by Will Estrada
Jan. 12, 2026
In the past few years, it has become apparent that the enemies of homeschool families and homeschool freedom think they have a winning strategy: conflate homeschool families with child abusers. I’ve been involved in HSLDA’s recent battles to defend homeschool families in Illinois, New Jersey, and Virginia. In all three of these states, opponents of homeschooling tried to justify their attempts to roll back freedom by claiming that it was needed to protect homeschool children from abuse. What is particularly interesting about this new tactic is that opponents of homeschooling no longer justify their arguments by claiming that they need to make sure homeschool students receive an education, or that parents are not qualified to teach their kids (this was the centerpiece of arguments against homeschooling in the 1980s and 1990s). Perhaps this is because of the massive body of research showing that homeschool students have high academics or because of the well-documented (and tragic) academic failures of modern public education. Whatever the reason, one thing is for sure: opponents of homeschooling are going to continue to try to argue that homeschool families are child abusers. And to make this unsupported leap of logic, they are going to continue to rely upon the discredited Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE). This is despite the fact that a founding board member of the organization, Carmen Longoria, recently took to Facebook to publicly accuse the leadership of the organization of racism, misogyny, and financial mismanagement. CRHE has been behind numerous attempts to impose draconian legislative restrictions on homeschooling, including a bill which was defeated in Illinois earlier this year which would have criminalized loving homeschool parents simply for being a few days late with filing paperwork. These opponents of homeschool freedom are going to continue to make reference to CRHE’s “Homeschooling’s Invisible Children” database. This “database” is so error-filled that (as one example out of many) it attempted to classify Elizabeth Smart (the young Utah girl kidnapped from her parent’s home in 2002) as a victim of homeschool abuse. I recently went line by line through this “database,” and found that many of the tragic stories recounted in it were actually failures of state child protection agencies. We as a nation are spending billions of tax-payer dollars on state child protection agencies, only to see these agencies collapsing under bureaucratic mismanagement. Instead of trying to fix these bureaucratic failures, politicians and organizations like CRHE are instead using homeschool parents as scapegoats. And calls to have public schools supervise homeschool families to try to protect homeschool kids from abuse are similarly tone-deaf. For background, my dad spent 37 years as a New York state public school educator, and I have great respect for public school educators. But public education is in crisis mode. Children are regularly abused by teachers and staff, bullied by their peers, and left behind academically. And the modern public education system seems incapable of fixing this crisis. These problems in our nation’s public school system have gotten worse, not better, in recent years. And for politicians to ignore this and blithely claim that today’s public schools are peaceful and happy little utopias (as I have personally heard numerous politicians say during high profile debates over laws to roll back homeschool freedom) is breathtakingly privileged and out of touch of the lived experiences of families across our nation. Indeed, federal data show that the number one reason parents choose to homeschool their children is because of concern about the environment of other schools. How can we as homeschoolers respond to these false allegations that try to paint loving parents as serial child abusers? One powerful way to respond is by sharing our stories. I’m a homeschool graduate. My wife is a homeschool graduate. We homeschool our kids. Millions of homeschoolers reside in our nation. And those families and kids are thriving. Homeschoolers come from across the political spectrum. The studies show that homeschool parents love their children, and are not more likely to abuse their children than public or private school parents. Homeschool families thrive in states with high regulation like New York, and in states with low regulation, like Texas. The U.S. Supreme Court addressed this issue of how to respond to stories of abuse and neglect in its landmark 1979 decision in Parham v. JR. The Court said the following: “Our jurisprudence historically has reflected Western civilization concepts of the family as a unit with broad parental authority over minor children. Our cases have consistently followed that course; our constitutional system long ago rejected any notion that a child is the “mere creature of the State” and, on the contrary, asserted that parents generally “have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare [their children] for additional obligations.” . . . The law’s concept of the family rests on a presumption that parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment required for making life’s difficult decisions. More important, historically it has recognized that natural bonds of affection lead parents to act in the best interests of their children. . . . The statist notion that governmental power should supersede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to American tradition.” In a recent law review article I wrote that was published by Liberty University School of Law, I discussed this issue in detail. I quoted HSLDA President Jim Mason, who wrote “the correct relationship of the state to the family is that parents have fundamental rights, not absolute rights. A fundamental right means that the state should only intervene for compelling reasons, and then only in a limited fashion.” I quoted the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 18:2-6 about the punishment that awaits those who harm a child. And I quoted University of Notre Dame Professor Melissa Moschella, who wrote about how the state should act to punish child abusers. In our nation’s system of law, we do not apply collective guilt. Punish those who harm a child to the fullest extent of the law. Reform our ossified child welfare and public education bureaucracies to ensure that children are safe and receive a good education. And leave homeschooling – the most successful and thriving education option for children today – free from government regulation. __________________________________ Will Estrada is a homeschool graduate, homeschool dad, husband, and senior counsel at HSLDA. He has served in a variety of roles in the federal government and in nonprofit organizations. He is a member of multiple state and federal bars, including the California Bar, and was appointed by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin in 2023 to serve a four-year term on the Board of Visitors of Christopher Newport University, a public university in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
