Calif. court allows parents to homeschool without credential requirement
The good news this afternoon is that a California appeals court has reversed itself and ruled that parents in the Golden State can homeschool their own children without having to obtain a government credential.
The bad news is that the teachers’ union/Big Nanny war on homeschooling never ends. Homeschoolers are a threat to their turf, a threat to their funding, a threat to their long-held and fiercely protected monopoly.
The ruling, Jonathan L. v Superior Court, is here (PDF).
Details via the SF Chron (and be sure to check the comments at the end of the article for your taste of intolerant home-school bashing, Bay Area-style):
A state appeals court reversed itself today and ruled that parents in California have the right to home school their children even if they lack a teaching credential.
The Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles had ruled Feb. 28 that the state’s compulsory education law requires parents to send their children to a full-time public or private school or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home. The ruling caused an uproar among home-schooling advocates and could have made truants out of an estimated 166,000 children in California who are taught at home by their parents.
After hearing from an array of objectors that included state education officials and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the court agreed to reconsider the case and issued a new ruling today that reached the opposite conclusion: State law allows home schooling, although children can be required to attend school if they’re being abused or neglected at home.
Although the compulsory-education law hasn’t changed since 1929, some alter laws “demonstrate an apparent acceptance by the Legislature that home-schooling is taking place in California, with home schools allowed as private schools,” Justice H. Walter Croskey, author of the earlier ruling, wrote in today’s 3-0 decision.
“Recent statutes indicate that the Legislature is aware that some parents in California home school their children by declaring their homes to be private schools,” Croskey said. He said one of those laws, a 1998 measure exempting parents from fingerprinting requirements imposed on private school employees, indicated “a legislative approval of home-schooling.”
Because the 1929 law itself did not explicitly allow or prohibit home schooling, Croskey said, the court should interpret it consistently with the Legislature’s current understanding, along with the views of state government and education officials.
The Spunky Homeschool blog celebrates.
The California Homeschool Network breaks down the ruling.
And here’s the statement from the Pacific Justice Institute:
Homeschooling families throughout California can breathe more easily following a major decision released today in the Rachel L. case by California’s Second District Court of Appeal.
In a reversal of its previous decision, the Court today clearly upheld the right of families to homeschool under California law. In doing so, the court agreed with most of the arguments advanced by Pacific Justice Institute in the briefing and at oral argument. The court deferred to the state legislature, which has allowed homeschooling to flourish in the state with few restrictions. At the same time, the court stopped short of declaring the right to homeschool to be absolute in all circumstances, holding that in rare circumstances, the state may have a compelling interest sufficient to prevent families under the jurisdiction of a dependency court through charges of abuse or neglect from homeschooling. The appellate court remanded the Rachel L. case to the trial court for a specific determination as to the L. family at the center of this case, although the trial court recently determined it no longer needed to exercise jurisdiction over the family.
Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, commented, “This is a tremendous victory for thousands of homeschooling families in California. The pall of uncertainty that has hung over so many families for the last few months is gone. Our attorneys will be thoroughly analyzing this 44-page decision and will be communicating further with California homeschooling families as to its additional implications.”
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Wow, maybe there is hope in this state!
Maybe we’ll be able to put out some real educated kids for a change!
Homeschoolers are a threat to their
turf, a threat to their funding, a threat to their long-held and fiercely protected monopolyability to indoctrinate youth into liberalism.Victory! The price of liberty is eternal vigilance - keep fighting, folks.
Sounds like someone needs to alter that 1929 law to specifically allow for homeschooling so that there can be no confusion/quibbling on the issue.
Well said, keep the heat up. They won’t give up that easy.
YES!!!!! Stop the secular radicals and delusional liberals!!!!
Like alaskangrizzly says, Let’s keep their feet to the fire!
It was ridiculous on the initial ruling, because it is over 20% of the teachers in public schools right now are not qualified. If they kept this qualification requirement then every single one of those teachers would have had to been fired also.
