Under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the
Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse
and Neglect Fatalities released a report
(2016) that included known factors related to abuse and child neglect. 5 According
to the Commission’s report, school type
(e.g., public schooled, private schooled,
or homeschooled) is never mentioned as
a risk factor.
Evidence Related to Schooling Type
The U.S. Department of Justice was still re-
lying in 2017 on research from before 2004
that showed “… school employee sexual
misconduct, the sexual abuse and miscon-
duct of K– 12 students by school emplo-
yees, is estimated to affect 10% of our na-
tion’s students” (p. 1). 6 The percent might
be higher now but data are not available.
Furthermore, these data do not include
the physical or psychological abuse of stu-
dents by school personnel. The authors
gave the following finding to the Depart-
ment of Justice:
Thus, despite clear policies and laws
requiring reporting and potential legal
consequences for failing to do so, only
an estimated 5% of school employee
sexual misconduct incidents known to
school employees are reported to law
enforcement or child welfare person-
nel, … A 1994 study in New York State
found that only 1% of the 225 cases
superintendents disclosed to research-
ers were reported to law enforcement
or child welfare and resulted in license
revocation … (p. 5)
An extremely small portion of sexual
misconduct acts by school personnel (e.g.,
teachers, coaches, school psychologists, custodians) that are known by school personnel are ever reported to the proper government authorities (Grant et al., 2017, p. 2).
The Department of Justice report also
noted that public school policies and col-
lective bargaining clauses often allow for
offenders leaving the system with no bad
record. Further:
These practices, allowing known sexu-
al predators to quietly leave the district,
potentially to seek work elsewhere,
have become known as “passing the
trash” or “the lemon dance” . . . With
no criminal conviction or disciplin-
ary record, predators can obtain new
jobs—and move on to other victims.
On average, a teacher-offender will
pass through three different districts
before being stopped, and one offender
can have as many as 73 victims in his
or her lifetime . . . (p. 5-6).
In addition to children in public schools
and private schools being abused or victimized by school personnel, some are also
abused by their parents. Further, many children in public schools are physically or sexually harmed or bullied by other students.
There are only three published reports in
existence relevant to whether the abuse of
public school and private school children
happens at a lower, similar, or higher rate
than for homeschool children. One of the
original studies was by Williams (2017) 7
who compared rates of child fatality due to
abuse or neglect in the general population
and in the homeschool population.
Williams calculated the numbers. He
concluded the following: “Legally home-
schooled students are 40% less likely to die
by child abuse or neglect than the average
student nationally.”
In the second study (Ray, 2015) of 9,369
adults who were public schooled, private
schooled, and homeschooled, one question
dealt with the abuse of minors (i.e., sexual
abuse). Those who had been home edu-
cated were significantly less likely to have
been sexually abused as minors than were
those who were public schooled and those
who attended private Christian schools.
There was no significant difference between
the homeschooled and the private secular
schooled.
Only one other published article appears to have directly addressed the topic
of abuse, neglect, and fatalities due to neglect or abuse as related to type of schooling of children. Homeschooling’s Invisible
Children found no statistically significant
www.TheOldSchoolhouse.com
There is no empirical evidence that more
control would significantly decrease abuse.
