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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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