On May 5, 2025, over 4,000 parents and children from Connecticut’s homeschool community gathered at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. They came to an Information Session on “home education,” expecting transparency, dialogue, and respect for their voices. Instead, they encountered a process that offered no public hearing, no opportunity to speak, and no real acknowledgment of their concerns. Many families waited for hours, jammed on highway exit ramps, determined to make their presence—and their message—count.
These families are part of a community that spans generations. Parents today are homeschooling children whose grandparents did the same, often in the face of repeated attempts by state actors to assert power and control over their families. The justification? “Someone needs to have eyes on the children.” Yet the systems that claim to protect children are failing: public schools are underfunded, overcrowded, and frequently unsafe. Teachers are leaving the profession, classrooms sit empty, and students are promoted without mastering basic skills. And yet, homeschool families—who educate responsibly, raise thriving children, and contribute to society—face scrutiny and calls for regulation.
Occasionally, homeschoolers themselves, like Beau Triba (5/5/2025 Info Session testimony) or Eco Webb, (CT Mirror Op-Ed), share negative experiences. Their stories are personal, and their pain is real—but they do not represent the majority. Using isolated experiences as a pretext to regulate all homeschool families is not just misguided; it is unfair. Meanwhile, public-school students continue to face bullying, abuse, and neglect—problems that regulation has repeatedly failed to solve. Sexual abuse, student-to-student harassment, and systemic failures continue nationwide, sometimes tragically ending in suicide. Regulations alone have never guaranteed safety.
The truth is simple: the problem is not homeschooling. The real problem lies in failing systems, broken oversight, and a lack of accountability. This brief is written to clarify what is happening behind the scenes, expose attempts to impose policies without transparency, and provide legislators, policymakers, and the public with clear, evidence-based context.
Legislators: you took an oath to represent your constituents—not agencies, lobbyists, or internal agendas. Over 4,000 voices chanted “Hands off our kids!” on May 5, yet internal documents reveal pre-drafted legislation circulating behind closed doors. Families deserve transparency. They deserve fairness. They deserve a system that protects children by addressing real risks, not by penalizing the families who are already doing the right thing.
The brief that follows provides evidence, analysis, and context to guide lawmakers, the public, and advocates toward solutions that truly protect children and respect parental rights. If you want to fix education and child safety in Connecticut, we need legislators who will stand firm with personal integrity – for accountability, honesty, and genuine, accurate data—not fear, anecdotes, handshakes & false statistics or secrecy. This should not be about “trying to protect” internal contacts (as has been said), but protecting the rights of those that put you in office and that you took an Oath to serve.
POLICY BRIEF
Homeschooling, Child Safety, and Public Policy in Connecticut: Evidence, Context, and Misconceptions
Prepared for: Connecticut Legislators
Purpose: To provide a balanced, evidence-based analysis of claims suggesting that homeschool families require increased state regulation based on individual anecdotes, including the recent op-ed by Eco Webb.
1. Executive Summary
Recent public discourse—including an op-ed by Eco Webb—has called for increased regulation of homeschooling in Connecticut based largely on a single personal narrative of familial neglect. While the personal account is serious and deserving of empathy, policy must be grounded in broad evidence, not isolated experiences.
Key Findings:
The harms described are attributable to parental neglect, not homeschooling as an educational model.
Connecticut data does not support a systemic link between homeschooling and increased abuse risk.
Child welfare failures—when they occur—are rooted in case-processing, oversight challenges, and inter-agency communication gaps, not in educational choice.
Homeschool regulation would not have prevented the circumstances described in the op-ed, because they stemmed from family dynamics, isolation, and unreported neglect—all issues that can occur in any household, including those with public-school children.
Policy solutions should focus on strengthening child-welfare systems, not on regulating a population with no demonstrated elevated risk.
2. Background: What the Op-Ed Claims
Eco Webb’s op-ed presents a deeply negative childhood experience and suggests that stricter homeschool oversight is needed to prevent similar situations. Key claims include:
Lack of socialization due to not attending preschool
Self-instruction without parental involvement
Religious or ideological isolation
Neglect, instability, and mental health struggles
Assertion that homeschool regulation could have prevented these harms
Policy Problem:
These issues are related to parental behavior, family environment, and lack of timely intervention, not homeschooling as a category of education.
3. Evidence Review: What the Data Actually Shows
A. Homeschooling Is Not Statistically Linked to Higher Abuse Rates
Research from multiple universities, think tanks, and states shows:
No higher substantiated abuse rate among homeschool families compared to the general population.
