I recently talked with a smart mother who was homeschooling three children, apparently extremely well.
Her positivity contrasted with the alarmist tone of the Home School Legal Defense Association (hslda.org) when it portrays common-sense practices like interviewing children separately from their alleged abusers as an unjustified intervention into families.
They might benefit by studying groups like the Catholic Church and Southern Baptist Convention, which fended off civic oversight, but in so doing created hiding places for sexual predators.
The only specific data point we have today is Connecticut research showing that 36% of new homeschooling families had a recent child protection case.
But more research is likely. So it is in homeschoolers’ interests to help shape regulations that stop predators. Without reasonable regulation, if terrible situations come to light, the public reaction could lead to the very overregulation they dread.
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education, staffed almost exclusively by volunteers who are alumni of home schooling, is the one organization working for reasonable regulations that protect homeschooled children from abuse and neglect (including educational neglect), Check them out at responsiblehomeschooling.org.