As in California, leftwing bureaucrats and
politicians are using a horrific abuse case in an attempt to clamp down on
homeschooling families.
Following Connecticut officials’ failure to follow through in the
case of an abusive and negligent mother whose autistic son starved to death,
the office of the Connecticut Child Advocate has decided to target
homeschooling families and use the case to build support for state regulation
of parents who wish to educate their children at home.
The case of the Tirado family is yet another “House of Horrors”
situation, not unlike the recent case of the Turpin family of California, who
shackled their children to their beds and starved them in a so-called private
school.
Katiria Tirado, 34, was sentenced to 11
years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the death of Matthew,
her 17-year-old autistic son. When Matthew died in February 2017, he was 5
feet, 8 inches tall, and weighed only 84 pounds, with cuts and bruises over his
body. His death was ruled a homicide and the medical examiner said he died of
“fatal child abuse syndrome with dehydration and malnutrition.”
Katiria had been reported repeatedly to Connecticut’s Department
of Children and Families (DCF) for suspected abuse and neglect. Although
Matthew was enrolled in his Hartford district school, his mother failed to send
him to school, causing him to be truant. At one point, a school psychologist
reported Matthew had not attended school for an entire year.
Matthew’s sister reported that her mother hit her and her brother.
Nevertheless, DCF workers and even Matthew’s own court-appointed attorney
failed to see Matthew for months. On five separate occasions, Tirado didn’t
show up for court hearings. Finally, DCF asked the court to close the Tirado
case because they were unable to get Tirado to come to court.
Government
Failed Big Time. So Let’s Blame Parents
Despite the many horrific government failures of the Tirado case,
Sarah Eagan, who heads the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate (OCA), is
making the rounds on local talk shows to garner support for her claim that
Matthew’s death is evidence of why homeschooling must be regulated in the
state.
In a memo released
in April just as a hearingwas scheduled
on the homeschooling issue, Eagan noted that, despite all the reports to DCF
over the years, Tirado successfully filed a notice of intent in November 2017
to withdraw Matthew’s sister from school in order to “homeschool” her. Eagan’s
memo detailed what appears to be a total lack of competency within the school
district, DCF, OCA, and the Juvenile Court system:
The school district did not notify DCF of the child’s withdrawal,
nor did the district follow up with the family at any point thereafter prior to
Matthew’s death. OCA determined that were no district policies or state law
that expressly required district follow-up. In December, 2017 the Juvenile
Court granted DCF’s request to close a child protection proceeding filed on
Matthew and his sister’s behalf. DCF, the Court, and the children’s appointed
attorney did not have the information that Matthew’s sister had been withdrawn
from school. After Matthew’s death, DCF’s investigation found no evidence that
his sister was in fact being homeschooled, and Ms. Tirado could provide no
explanation for why she withdrew her younger child from school.
The memo included an OCA so-called “study” of students from six
school districts, one of which was Hartford, who were withdrawn from school to
be homeschooled and whose families had a prior referral to DCF for suspected
child abuse or negligence. Eagan said her office found that over a three-year
period, 380 students were withdrawn to be homeschooled, and that 138 of these
(36 percent) lived in families who were the subject of at least one prior
accepted report to DCF for suspected abuse or neglect.
Eager to report these findings, the Hartford Courant immediately
published an article with
the headline, “Hundreds Of Connecticut Children Home Schooled In Households
Where Abuse, Neglect Suspected.” Eagan’s conclusion drawn from her “study” was
that “the lack of regulation in Connecticut for homeschooling leaves an unclear
framework for parents, districts, and, where there are concerns of abuse or
neglect, for DCF to follow.”
“OCA strongly recommends that Connecticut stakeholders consider
the unintended consequences of having no clear regulation for homeschooling and
the impact on the safety net for children,” Eagan recommended.
During a recent radio interview, she said
the state should treat all homeschooling families as potential abusers because
there are “parents who are using homeschooling as a pretext or a guise to
withdraw their child from school, not to educate them, but to hide them from
public view.” Eagan’s office has now subpoenaed the
records of Connecticut homeschoolers in an effort to bolster her case for
regulation.
The
Tirados Were Not Homeschoolers
The big elephant in the room, of course, is that homeschooling has
nothing whatsoever to do with the tragic case of Matthew Tirado. As in
California, leftwing bureaucrats and politicians are using a horrific abuse
case in an attempt to clamp down on independent homeschooling families.
