional, districts often don’t even know if withdrawn students are being homeschooled or not. This raises two primary questions; what recourse, if any, does a district have to follow up on a student who has been withdrawn under suspicions of neglect and abuse at home, and how can the state qualify whether a child is being adequately educated or not?

“There must be a safety net to protect children who are victims of abuse and neglect from being withdrawn from the safe harbor and visibility of school and removed to a less or even potentially non-visible environment,” read Eagan’s report. “Even for children who have never been victims of abuse or neglect, there must be some mechanism for ensuring that children are actually being homeschooled.”

Ultimately, Eagan’s report recommended the creation of a stakeholder group involving DCF, the State Department of Education, school district personnel and homeschool advocates to “discuss the merits and components of a regulatory framework for homeschooling in Connecticut that will minimally ensure a child withdrawn from school for the purpose of homeschooling is receiving an education and is making progress in instructed areas.” Specific topics would be notices of withdrawal, curriculum, instruction scheduling, teacher qualifications and progress assessment.

The response to Eagan’s report was polarized. While some legislators were swayed to act, she also received significant backlash from pro-homeschooling advocates, some of whom started a Change.org petition calling for her resignation. Some publications have utilized the study to imply a correlation between homeschooling and abuse, while others have highlighted the fact that the number of child service complaints filed among homeschoolers in Eagan’s report is consistent with the rate of complaints filed when looking at all students regardless of the method of schooling. Homeschool advocates have also levied that the failure to prevent or respond to abuse falls solely on the shoulders of DCF, and that none of that burden ought to be carried by homeschooling parents. 

In an interview with Inside Investigator, Eagan agreed that there is no correlation between homeschooling and abuse and that parents should not be burdened with the responsibility of a failed child services system. Eagan emphasized that her 2017 detailed numerous failures of DCF. Regarding the data, Eagan said that the report concluded a “not insignificant number” of children who were subjects of repeated reports to the child welfare system and said that Connecticut being a “no regulation state” makes it more difficult to address such cases of suspicious withdrawal.

Eagan emphasized her support of the right of homeschoolers to teach but claims the state has a vested interest in ensuring its children are safe and educated. Eagan cited Yoder v. Wisconsin, a case that established that while states do have a “high responsibility for education of its citizens,” while also asserting that this interest must consider families’ First Amendment rights, such as freedom of religion. She also cited a Massachusetts case, Care and Protection of Charles & Others, a 1987 case which decided that homeschooling oversight be the responsibility of local school districts, establishing a precedent in Massachusetts that education administrators would like to see replicated in Connecticut.

Essentially, Eagan said that the two cases make it “clear” that Connecticut possesses a vested, legally-recognized interest in ensuring its populace receives the best possible education, and that she thinks Connecticut “has not exercised that interest.”

“You have a balancing of very important, legally cognizable interests, the right of families to direct the upbringing of their children, right, religiously, educationally, morally, which is a right that, I want to be clear, the OCA strongly supports,” said Eagan. “You also have the state’s compelling interest in ensuring the education of its citizens.”

Eagan acknowledged and understood the trepidation of homeschooling families but said a total lack of regulation must be considered carefully.

“People don’t want unwarranted government intrusion, into private family decisions about where and how kids are educated,” said Eagan. “But that being said, we do need to talk about what happens in the absence of any framework for the minimum of, is the child even being homeschooled?”

Eagan notably strayed from recommending any specific oversight measures for state officials to take up. She said that while it is easy to understand the positions and rationales of both the state government and homeschooling parents, it’s much harder to come to a consensus on a legal framework that would ensure both parties feel satisfied that their interests are being met without either one feeling aggrieved.

“I do think it’s easy to describe the concurrent interests, but it’s challenging to concretize that into what the appropriate regulatory framework would be,” said Eagan. “I do think the law permits states to do that, and I do think that the state should engage policymakers, should engage with the State Department of Education, school district, and home education proponents to determine how that should best be done.”

Fran Rabinowitz, Executive Director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS), is one representative of the pro-regulation movement. Rabinowitz described CAPSS as “an organization that encompasses 90% of the superintendents in Connecticut, that really looks to ensure that every child is successful and is learning.” 

