Despite attempts by Harvard Law School to brand itself as an irreproachable authority on law and policy, recent scholarship from the institution on homeschooling leaves much to be desired.
In an editorial published this year by Harvard Magazine headlined “The Risks of Homeschooling,” Erin O’Donnell issued a scathing indictment of K-12 home education, which has reignited a decades-old controversy about the practice. Her piece relies upon a recent article published in the Arizona State Law Review titled “Homeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education and Protection” by Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor at Harvard Law School. Bartholet advocates a legal presumption against homeschooling subject to limited exceptions.
This presumption has been marketed as a response to Bartholet’s three primary criticisms of K-12 home education: child abuse, education inadequacy, and poor socialization. While readers unfamiliar with homeschooling may naturally infer these concerns, Bartholet’s solution to them would deploy the equivalent of a nuclear weapon in a theater better suited for tactical strategy. And, as with the deployment of a nuclear weapon, the collateral consequences would be serious.
Flaws in the Child Abuse Argument
Bartholet and O’Donnell cite Tara Westover’s Educated, a memoir which retells the author’s grim experience as a homeschooler at the mercy of her abusive brother and neglectful parents, to justify a legal presumption against homeschooling. They argue that homeschooling not only masks child abuse, but openly facilitates it, and therefore should be discouraged.
Child abuse, disguised or not, is vile, criminal conduct. Consequently, it is among the most severely punished behaviors by the criminal law —rightfully so. However, Bartholet makes two misguided assumptions. First, that the tendency among homeschool parents to abuse their children is widespread. Second, that a presumption against homeschooling would meaningfully curtail such abuse.
Bartholet’s first assumption requires empirical data which can demonstrate the extent to which abuse occurs in homeschool families compared to public and private schools. However, advocacy organizations on both sides of the issue have failed to discover such data. For example, the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, an entity predisposed to Bartholet’s call for additional regulation, explained “there is no official data” on homeschool child abuse or child fatalities because “no state currently includes information on a child’s educational status when tabulating child abuse statistics.”
Bartholet, therefore, must resort to anecdotal evidence to back up a premise she needs to promote her presumption against homeschooling. Why predicate national policy on anecdotal evidence in this situation, but not others? Fallacy of composition, indeed.
Second, Bartholet assumes a legal presumption against homeschooling would curtail child abuse. However, the alternative (typically, a local public school) is not much safer, according to the Department of Education, especially for the number of thriving homeschooled students who would be reassigned to public education in Bartholet’s regime. According to the National Center for Education Statistics’s 2019 Crime and Safety Report, 5.2% of the participating 2,762 K-12 schools reported at least one incident of sexual assault other than rape in 2017-2018, compared with 3.4% in 2015-2016. These incidents, perpetrated by students and teachers alike, indicate just a statistical floor because so many cases go unreported.
Homeschooling is not, nor has it ever been, a legally cognizable defense to credible charges of child abuse or neglect. While homeschool horror stories such as Tara Westover’s do exist and must not be trivialized, they should be investigated on a case-by-case by state and local child protective services agencies. This tailored approach would hold abusive parents accountable and allow law-abiding parents to continue successfully educating their children from their homes. Bartholet’s one-size-fits-all “presumptive” approach to education turns this logic on its head because it applies indiscriminately to caring parents and child molesters.
Flaws in the Education Adequacy Argument
According to a source cited by Bartholet, an adequate education is one that allows children “to function productively as civil participants.” However, such productive civil participation cannot be objectively measured; it depends on the circumstances, community, and career (collegiate or otherwise) the student will enter. The evidence belies Bartholet’s assumption that homeschooled students cannot “function productively” in civil society or the workplace. A 2012 paper explained that homeschooled children scored an average of 30% to 37% higher than their public school peers on standardized tests. Another study published by the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science corroborates this conclusion, finding students educated in a structured homeschooled environment significantly outperformed their public and private school counterparts on standardized tests. Homeschoolers also populate Ivy League universities, attend military academies, and excel academically in a myriad of disciplines. Such research, and individual success stories, expose Bartholet’s presumption against homeschooling as not only foolish, but dangerously prone to forcing students into an educational environment less adequate than the one they enjoyed at home.
Bartholet responds to this argument with a series of so-called exceptions to the presumption. Such exceptions include scenarios in which local schools are “seriously inadequate to serve children’s needs,” where children are “at risk” for bullying or racism, and where parents can demonstrate they would provide a “significantly superior” education to local public alternatives. Even in cases where exceptions would be granted, Bartholet insists these children should still be required to attend certain courses at public school, such as civic education, to ensure “socialization” and familiarity with “democratic values.” Readers are left to wonder how such vague terms should be interpreted, let alone implemented, and by whom. These required courses, together with the malleable language used to describe “justifications” for homeschooling, indicate Bartholet’s “exceptions” are not genuine exceptions at all.
Bartholet also proposes a series of “specific requirements” to ensure education adequacy for homeschoolers. Her regime would require parents to submit lesson plans, their credentials, and even allow mandatory home visits (in some cases, without consent) by public school authorities; low test scores would also trigger an enforceable order for the homeschooler to enroll in a public school. However, homeschoolers already take annual achievement tests in many states, often as required by law. Bartholet’s strict requirements egregiously assume most homeschool parents will provide inadequate instruction absent comprehensive oversight, a guess unsubstantiated by standardized test data. Consistent with the status quo, homeschoolers who perform poorly on standardized achievement tests should be enrolled in public school. However, successful homeschool parents should not be “presumed” inadequate when they are not; conversely, Bartholet’s draconian recommendations could cause excellent home educators to cease homeschooling altogether and entrust their children to less adequate public schools.
Flaws in the Socialization Argument
Finally, Bartholet and O’Donnell argue homeschoolers receive a religious indoctrination at the expense of secular ideas in the name of education. O’Donnell’s editorial even features a cartoon which depicts children playing outside a house while another child watches from indoors through a barred window. However, this caricature of homeschool life defies reality.
Most homeschool families do not isolate their children from society — quite the contrary. Nowhere in her scholarship does Bartholet address the panoply of homeschool organizations, cooperatives, forensics programs, and extracurricular activities in which homeschool students participate outside of class. In fact, some research indicates homeschoolers may enjoy greater opportunities for socialization than their public school counterparts. While some homeschoolers in many states compete against their public school peers in sporting events, science fairs, and writing competitions, others choose to work local jobs, become involved in community organizations such as the 4-H, or serve as pages in state or federal legislatures (some state legislature even designate a week explicitly for homeschool pages). Bartholet’s socialization argument depends on the majority of homeschoolers staying at home like the child in the cartoon, yet her research is bereft of any statistical data to corroborate this premise.
Harvard’s treatment of homeschooling as a presumptively inadequate or dangerous practice ignores countless success stories. Such stories are particularly relevant in poorly rated school districts where children otherwise lack opportunities to reach their fullest potential. Consequently, homeschooling is becoming increasingly popular with low-income minority parents. In many such cases, including my own, a homeschool education opens the door to higher achievement and an incredible network of lifelong friends from coast to coast.
Consequently, Bartholet’s proposal would deny the ability of minority families to offer a better education for their children than the one provided by their failing school district. Why ask them to settle for an “adequate” public education when an excellent one can be offered at home? Reality exposes Bartholet’s proposal not only as nonsensical but outright counterproductive.
Razi Lane is a J.D. candidate at the University of Notre Dame Law School.
