Connecticut hearing on homeschooling spotlights data gaps, child-safety concerns and split views on regulation

Connecticut education and child-welfare officials, the state child advocate and homeschool advocates met in a joint informational hearing to review how children who leave public school for private schooling or homeschooling are counted and protected, and to wrestle with whether the state should adopt new checks on families that educate at home.

The hearing opened with a broad review of enrollment and exit data from the State Department of Education and descriptions of legal limits on the Department of Children and Families (DCF). Commissioner Charlene Russell Tucker, Commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education, said the department’s records show most students who leave public school do so because they graduate or move out of state, and that only a small share of annual exits — roughly 1,800 students per year in recent years — were recorded as exits to homeschooling. "We have data on students who exit the public school system for homeschooling purposes," Russell Tucker said, adding that the department’s running registration system can show transfers but that snapshot counts change throughout the year.

The Office of the Child Advocate and DCF described the safety risk the state faces when children leave the public school system and disappear from routine public oversight. Christina Guillot, acting child advocate, told the committees that Connecticut is an outlier in New England because parents can indicate they will provide "equivalent instruction elsewhere" and then have no further contact with state education officials. Guillot said her office’s 2025 report found thousands of children withdrawn to private school or homeschooling between 2021…