Homeschooling all but outlawed in CA
(posted by Angelica)
A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution.
I am of two minds…Going from what my friends tell me, churning one’s way through public high school in the US sounds like years of grueling horror. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that if my mother took it into her head to ‘homeschool’ me the horror would have been multiplied.
Joking aside, here is a would-be homeschooler parent’s take on the issue. He seems pretty passionate about this:
[S]uddenly, I’m on the side of the right-wingers ranting about judges legislating from the bench and the nanny state trying to take over our lives. Heck, suddenly James Dobson of Focus on Family, who spent his radio show today decrying the ruling, is my ally.
We are not religous so that’s not our motivation for wanting to home school, but we are not really all that different from the homeschoolers who are. While we don’t object to the secularism of public schools—that’s one of their good points as far as I’m concerned—we object to other parts of mainstream culture: the relentless consumerism, the regimentation of academic instruction, and the emphasis on competition and working for extrinsic rewards. I’m sympathetic to the need for society (i.e. the state) to look out for the welfare of kids whose parents aren’t taking proper care of them. But to have the state tell me I have to send my daughter to the schools the state has approved and to be taught only in the way the state thinks is best makes me start thinking about holing up in a compound somewhere with too many guns and a couple years worth with of canned food in the root cellar.
The SF Chronical article only offered scant information, but it seems that the case that sparked this decision started off as a child welfare case, with one of the children complaining that he had been mistreated by his father and the judge finding that the children were not adequately educated. If that is true, it sure seems like, in this case, the parents were not providing a good education for their children. Enforced public schooling would seem like a good thing.
On the other hand, this decision affects people like Peter, who would probably do an outstanding job educating his daughter, and that’s a bad thing.
Tags: california, homeschooling
March 9th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
It is not clear whether this case was in state or federal court on appeal. But it will end up in federal court if this is a state appellate ruling, and appealed to SCOTUS if it is federal; possibly either way.
March 9th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
The case is a California state appellate court decision. Any appeal would first go to the California Supreme Court. Any appeal from there would go to SCOTUS. The lower federal courts would have no jurisdiction.
There is some detailed information from the Home School Association of California here: http://www.hsc.org/Appellatedecision
The case is In re Rachel L. (2nd Appellate District, Division 3; Docket B192878; filed 2/28/08). The full text of the decision is available here: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/opinions.cgi
March 9th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I had lunch today with a friend who confided in me that she feels like a bad mother every time she sends her son off to his public school (Virginia). It just doesn’t suit him and he already hates school. He’s only in first grade. They can’t afford private school, so she’s thinking of homeschooling. Imagine the state telling her that she can’t decide what’s best for her kid.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
The case is a California state appellate court decision. Any appeal would first go to the California Supreme Court.
Right. And only then appealed to SCOTUS, which may well not grant cert.
So, I should not have written that the case would invariably end up in federal court.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:43 am
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March 10th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Is anyone who comments on these articles (about the CA homeschooling ruling) actually familiar with the CA public schools?
Many of them are absolutely terrible. It’s not for nothing that CA test scores are some of the lowest in the nation. It’s not for nothing that private school is huge in CA (most of the middle class was sending their kids there when I grew up.). It’s not for nothing that the CA community colleges all offer remedial classes to teach junior high and high school math and english. I’ts not for nothing that L.A. unified school district offers hazard pay (because teachers are putting sometimes their lives but at the very least their property - ie their cars - at risk teaching there). That’s what the teachers I know tell me! It’s real.
It’s not for nothing that teachers work hard to work in the good school districts, and even take pay cuts to do so! Bad school districts drive out all the good teachers and drive out anyone who can afford to send their kid to private school or to move to a better district. Oh and it’s not for nothing that magnet schools have mile long waiting lists and lotteries to auction off spots (because the regular schools suck so badly). But you know heaven forbid that at anyone who doesn’t have these options homeschools ….
I’m a big fan of allowing private schooling, homeschooling, vouchers even, in a large part because I have seen the CA public schools, and I have seen teachers that don’t even try to teach, and the impossibility of reform.
March 16th, 2008 at 4:36 am
I couldn’t disagree more on this point. Every parents will inevitably fail in some way or another. That doesn’t give the state any sort of moral right to take their children from them by force, particularly in cases where this failure is subjective. What exactly, is a “good” education? Maybe some parents will be wrong, but the state has made and is continuing to make countless blunders as well. At the very least, parents interests are aligned with their children. They may be mislead, but they almost definitely care more about their children than the system does.
Clear physical abuse is a reason for the state to intervene (though abuse is a serious problem in foster homes), but in issues of education, health care, and similar issues, I wouldn’t want to see any intervention barring extreme situations, i.e., those in which the poor care of the parents is obvious to a jury of their peers. If a kid lacking physiological problems is clearly illiterate or innumerate, and recognizably so to outsiders, then enforced state schooling would be reasonable. If they’re anywhere near the the average range, let the family decide.
April 1st, 2008 at 11:15 pm
I want to second Mark.
Then again I also want to end compulsory schooling, so neither parent nor ’student’ would have to prove some kind of minimal competency in whatever to the state.
I didn’t care a whit for intellectual matters until well after high school. If I’d been forced, for example, to attend college at 18 I’d probably be proudly anti-intellectual and quite pissed.