Shocking cases of the abuse or neglect of children rightly engender in us a desire to take action—a desire to "do something." When a case of child maltreatment is even remotely tied to home education, the calls inevitably come to increase regulation of homeschooling parents and families.
If we put up guardrails around homeschooling, so the thinking goes, we can prevent abuse and neglect from happening again. Yet the proposals made in the wake of these child maltreatment cases, driven by a sense of urgency, often fail to adequately assess a complex issue.