Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) is using a high-profile tragedy as a springboard to regulate homeschooling, but critics say the state’s case is built on flawed data and sloppy analysis.
On May 5th, OCA released a report claiming that gaps in state law allow some parents to withdraw children from school, isolate them, and avoid child welfare oversight. To make its case, OCA points to the horrific Waterbury case — where a man was held captive for decades after being pulled out of school in fifth grade — as a focusing event for tightening oversight on homeschooling families.
The numbers OCA highlights come from statewide data between July 2021 and June 2024. The agency says 5,102 children were withdrawn for homeschooling during that period, including 1,547 between the ages of 7 and 11. Of those, 31 percent were chronically absent and 19 percent had identified special educational needs before leaving school.
OCA then took a random sample of half of that group and compared them to Department of Children and Families (DCF) records. It reported that 22.9 percent of those children lived in families with at least one accepted DCF report, 9.6 percent had at least one substantiated investigation, and 3.8 percent had a caregiver on the state’s central registry — the list of individuals with substantiated allegations of abuse or neglect.
A smaller group of private school withdrawals showed lower rates, which OCA presents as evidence of risk in homeschooling.
Homeschool advocates blasted the state’s analysis as statistical malpractice. The National Home Education Legal Defense (NHELD) asked three outside Ph.D. level statisticians from UConn, Yale, and the University of California, Santa Barbara to review OCA’s methods.
All three agreed — the report was not legitimate analysis.
In an Aug. 18 statement, NHELD wrote: “The Child Advocate’s report is merely a subjective descriptive document containing random figures of no statistical value, such that her conclusions are illegitimate, fatally flawed, must be retracted, and are of no value to be used as a basis for any rational conclusions.” The group added that the report was “statistically speaking, meaningless,” and asked, “When will a full retraction be made?”
NHELD founder Attorney Deborah G. Stevenson told Yankee Institute that “OCA has not responded.”
OCA’s recommendations are far-reaching, and they would transform the relationship between families and the state. The office wants lawmakers to rewrite Connecticut law (§10-184) to expand requirements on homeschooling parents beyond providing “equivalent instruction.”
Instead, they would be mandated to demonstrate compliance through a series of annual state check-ins. Parents would be required to appear in person every year with enrollment documentation, their child would have to undergo an “independent” annual evaluation of academic progress, and parents would also have to provide initial and ongoing assurances that their child is in good health.
Private-school families would face a lighter burden — annual proof of enrollment.
The office further proposes that the state maintain a series of approved evaluation methods. On paper, this sounds like flexibility, but in practice it means every homeschooling family would have to select from a government-mandated list — whether that be standardized testing, portfolio reviews by state-approved evaluators, or other options.
Additionally, the plan would turn local school districts into watchdogs. Once a parent files notice to homeschool, the district would thoroughly review family records — attendance, discipline, special education, even past DCF reports — and determine whether to flag them to child services. This is concerning, simply notifying the district you want to homeschool could trigger an investigation.
Furthermore, OCA wants DCF to change its rules and rewrite the definition of “educational neglect,” to retrain caseworkers and include homeschooling within their purview. If successful, parents wouldn’t just face yearly check-ins and district reviews, but the state’s child-welfare agency would be told to treat homeschooling itself as a red flag.
Taken together, these proposals would mark a dramatic shift away from Connecticut’s long-standing recognition of parental rights in education.
For years, families were trusted to act in their kids’ best interests. Under this scheme, they’d be treated like suspects — forced to prove themselves to the state year after year. It’s basically government flipping the presumption of innocence on its head — every parent treated like a criminal unless they grovel for permission to teach their own children.
Critics argue lawmakers should examine state performance before imposing new mandates on parents.
A June 2025 performance audit found DCF’s basic safeguards failing. Auditors reported 606 children in care accounted for 3,736 instances of children going missing between FY 2021–2023; the rate of children disappearing per 1,000 care-days rose 94% since 2020; and many being repeat offenders with one child having 100 separate incidents, and 56 children accounting for 51% of all cases. Most cases originated in congregate care, which accounted for 61 percent.
The audit also found DCF routinely missed or couldn’t prove required notifications. The agency notified the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in only 33 percent of applicable cases and, of those, 61 percent were late. Data quality was so poor, auditors “could not determine compliance” with police-notification timelines in most incidents. Staff completed the required “exceptional circumstance” risk form only 4 percent of the time, and attorney-notification documentation was missing in 89 percent of episodes.
Diane Conners of the Connecticut Homeschool Network put it bluntly: “Those that are involved with the failures to keep the children safe, time and time again, who are enrolled in public school, they need to all be fully investigated. Clearly somebody’s not doing their job.”
Conners argued that state officials should focus on problems in their own system first: “They can feel free to start with the nearly 100,000 chronically truant children in Connecticut (20.2% as of February 2025), who are potentially unsafe and whose whereabouts are not known by the school.”
Ultimately, this debate isn’t about safeguarding children — it’s about expanding the reach of unelected bureaucrats. Rather than addressing long-standing problems within DCF, OCA is pushing for new mandates that burden every homeschooling family in Connecticut. Parents who dedicate themselves to educating their own children are not the issue. The real issue is a state office that prefers to shift blame onto responsible families instead of acknowledging and correcting its own shortcomings.