She previously spent 29 years working as a teacher, researcher, and executive director of teaching and learning in the Bridgeport Public School District. She also worked as the Superintendent of Hamden’s Public Schools from 2007 to 2014, Superintendent of Bridgeport’s Public Schools from 2014 to 2016, and the Associate Commissioner of Teaching and Learning at the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) from 2002 to 2007.

Rabinowitz made her stance on homeschooling abundantly clear, saying that she disagrees with it in principle, though she “won’t dispute the fact that some [homeschool groups] are very well organized and do an excellent job.” She too, also denies there being any evidence of a direct correlation between homeschooling and abuse.

“I would never want to go on record as saying homeschool children are being abused, that’s not what I’m saying,” said Rabinowitz. “What I am saying, is there are instances of homeschooled children, or children that we were told were being homeschooled, were neglected or abused and it’s impossible to know that because there are no checks on these children.”

One of the primary reasons she opposes homeschooling is her belief in the need for children to be acclimated to working and collaborating with people from all walks of life.

“Generally speaking, I think that children learn a great deal from each other in the classroom, just like we do as adults,” said Rabinowitz. “I think to be successful in our world, you need to be able to collaborate with others, work with others, accept others who are very different from you, and understand how to get along with all kinds of people, and I think some of that can be lacking in certain homeschool organizations.”

She also believes there should be stronger laws, and cited home visits by mandated reporters, studies on homeschooled students’ educational performance, and potentially even mandated testing requirements for homeschoolers as potential solutions. Rabinowitz said that other school district officials shared her concerns.

“If I’m honest, I think we believe that there is a need for more accountability in homeschooling,” said Rabinowitz. “Right now, we feel that it’s very amorphous and very open. What we feel, are that some students are just – they disappear, and we don’t know where they are. Parents say they’re going to homeschool and that’s the last we hear.”

Rabinowitz said she had spoken with Eagan about the lack of options schools have in relation to following up student withdrawals under suspicious circumstances, such as abuse or frequent truancy, and Eagan told Rabinowitz that schools can report such instances to DCF.  Rabinowitz was unclear how often such instances occur, however, and DCF did not have these numbers on hand when Inside Investigator inquired on the subject.

“Our department does not commence an investigation when the allegation is solely that a child is being homeschooled,” said Jodi Hill-Lily, DCF Commissioner. “However, our department does investigate allegations of maltreatment regardless of whether a child is enrolled in a traditional school setting or being educated at home.”

Rabinowitz also cited the limited staff numbers of school districts as another possible limitation to homeschool follow-up. Both Rabinowitz and Eagan said that guidance on how districts should interact with or supervise homeschoolers is the purview of Connecticut’s State Department of Education (CSDE). Despite Inside Investigator’s numerous inquiries, CSDE did not provide comment.

Ultimately, Rabinowitz said districts, and the state at large, know very little regarding how many students are homeschooling, what they are being taught, nor what the average long-term outcomes are for homeschooled youth. 

“I think it’s a concern,” said Rabinowitz. “I’d like to have this data in front of me. I’d like to know where every child is and know that every child is receiving the education that they need to receive.”

Currently, the primary source of homeschool research is the National Home Education Research Institute, headed by former home educator Brian Ray, though the methodology of his research has been called into question. Rabinowitz called research an “untapped place.”

“I’m not sure that we know a whole lot, I mean, qualitatively we have some you know anecdotal studies,” said Rabinowitz. “We just hear about the major issues with a child that might be neglected or abused in homeschool. That’s not the whole picture, and I don’t think there is, I don’t know of a great deal of research on homeschool.”

One organization undertaking new research on homeschooling is the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE). Founded in 2013, it bills itself as a group advocating for homeschooled children’s right to “a comprehensive and empowering education and a safe and supportive home environment affirmed and protected by laws, stakeholders, and society as a whole.” 

“Our impetus for forming is nearly all of our staff and board are homeschool alumni,” said Stewart. “We, from a lived experience angle, saw how well homeschooling can go, we have a lot of people in our network who had very positive experiences, but we also had people who had negative and even abusive experiences, and we saw how gaps in homeschooling policy and gaps in oversight can lead to pretty devastating outcomes.”

