The attitude here is clear: Homeschooling families are guilty until proven innocent. They are automatically suspect, probably incompetent to educate their own children, and require a heavy, paternalistic hand lest they forget to feed their kids (or, it is subtly implied, forget to stop having kids after a socially acceptable number).

Last week we learned that the media will pay lots of attention to a so-called “house of horrors,” as long as it’s not an abortion clinic.

Tipped off by a 17-year-old daughter who had escaped, police entered the home of deranged-looking California couple David and Louise Turpin. There they allegedly found the pair’s 13 children shackled to their beds and starving in their own filth. Seven of the Turpin kids are evidently older than 18, but have been so malnourished for so long, they still look like children. One 29-year-old daughter was reported to be a mere 82 pounds.

It’s hard to imagine what these kids went through during the years their parents allegedly kept them prisoners behind a well-maintained suburban façade. It’s likely mental illness was involved, and looking at the Turpins’ mugshots (I’m serious, look), I wouldn’t rule out demonic possession.

But the press has chosen to focus on one detail about this sad story: The Turpins were registered as homeschoolers in California. Sarah Jones at The New Republic wastes no time in laying the blame for these kids’ plight squarely at the feet of “lax homeschooling laws,” which she claims “protect child abusers”: “We know now that the parents homeschooled their children under the auspices of the Sandcastle Day School, which is simply the name they used when they filed a private school affidavit with the state of California.”

Understanding how the Turpins got away with allegedly torturing their children for so long, she continues, is “a matter of understanding homeschooling law, and of the problems that attend homeschooling deregulation. You can hide almost anything when nobody is watching.”

Homeschoolers: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Jones uses this as a springboard to go after not only California’s surprisingly favorable homeschooling laws, but homeschooling itself. She pooh-poohs research that shows homeschooling produces, on average, better-educated and more college-ready students, and strongly hints that groups like the Homeschool Legal Defense Association are knowingly running interference for abusive parents.

As evidence, she cites Chelsea McCracken, a senior analyst for the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, which lobbies around the country against freedom in education. McCracken claims her organization has “confirmed 25 cases of child abuse connected to homeschooling families in California since 1996.”

From this, Jones concludes that much stricter government oversight of all homeschoolers is necessary, suggesting regular standardized testing, requiring parents to have teaching licenses, and even imposing annual home inspections by local public school districts.

The attitude here is clear: Homeschooling families are guilty until proven innocent. They are automatically suspect, probably incompetent to educate their own children, and require a heavy, paternalistic hand lest they forget to feed their kids (or, it is subtly implied, forget to stop having kids after a socially acceptable number).

No Data Shows Homeschooling Uniquely Fosters Abuse

But one wonders whether McCracken’s “25 cases” of abuse “connected to homeschooling” in California in the last 22 years really are connected to homeschooling. After all, parents of children enrolled in public school sometimes abuse or neglect their kids, too. Sometimes, they kill them. There is nothing inherent in homeschooling that causes such behavior. This makes it look like what Jones is really arguing for is universal government oversight of parenting.

In her mind, the fact that some homeschooling parents abuse their children is proof that something is wrong with liberal homeschooling laws. But we might also apply her line of reasoning to public schools. There have been 181 school shootings in the United States since 1990, resulting in over 200 deaths and injuries. Public schools are highly regulated environments, and that hasn’t prevented plenty of abuse and other evil occurrences there.

Violence isn’t the only problem in our nation’s schools. A Google search for the term “teacher student sexual relationship” yields 197 million hits.

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[Editor’s note: One or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]