So where is LGM on this one? Is he with the parents of homeschoolers or the fascist teacher union?…
It’s only fair. If Obama can run for president without any credentials, why can’t parents homeschool their own kids?
Good news for now, but I wonder how long it will take before someone finds a way to get this into the Federal court system and bring it before the 9th Circus Court? You know how they love to legislate from the bench on behalf of the Nanny State concept.
And, parents can only homeschool if they agree to teach the same looney, leftwing, liberal curriculum that the public school teaches.
Having home-schooled many years ago - when it was a “way out” concept here in CA -I can say …
I am relieved for those who choose to HS in CA now!
C’mon, you know the answer to that!
lgm will always side with Nazis…
Smell that? The sweet smell of VICTORY!
Now, if liberals could just get used to that smell, we could get somewhere.
Why not? California courts have been allowing abortion clinics to practice without medical credentials for years.
BTW, I am NOT comparing some Californian parents’ desire to educate and better their children’s lives with some Californian parents’ desire to abort them.
pressto: It’s not about qualification, it’s about curriculum. Want a taste of what passes for important at the WEAC national convention? Here ya go:
This is what happens at their national convention. Lots of political activism, but not so much emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic.
I oppose every single one of the points in this agenda, plus the openly hostile attitude of WEAC toward my beliefs (’tolerance’ and ‘diversity’ apparently do not apply to Christians). So homeschooling is my right - and the right of every other parent - who doesn’t want people who choose not to have children to indoctrinate the children of others into diehard liberalism.
Atheling…I am only trying to be fair
Sadly, i wish i had the time to homeschool my children. I’m sure i could handle the situation itself, but..sadly, i have neither the time or the resource to do so.
but i’m glad these folks have the ability to do so, and am glad they are being allowed to continue.
Agreed.
The Sodomites by the Bay have a harder time getting the children of the home schooled. The anti-home school movement is a lot bigger than just the education lobby.
Anyone who believes Woodrow Wilson was a good person find this:
Trickle down fascism.
—
His Messiahship be mocked- the Botox Broad 2
Allie OOP OOP be praised
There’s the rub. This is precisely the insane argument the school district used to get these kids out of the safety of their home and into the public schools.
We can see it now: “Children not being taught how to put condom on banana or embrace Timmy’s 2 mommies; parents face charges of child neglect”.
This issue still needs prayer. Lots of it.
The scary thing is that we have come to a place where a parent’s right to educate their children is even a question. If LIBERTY means anything, it surely means that your children are not the property of the state.
How sad that we have forgotten that just slightly more than 100 years ago, there was only homeschooling or private schooling. It’s only very recently (the industrial revolution) that the state decided that separating children from their parents was a great way to indoctrinate them to the ways of the state.
For what it’s worth, we’ll be homeschooling all 5 of our kids here in California, at least until we get fed-up enough to move to a more sane state. When we first made this decision, we were timid about it, thinking that we’d try it for a year for kindergarten with our oldest daughter and that if it didn’t go well, we’d re-enroll her in public school for 1st grade. At the time, all our friends and family thought we were insane.
First, they said, “How can you educate your own kids? You aren’t even trained to teach anybody anything?”
Eventually, it turned into, “Well, okay, you guys can do it, but you’re both college educated. Certainly, the average person would want to leave all this up to the professionals.”
Now, we look back and think that we really were insane–there is no way we’d let her be enrolled in a public school, with all the crazy crap they want to pull. No thank you. We’ll be giving our kids everything they need at home.
Let me be blunt: all the arguments against homeschooling are bunk. Even parents without college educations produce better educated kids than the so-called “professionals” at your local public school (or even private school). While there is a very slight difference between students educated by college educated parents and high-school educated parents, it’s so small as to be meaningless in the real world, and home schooling overall just demolishes public school.
If you are even thinking about doing this, you owe it to yourself and your kids to attempt it. It’s not always easy, but the rewards are huge.
Yes, well as some secular humanists and atheists think religious upbringing of any kind is abuse, that’s not a stretch, vickisoup.
vickisoup, you got that right.