The CRHE maintains and updates a national database on instances of abuse and neglect of homeschoolers called Homeschooling’s Invisible Children. The database’s findings report, which was released in July 2024, identified 475 cases of neglect or abuse in total, and 211 fatalities since 1986. It identified 148 cases that “involve extreme abuse that likely meets most definitions of torture.”

While noting no correlation between homeschooling and abuse, it does highlight suspicious withdrawals as a red flag, noting that 31 homeschoolers died from abuse out of a total of 59 instances of suspicious withdrawal. 

“We believe laws preventing that would save lives,” said Stewart. 

Perhaps the most significant conclusion the report draws is that while the incident rate of abuse and neglect may be consistent between publicly educated and homeschooled students, the level of visibility is not. It found that less than one-third of cases involving homeschooled children are resolved by abuse reports or direct intervention by police and social services and that 61% of incidents came to light either because of the victim’s death or near-death, or due to parents’ involvement in unrelated criminal activity attracting law enforcement attention.

Only 18% of these incidents were reported by professionals, a definition which includes teachers, police officers, lawyers, and social service workers, all of which are mandatorily required to report suspected abuse. This represents a significant difference in reporting trends from that of the general population. A 2021 study conducted by the United States Children’s Bureau found that 67% of child abuse and neglect cases were reported by professionals, with education personnel representing the second-most significant group of reporters, right behind law enforcement officers, at 15.4%. Another 2023 study, cited in the CRHE’s report, ranked educational staff as the number one group of reporters, accounting for 18.4%.

The reduction in visibility of homeschool abuse is made further apparent by one 2022 study which conservatively estimated that there were anywhere from 5,500 to 8,000 missing reports of child maltreatment during peak COVID because of children’s reduced contact with teachers. The study found that the number of investigated reports for children at age 5 is 5-10% higher in those eligible to enroll in kindergarten than those who aren’t.

Stewart noted that some of the more heinous and common forms of abuse found by the CRHE’s study, such as malnourishment (found in 50% of cases) and imprisonment (found in 44%), are harder to hide in a public setting.

“Families starving their children, when children are in school that’s really difficult to accomplish,” said Stewart. Regarding imprisonment, they said that “when families have no contact with the outside world, or no required contact, things like that [kind of] very extreme, persistent, intentional forms of abuse can take place.”

Stewart referred to another study cited in the report, in which medical professionals examined 28 children who “experienced abuse so severe that it could be deemed torture.” The study found that 47% of those children were homeschooled, and another 29% were children who had never been enrolled in school. Essentially, not being in public school made it more difficult to uncover abuse.

“We’re not saying that homeschooling makes parents want to torture their children,” said Stewart. “But we’re saying when families are already abusive, those conditions enable abuse to escalate and to be exacerbated without any checks on it, and that can lead to just incredibly devastating outcomes.”

Ultimately, the CRHE’s report recommended states enact laws that would prevent parents from withdrawing children from public school within three years of a child abuse or neglect investigation, ban people convicted of violent crimes against children from homeschooling (currently only the states of Utah, Arkansas and Pennsylvania have such laws), and require homeschool children to be periodically assessed by mandatory reporters. Stewart envisioned homeschooled students being mandated to be seen periodically either by doctors or school officials, to ensure their safety and wellbeing, as well as to evaluate their academic progress.

CRHE’s report also noted that in states such as Connecticut where there are zero requirements for notices of intent, withdrawal can be used to shield truancy. The CRHE’s findings cited a report conducted by the Kentucky Office of Educational Accountability, which surveyed every district in the state and found that 62% of students withdrawn from school were chronically truant. Kentucky was considered a “low regulation” state in Eagan’s report, a class above Connecticut.

“There’s 11 states that don’t have that [mandated notices of intent],” said Stewart. “Functionally, in those states, you’re really kind of blurring the lines between homeschool and truancy here.”

