Abused Homeschooled Children Deserve Legal Protections: A Response to Ray and Shakeel (2022)

ABSTRACT In this short response, we at the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) offer two critiques of Ray and Shakeel’s (2022) recent study on the influence of demographic factors on homeschool safety. We argue that, while the study’s methodology is novel and valuable, concerns remain about its usage of snowball sampling to overrepresent certain demographics, as well as shortcomings in the survey instrument and its validation. Our main critique, however, questions the study’s ideological roots. We argue that Ray and Shakeel’s aim is to circumvent consideration of potential changes to policy measures that would protect homeschooled children. In CRHE’s view, closing loopholes that enable abuse to occur unnoticed takes precedence over determining incidence of abuse relative to school type. Indeed, we caution against conflating the relative incidence of abuse within homeschooling communities with its absolute importance to a society that prioritizes child safety.