Why would any parent want to deny their children the experience of eating bad cafeteria food and being in overcrowded classrooms is beyond me…I feel like if you can survive public schools, you can survive anything.
abstractmind, I have no idea about your situation, and I won’t criticize you for any choice you make, but I’d just point out that everything comes down to priorities.
When I look at my Christian duty, my civic duty to the future of this nation, and my personal duty to the beautiful rugrats that I’m raising, the priorities naturally all fall on the side of educating my kids at home.
That has required the sacrifice of our whole family. We live in the San Francisco bay area and things are expensive. My mortgage would make anybody who doesn’t live in San Francisco or Manhattan blanch. (Though ironically we opted for the house that scaled with our income rather than rely on the government to bail us out.
) My wife left a very high-paying high-tech sales job to raise our kids because we think it’s that important. I haven’t bought myself a new car in 10 years. We forgo many vacations and luxuries because we choose to focus on raising our kids to know their responsibilities as Christians, as citizens of the USA, and to the next generation that they will surely raise.
For me, it’s about far more than whether my kids can read, write, and do arithmetic. It’s about the future at a personal and national level.
Why are we wasting time teaching kids in the first place?
They won’t become producing adults for another 10 to 15 years!
Think of all that education money we could be using someplace else, like the military.
I believe your assesment is fair.
But as a single father, my choices are limited. I could stop work and homeschool, but i have no other means of support at that point. Logistically, the benefit of homeschooling is outweighed by keeping the lights on and having food on the table. Situation being a little different, and there was another source of income….i would do it in a heartbeat.
Who are the idiots on the court of appeals? To find one answer in state law, then find the opposite answer a few months later when enough people complain, makes the rule of law a fraud to be replaced by a popularity contest.
Other than that, I am glad to see that they corrected a stupid decision. Parents should always have control of their childrens education.
I’m not a teacher but I am a enthusiastic beliver in distant learning. Home schooling is such a great candidate for distant learning. With the internet, DVD of text books, and a little government funding national home school by grades would be such rich educational experience. Why such has not been yet developed is beyond me. Good parents are not available to all kids but for kids who do have such deserve at a fraction of public cost per student a superior education (standarized testing for pass/fail/grades would also be possible and accreditation would be of the highest standard and available to all).
Of course in 1929 you could get a pretty good education in a California Public School.
PapaLoui #26, applying the Democrat don’t drill logic to the education of our kids cracks me up, chuckle of the day.
abstractmind, yes, if you’re a single father, that makes things extremely difficult and I completely understand your choices. Job 1 is certainly earning a living for your family. Good call.
Still no word from our resident liberal LGM…. about this decision (crickets chirping as the evening begins)…It must be he supports the fascist teacher union.
I no longer feel so alone in this world, there are so many right thinking people on this blog, christian, moral, good parents, concern for the country. I come here to read about your problems, your solutions and your never give up and let the bad guys win attitude.
Thank you.
I read Atheling’s link about German homeschooling of today…it looks like the Germans haven’t learned much from their Nazi period.
We start officially homeschooling our youngest a week from Monday. We are a single income family and I know there are many single mothers and fathers out there who homeschool as well. If you are truly concerned about your child’s emotional, spiritual, and intellectual well-being you will find a way to make it happen. There are so many resources out there as well as homeschool co-ops who offer their time to teach each others children. I know this may sound harsh, but as Christians, we have no business sending our children to public schools. The argument about “salt and light” does not fit here. Our children are not fully grown and mature in their worldview. What we are doing is sending off our children to the training camp of the enemy. Find a way to homeschool and you’ll be truly blesed.
that should read our oldest (not youngest!)
In the realm of fantasy, but I just re-read the 7th Harry Potter book. One of the first things the villain does is make school attendance compulsory so his followers can, among other things, teach the young wizards that Muggles are no better than animals and need to be oppressed by magic peoples.
Sound familiar? Art imitating life, that.