When asked to define the organization’s ideal view of homeschooling, Stewart mentioned the CRHE’s Bill of Rights for Homeschooled Children, which they said represents the organization’s “broader, holistic vision for what a child centered approach to homeschooling would look like.” The Bill of Rights contains eight core principles the organization deems essential to homeschooling such as protection of children’s safety, proper provisions for their education and future, consideration of their adoption or disability status, etc. Stewart said the organization does not have any curriculum recommendations, nor recommendations surrounding curriculum.

“A lot of families are motivated to homeschool because there’s some pedagogical creativity that they’re pursuing, they’re trying to tailor their curriculum to their children,” said Stewart. “As far as we’re concerned, if that’s done with the best interest of the child in mind, then we endorse that.”

Stewart discredited the notion that the CRHE is anti-homeschool and said homeschooling could be “lifesaving” in instances where children are severely bullied, unfairly targeted by policy in regard to their gender identity, or in instances where schools cannot meet the needs of disabled or special needs students.

“We see the value of homeschooling as an option,” said Stewart. “But ultimately, we’re very pro-homeschooling when homeschooling is done correctly and when there are sufficient regulations and supports in place to ensure that homeschool children are safe and educated.”

Ashley West is a Connecticut resident and mother of five children, all of whom are homeschooled.  West said she made the decision to homeschool in 2020, describing COVID as “the gateway into homeschooling for us,” though she admitted that the idea of homeschooling appealed to her before she ever even had children. 

West has three daughters, Bella, 12, Emma, 11, Kate, 9, and a pair of twin boys, Jack and Leo, who are 7. West said that her three girls finished up their 2019-20 year in public school and that she began homeschooling them the year after. She has also been homeschooling her sons ever since they came of school age.

West cited a litany of reasons for why she decided to homeschool; she finds it allows her to provide better accommodations for Leo and Bella, who have ADHD, as well as allows her children a flexible schedule and customized curriculum. West appreciated the fact that it has given her children the freedom to learn at their own pace, and the ability for her to take them on field trips, teach them home and life skills, and spend more time with them as their parent. West also said it helped alleviate her safety concerns regarding bullying, peer pressure and school shootings.

While West acknowledged the role COVID played in the rise of homeschooling, and in her own decision to homeschool, she cited all the above reasons as being the most frequent rationales given to her by other parents who have decided to make the switch to homeschooling themselves since the pandemic ended.

Above all, however, West’s main reason for homeschooling was the freedom it provides her to guide her children’s education.

“When my kids were in public school, it felt like we were being suffocated by the pace and expectations of the school system,” said West. “Every day of the week was the same stressful day, repeated over and over again.”

West acknowledged that the curriculum of homeschooled children looks different for every family, but said she incorporates several different methodologies for teaching. She teaches math and English from textbooks and finds that implementing lessons in real-world activities (teaching fractions to her daughter while baking cookies, for example) and catering study subjects around topics that her children are interested in has helped keep them engaged. Her kids also take online courses, both to strengthen the children’s weaker subjects or further enrich them in subjects they find interesting. She said that school hours are between 10 a.m. and 2 or 3 p.m. each day.

West is especially qualified in her role as a home educator. She graduated from UConn with a bachelor’s degree in human development and family studies, with a concentration in early childhood education and mathematics. She worked as a financial controller for a litigation firm during her first five years out of college but made the occupational switch to teaching in 2020, and has since worked as a virtual teacher, tutor and curriculum developer. West said that she teaches math and English courses to small groups of students through Zoom and has even enrolled her own children in some of these courses as students.

“This past school year, I taught a pre-algebra course, three nights a week,” said West. “I was able to enroll my daughter in this class, so it’s almost like I’m getting paid to homeschool, but it’s definitely killing two birds with one stone!” 

The flexibility West has to work from home was another major factor that she thinks has prompted so many parents to switch to homeschooling. West cited the proliferation of remote work, as well as the ease of access to resources and support groups via social media, as two phenomena that have made switching to homeschool easier now than ever before for parents who consider it.

West is a member of a homeschooling Facebook group named Shoreline Homeschoolers. She described the group as a resource for connecting homeschool families along the Connecticut shoreline.  She said that families use it not only as a source of support, but as a place where homeschooling families could connect for activities such as homeschool formals, nature center classes, summer camps, and the like. 