Most cases of abuse involving a homeschooled child “come to light because they are extreme,” not because they represent a trend.
The absence of mandatory reporting to schools is not synonymous with an absence of child-welfare oversight.
DCF investigates based on risk and harm, not school enrollment status.
B. Neglect Occurs Across All Educational Settings
Children can be socially isolated or emotionally neglected while:
attending public school,
attending private school, or
being homeschooled.
Educational venue is not the causal factor.
Family functioning is. Mandated reporters are in all of those settings.
C. Regulation Does Not Prevent Abuse
States with the most homeschool regulation (ex: New York, Massachusetts) still document:
severe abuse in public-school families,
neglect in regulated homeschool families,
missed opportunities for intervention due to agency caseloads and systemic failures.
The determining factor in whether a child receives help is CPS performance, not educational regulation.
4. Key Flaws in Using the Op-Ed as a Policy Foundation
A. Anecdotes Are Not Evidence
One individual’s traumatic past cannot justify statewide policy changes affecting tens of thousands of families.
Legislators require population-level data, not personal narratives, to craft policy.
B. Misidentified Cause of Harm
The op-ed attributes the author’s suffering to homeschooling, but the described harms—neglect, emotional abuse, family dysfunction—are:
not unique to homeschoolers,
not caused by the absence of homeschool regulation,
and would not have been prevented by notification, testing, or curriculum review.
C. Misunderstanding of CPS Authority
DCF already has full authority to investigate based on:
medical reports
neighbor reports
police reports
therapist or clergy reports
community reports
Homeschool status does not and never has shielded a family from DCF intervention. Homeschoolers do get reported to DCF and the community is filled with mandated reporters.
D. Conflating School Attendance With Safety
Schools are not reliably protective spaces.
Every year in Connecticut and nationwide, public-school children experience:
abuse by school personnel,
bullying leading to mental-health crises,
unmet special-education needs,
lack of intervention despite clear warning signs.
School attendance is not a proxy for safety.
5. Policy Area Clarification: What the Real Problems Are
A. Inter-Agency Communication Problems
CT has documented weaknesses in:
school-to-DCF communication,
DCF-to-court reporting quality,
incomplete case information at hearings,
rushed judicial placement decisions.
These systemic issues—not homeschool families—pose the actual risks.
B. Court System Failures
Connecticut judges frequently make placement decisions:
on limited information,
under extreme time pressure,
without full case history,
involving parents previously substantiated for abuse or neglect.
This is a child-safety issue within the court system, not a homeschool policy issue.
C. Weak DCF Follow-Through
DCF often:
closes cases prematurely,
misses red flags,
lacks oversight in FAR responses.
Again, this has nothing to do with homeschool families.
6. Legislative Recommendations
Do Not Use Individual Anecdotes as a Basis for Homeschool Regulation
Instead, policy efforts should focus on:
A. Strengthening DCF capacity
Improved case-review procedures
Mandatory inter-department communication
Consistent follow-up in FAR cases
B. Judicial Reforms
Requiring full case histories before placement decisions
Slowing down “rush hearings”
Ensuring CPS substantiation history is fully presented
C. Improving Statewide Child-Welfare Response
More training for mandated reporters
Updated risk-assessment tools
Stronger cross-agency oversight
D. Supporting Mental Health Access
For all youth—public, private, homeschool.
Homeschool regulation will not achieve these goals.
Child safety requires system reform, not educational micromanagement.
7. Legislative Recommendations
This brief recommends the following:
1. Transparency & Accountability
Legislative inquiry into OCA, CSDE, CAPSS, and internal communications
Public release of all draft legislation related to homeschooling
Clear boundaries around non-legislator involvement in bill drafting
2. Strengthen Actual Safety Systems
Improve CPS-school communication protocols
Require judicial review standards for child-placement decisions
Ensure CPS substantiation history is accessed during custody determinations
Assess school compliance with mandatory reporter laws
3. Respect Constitutional and Parental Rights
Reaffirm that homeschooling is a lawful, constitutional educational method
Reject regulatory proposals not grounded in factual data
Engage homeschool communities at the beginning—not the end—of policy development
For Legislators and the Public
This brief provides a factual, well-documented foundation for understanding the truth about homeschooling in Connecticut and the broader national context. It invites policymakers to respond to evidence rather than pressure, emotion, or internal agendas. It urges a shift toward reforms that genuinely protect children—while respecting the thousands of families who choose home education with diligence, love, and excellence.