The L.A. Times set off a panic recently with a headline "Ruling Seen As A Threat To Many Homeschooling Families".
The first sentence reads "Parents who lack teaching credentials cannot educate their children at home, according to a state appellate court ruling that is sending waves of fear through California's home schooling families."
Uber blogger Michelle Malkin picked up on the story. World News Daily is on it. Gabriel Malor of Ace of Spades says take a chill pill -- the L.A. Times botched this story.
My take after sifting through a few posts is that no laws have been changed in CA as a result of this ruling. The parents in this case failed to properly identify themselves as a private school under California law. They let it look like they were attending a charter [public] school but in reality they were not. Bad move.
The worry, of course, is the way the ruling was issued by the appeals court. It was sweeping and scathing.
But in this case, the court said went much further, essentially concluding the state provided no circumstance that allowed parents to school their own children at home.
Specifically, the appeals court affirmed, the trial court had found that "keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where (1) they could interact with people outside the family, (2) there are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children's lives, and (3) they could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents' 'cloistered' setting."
Further, the appeals ruling said, California law requires "persons between the ages of six and 18" to be in school, "the public full-time day school," with exemptions allowed only for those in a "private full-time day school" or those "instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught."
That is an ominous opinion. It has the potential to be misused in future cases in CA. Mr. D. is a member of the HSLDA, an advocacy group for homeschooling. HSLDA will be petitioning the supreme court of California to "depublish" the opinion.
If the opinion is “depublished” then it cannot be used by other California courts and this threat to homeschool freedom will be neutralized for other California homeschoolers.
You can sign the petition too. I encourage you to do so. Don't let one family's improper filing affect homeschooling for thousands of families. That would be wrong. We need to see this opinion depublished and homeschooling protected.
I think it is rediclous that homeschooling is thretend by one family's mistake
Posted by: ccboy | March 09, 2008 at 19:58
From what I understand, the homeschooling laws in California are pretty vague to begin with. Maybe this will be a good opportunity for those HSers in CA to make it harder for this kind of threat to happen in the future.
Posted by: Brian | March 10, 2008 at 12:48
Strategically, it might be better for pro-homeschool families to petition the CA Supreme Court via amicus briefs in this case to completely overrule the lower court's opinion, thereby affirming homeschooling... rather than simply "de-publishing" - a term I am unfamiliar with. Of course, the opinion carries precedential value for the limited time it goes un-challenged. However, if it was overruled, the long-term effect would likely be greater. The other move by pro-home school families is to petition the CA legislature to change the laws. Don't let the courts screw it up - get it right in the drafting process.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 10, 2008 at 14:19
The part that bothered me the most was the judge declaring that people do not have a right to home school at all. That's just scary.
Posted by: Ogre | March 11, 2008 at 14:28