West said that the group currently has 1,040 members and that she has seen it grow steadily since she joined a few years ago. Last year, 150 new members joined the group. According to numbers from Connecticut’s The Education Association of Christian Homeschoolers (TEACH), the number of homeschooled children in Connecticut leapt from an estimated 22,000 in spring 2019 to 40-45,000 in March 2021.

“I think homeschooling has grown significantly since 2020,” said West. “I’ve seen an increase in our Facebook group, but also an increase in posts and traffic to similar groups that I’m part of. “

West, a secular educator, estimated that half of the state’s homeschoolers learn secular curriculums and half learn faith based. She noted a generational divide in curricula, saying that pre-COVID homeschoolers seemed to be more faith based while new homeschoolers tended to be secular, a trend which has been observed nationwide.

West wished to dispel the concerns surrounding homeschooling and socialization, emphasizing the many ways homeschooling parents can enrich their children’s social lives. She gave a laundry list of social activities her kids participate in, such as sports leagues, summer camps, and cooking and technology classes.

“Being homeschooled doesn’t mean that you stay at home all the time, away from other people or peers,” said West. “We can finish our schoolwork in a few hours, and then go to a playground meetup, co-op, library class, camps, etc. Being in those environments gives children the same, if not more, opportunities to learn and cooperate with people from all different backgrounds as being in a public school.”

Ultimately, West said that her children “have more time and less stress” in comparison to their peers. She admitted to disliking standardized test-taking, a common complaint of homeschool parents, and said that while homeschooled kids may lack in test-taking skills, they excel in the departments of time management, self-motivation, and independence.

“Personally, I do not care for standardized testing at all, for homeschoolers or traditionally-educated students,” said West. “I don’t think it really captures how much a student knows.”

“I think the ultimate goal of homeschooling, for most families, is to provide a well-rounded education that respects family values while preparing children to be successful in a diverse world,” said West. “I think it is important to educate your children academically, but you should also teach values, ethics, virtue, and diversity.”

Deborah Stevenson, a former home educator and the founder of the National Home Education Legal Defense (NHELD), also stood in opposition to standardized testing.

“Standardized testing may be useful for a group of students who all are learning the same

materials, at the same time, in the same manner, taught by the same system,” said Stevenson. “Standardized testing rarely is useful when students are learning based on their own needs, using materials geared to meet their individual needs, learning at their own individual timeline, taught freely without any artificial constraints.”

Stevenson has been an attorney since 2002, practicing civil and litigation with a focus on constitutional, appellate and education law. According to Stevenson’s website, both of Stevenson’s daughters entered college in their teens and both earned two degrees by the time they were 19, one earning their master’s and the other two bachelor’s. Stevenson said that she has advocated for parents’ rights to homeschool for more than 30 years.

Stevenson stands in almost direct opposition to all of Rabinowitz’s points. Like West, she dispelled Rabinowitz’s socialization concerns, calling it a “canard popularized by those uneducated as to true homeschooling, and the myth has been erroneously perpetuated for decades.” Stevenson spoke in disdain of standardized testing, saying “testing rarely is useful when students are learning based on their own needs, using materials geared to meet their individual needs, learning at their own individual timeline, taught freely without any artificial constraints.”

Ultimately, Stevenson boiled down her opposition to new homeschooling regulations in one sentence:

“Freedom always is important to maintain,” said Stevenson. “There already are many laws on the books to deal with anyone who neglects children in any manner. Each person who neglects or abuses a child should be prosecuted accordingly.”

Both West and Stevenson opposed Connecticut’s 2019 bill. Stevenson submitted public comment at the time questioning Lamont’s intent and accusing the bill of attempting to bring homeschoolers under the umbrella of what she called the “failing public school systems.”

“I am glad that it didn’t pass,” said West. “It is important to prevent further regulation of homeschooling because I strongly believe in the right for the freedom to educate our children at home without excessive government interference. I strongly believe in the freedom of educational choice and the right for families to choose the educational path that best suits their children’s needs and learning styles.”

