Homeschooling and Child Safety: Are Kids Safer at Home?

Abstract

Safety remains a key concern for parents and education policy makers. Homeschooling opponents argue that child abusers use homeschooling to isolate and harm their children while public school teachers and administrators, as mandatory reporters, reduce child maltreatment. Supporters of homeschooling argue that public schools expose children to bullying from their peers and that some school employees also mistreat children. In the 1980s and 1990s, most states adopted legislation clarifying a legal path for homeschooling. I conduct two-way fixed effects and event study analyses of the effect of home- school rules on measures of child safety. Although most estimates are not statistically significant, some specifications find a statistically significant increase in child homicide rates in the years following homeschool legislation. Better understanding how a variety of educational options affect children’s safety continues to be a pressing aspect of education policy.