Chicago’s public schools are not safe – for hundreds of their students, they’ve become hellscapes of broken trust and abuse.
The Chicago Public Schools Office of the Inspector General’s annual report found more than 70 allegations of teacher misconduct against students in the 2021-22 school year. The misconduct ranged from the sexual assault of minors as young as 11 to alleged murder threats against both victimized students and their families. Other teachers took students as young as high school juniors to Broadway plays and sexually harassed them.
While the school district reportedly took action against the guilty parties, the damage has already been done to hundreds of innocent children, and it’s hardly limited to Chicago. A Fox News analysis revealed that almost 270 educators were arrested for sex crimes involving children between January 1 and September 30, 2022.
Such analyses reveal a startling, even horrifying trend in public schools nationwide: sending children to public schools involves the possibility of putting them in the path of a wave of underreported, often mishandled abuse from educators tasked with the care of young minds. While investigations are a moral imperative, the worry for parents is both real and completely justified: if the public education infrastructure allows such abuse, are there better options?
One option that many parents have chosen is to opt out of the public education system entirely. As PBS reports, “[t]he coronavirus pandemic ushered in what may be the most rapid rise in homeschooling the U.S. has ever seen,” with homeschool levels still exceeding pre-pandemic levels. And the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated existing trends: in 2019, 80 percent of homeschooling parents voiced concern over school safety as a reason for home-educating—a quarter of parents listed it as the single most important reason. In an essential facet of the competition of ideas, thousands of families are voting with their feet and turning to time-proven, academically competitive options like homeschooling for educating their children. The reasons are varied, but one is intrinsically understandable: America’s public education systems are either ill-prepared or ill-equipped to handle a growing rash of student abuse—leaving “the system” is not merely reactionary but a calculated move to protect children.
Homeschooling’s varied organizational structures for group activities offer personal accountability that bloated and overrun public school management structures never can. Reputable homeschooling communities insist on parental participation, which keeps the parent responsible for their child’s safety. Many homeschoolers rely on community-based structures that partner with local institutions like churches to create a safety net of accountability around children, bolstered by committed parents and trustworthy, well-known friends.
The state does not love your child. You love your child and therefore have a greater capacity and duty to protect them. The state does not (and was never meant to) have unquestioned, all-encompassing access to your children. The hellscape that Chicago public schools have become illustrates the reason why thousands are bailing out of this model. It’s not buying into conspiracy theories or baseless fearmongering. It’s realizing the simple truth about American public education: in many cases, it’s not prepared to handle its own rates of abuse.
There are many alternatives to “the system” for those who care to look.
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