Stevenson and other advocates, such as Diane Connors, founder and co-president of the CT Homeschool Network, oppose regulation on a fundamental level. Connors said that homeschool detractors are simply those who wish to have “power and control over others.” Both Stevenson and Connors had harsh words for the public school system in the state of Connecticut.

“Maybe they ought to concern themselves with their declining enrollment rates, the unresolved bullying issues, suicide issues, the dropout rate, drug problems, alcohol problems, police having to be called due to threats and violence, physical and sexual abuse issues (of adults toward students, by the way), their failing or mediocre academic scores, their severe truancy issues and school violence, to name a few problems,” said Connors. 

Stevenson and Connors criticisms of the public school system are not unfounded. While homeschooling has taken off as a result of COVID, schools across the state have been battling to reach pre-COVID test scores in math and reading, facing budget and service cuts as COVID-era federal funding sunsets, and struggling to lower truancy rates to their pre-COVID averages. All of this is in spite of Connecticut spending more money per student than any other state but New York in 2021.

“Most families who have left the public school system do so because it has failed their children,” said Stevenson.

Beyond her criticism of public education’s academic outcomes, Stevenson also feels the regulation of homeschooling unfairly targets home educators while not targeting the real problem; the abuse itself.

“There are many laws already on the books to crack down on abusers, regardless of the type of education the children are receiving,” said Stevenson. “It is up to those in charge of implementing those laws to do so properly. It is the abuse that is the problem, not the type of education the child is receiving.”

West, on the other hand, seemed to have a more nuanced approach. Like Eagan, West balanced the state’s concerns against the privacy rights of her and other home educators and said, “there is no simple answer here.” In contrast to Stevenson and Connors however, she is open to some oversight legislation.

“In my personal opinion, someone who withdraws their child from school immediately after a child abuse or neglect case is opened against them is very suspicious,” said West. “A legislation that barred families from withdrawing their children from school throughout the course of a social services investigation may help child, but I’m not sure if it’s the right answer. Again, it’s a delicate balance between privacy rights and child safety.”

Ultimately, it is hard to predict where the future of oversight legislation lies in Connecticut, but the inability of Education and Children Committee Chairs Jeff Currey and Liz Linehan to speak with Inside Investigator for this story may signal the relative “hot-potato” nature of the subject among legislators. The backlash received because of the original language included in the 2019 omnibus bill cannot be overstated; so many homeschool advocates arrived at a 2019 Education Committee meeting in protest of the provision, that they had to be escorted into overflow rooms.

“There really has been no movement on this issue,” said Eagan. “We had a terrible child abuse case last year that involves a child that had been withdrawn from school under the pretense of homeschooling, and we did some investigative work there to understand more about what happened, but I mean, we know what the law is right?”

Regardless of the controversy, education stakeholders and state officials such as Rabinowitz and Eagan still believe that a conversation surrounding the state’s current legislation is an important one to have.

Other states, such as West Virginia, which have tried to pass a law forbidding children from being homeschooled while involved in a pending abuse or neglect investigation, has been shot down several times since it was first introduced in 2020. A Michigan bill that would have required parents to register with school districts also died in the legislature. In contrast, states such as Nebraska, Vermont, and Ohio have recently passed bills rolling back homeschool oversight. Stewart found hope in the fact that the conversation at least is now starting to occur.

“Even though the outcomes of those are the opposite of what we’re hoping to happen, the conversation is sort of becoming more tangible,” said Stewart.

Even among the advocates of tighter legislation, there remain differences of opinion on what measures should be taken. While Rabinowitz is far and away the biggest proponent of regulation, Eagan said that she may object to proposed laws that would require certification of home educators. Stewart said that the CRHE takes no stance on legislation that would dictate curriculum. 

“I think the school districts and policy makers and superintendents need to be working on it, I think they need to have a dialogue with the homeschooling community because I do think that’s important,” said Eagan. “But the answers are not easy.”

Regulation proponents share a desire for Connecticut government officials to do something, but what that something could be, and whether that something would ever be accepted by some of homeschooling’s advocates is a question that only time can answer.

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