Matthew Tirado was never homeschooled. He had been enrolled in
schools in Hartford from elementary through high school, but was truant because
his mother failed to send him to school. Mrs. Tirado already had countless
referrals to DCF by the time she filed a notice of intent to homeschool her
daughter, but none of the state agencies responsible to oversee the family took
action.
Peter Kamakawiwoole, an attorney with Home School Legal Defense
Association (HSLDA), spoke at the hearing in
which Eagan discussed her recommendations amid a room full of homeschooling families.
Kamakawiwoole observed that results of a national child abuse commission report
covering various states found the primary risk factor for child abuse and
neglect was found to be prior contact with child protective services—a risk
factor clearly present in the Tirado case.
Additional risk factors from the study, Kamakawiwoole noted,
included the age of the child (75 percent of children who were fatal victims of
abuse were under three years of age, which is not school age), drug abuse in
the home, the presence of a live-in boyfriend or girlfriend in the home, and a
past history of domestic violence.
“Nowhere in the 160-page [OCA] report is there any mention of
educational setting and no mention of homeschooling as well,” he noted.
Regarding regulation of homeschooling as
a means to curb child abuse, Kamakawiwoole added, “There is no data to suggest
that child abuse and neglect fatalities are lower in states with high
regulation, and higher in states with low or no regulations.”
People
Who Homeschool Are Lower Risks for Abuse
The vast majority of homeschooling parents have chosen to educate
their children at home because they view public schools as failing in one or
more ways, i.e., they are concerned for their children’s psychological and
character development, physical safety, and overall well-being. They are also
parents who want to nurture the bond between themselves and their children.
These same failed schools and agencies
will be asked to oversee many already successful homeschoolers.
The investment in the relationship between parents and children
and the individualized learning experiences for the more than two million homeschooled children in the
United States pays off. Most homeschooled students outperform their
peers in public schools and are better prepared for college.
Targeting homeschooling families in the wake of child abuse cases
in which there is so much evidence that school districts and state agencies
failed to perform their duties to protect children seems beyond comprehension.
This is even more so when we consider that these same schools and agencies will
be asked to oversee many already successful homeschoolers.
The motivation of organizations demanding
homeschooled students meet the same rules as public school students certainly
deserves scrutiny when we observe the most recent data from international
assessments showing U.S. public school students failing to progress and, worse
yet, falling behind their peers in other countries.
“The good news from the latest Progress in
International Reading Literacy Study [PIRLS] is that basic
literacy is at an all-time high worldwide and a majority of countries have seen
rising reading achievement in the last decade,” reported Education Week in
December 2017. “The bad news is that students in the United States are bucking
the trend.”
Similarly, Peggy Carr, the acting commissioner of the National
Center for Education Statistics, said of the performance of students in the
United States, “We seem to be declining as other systems improve. This is a
trend we’ve seen on other assessments that the United States participates in.
There is a lot to be concerned about.”
Public
School Is a Bigger Risk Factor than Homeschooling
When it comes to actual child abuse, can we ignore the almost
daily litany of abuse incidents public school students endure in classrooms run
by state-licensed teachers?
“In 2014 alone there were 781 reported sex crimes by teachers and
other employees, wrote Lance
Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute in his book, The Corrupt Classroom.
“That is an average of 15 students per week who were sexually victimized by
school personnel.”
The Tirado case in Connecticut is a gross example of the failure
of bloated state government tripping over itself as one agency passed the buck
to another. Following Matthew’s death, some lawmakers decided it was time for
the state legislature to increase DCF oversight. A bill to create a council
that would oversee the child protection agency was passed. The Hartford Courant explained the
reason for the legislation:
A federal audit released in March said DCF struggled to accurately
assess risky households and was inconsistent when it comes to effectively
interviewing child victims or vetting the fitness of relatives to serve as
foster parents.
The agency’s conduct has also been called into question related to
a number of high-profile deaths, like that of Matthew Tirado, a 17-year-old boy
with autism who died weeks after DCF closed a case involving his mother, who
has been charged in his death.
Last Wednesday, however, Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy vetoed the bill
to provide legislative oversight of DCF. This bill “represents a significant
intrusion by the legislative branch into the functioning and administrative
authority of an executive branch agency in violation of the separation of
powers doctrine,” Malloy said in defense of his veto.