Don’t really get the home schooling thing. If the public schools in your neighborhood are lacking in some manner or you’ve got some sort of religious issue with public schools, why not just send your kids to an appropriate private school? If cost is an issue, most private schools (religious or secular) offer pretty generous scholarship packages.
dakine, I doubt that the majority of Christians who choose home school over private school have money as the number one factor. They choose to do it because family comes first. Most people who choose to home school feel that the public school system itself is lacking, not just the local schools. If you really want to get the home school thing do a search and you’ll find hundreds of reasons people homeschool, probably different ones for each family choosing to do it.
When I was in grad school I had a 2 year old and wasn’t even thinking about what we were doing for school. I had two good friends who were homeschooling their children. I thought about it, researched it and we are starting with our now six year old this year. We’re in New Mexico though, not California. One reason we chose the job here was for the really nice homeschooling laws.
The closest private school in my area is 50 miles away. That’s a lot of commuting time and expense.
Not every place is an urban setting.
And if there isn’t a suitable private school, then what?
Up until recently, homeschooling was the only alternative to private school. And, today, most parents are not satisfied with the level of education received at either option.
So - a pointed question - why do parents not have the right to decide how their children are educated? With rare exceptions (and everything has exceptions), 99% of parents who homeschool have their children’s bests interest at heart. And - as evidenced by the winner of that spelling bee (last year, I believe) - homeschool kids are neither unsocialized nor stupid.
Oh, so many comments:
MM: “Homeschoolers are a threat to their turf, a threat to their funding, a threat to their long-held and fiercely protected monopoly.”
How stupid could the NEA be? Homeschooling kids amount to something like 1.5% of all school-aged children. We’re not taking away that much money from you idiots. Why don’t they attack the private schoolers? Because most of their teachers are also NEA indoctrinated.
Tre, #10: “parents can only homeschool if they agree to teach the same looney, leftwing, liberal curriculum that the public school teaches.”
Not exactly correct. We HS as long as we teach the same subjects. We don’t have to teach the same curriculum, thank God.
bit-boy, #29: “With the internet, DVD of text books, and a little government funding national home school by grades would be such rich educational experience. Why such has not been yet developed is beyond me.”
This sort of thing is available in many school districts, and is precisely why many of us HSers don’t like it. Because it involves teaching state-approved curriculum (have you ever really looked at those textbooks?). What’s more, once you accept any funding of any type, you also must accept things like state tests, teachers visiting your house, and the like. No thanks.
Dakine, #39: A HSing family that we know, with no money problems at all here in sunny central California, sent their two girls to a very expensive Catholic school nearby (Melanie Griffith’s kid goes there). $32K per year. They withdrew their girls after her 8-year old came home asking what a “b**w job” was, because a boy at her school asked her for one. They also got disgusted at the comments they’d hear in the morning when they dropped their girls off; kids making fun of other kids because of their clothing.
What I’m saying is, private school is not always the answer, despite scholarships and financial aide. And besides, if you can do a better job educating your kids than private or public school, why not HS?
For the record, we’ve been homeschooling our kids for eight years. Our youngest (of 4) is starting kindergarten. We homeschool for the following reasons, not necessarily in order:
1) Better education (we follow a classical model)
2) Vacation whenever we want (e.g. we other families can’t go on vacation)
3) We move too often (we’re a military family, and thank God we won’t be in CA much longer)
For anyone reading this who is considering HSing or had just started, I’d like to put in a plug for the Home School Legal Defense Association. We’ve had to use their legal assistance twice in our eight years, and in a relatively HS-friendly state (FL). Well worth the $100 a year.
On August 8th, 2008 at 3:44 pm, englishqueen01 said:
pressto: It’s not about qualification, it’s about curriculum. Want a taste of what passes for important at the WEAC national convention? Here ya go:
(see post #15)
There are just too many fascist qualities in that list of tenets for me.
Have a look (on an empty stomach) at the publication “Radical Teacher.”
http://www.radicalteacher.org/about.asp
Lots of antisemitism and other “good” clean Democrat fun!
On August 9th, 2008 at 12:24 am, dakine said:
Don’t really get the home schooling thing. If the public schools in your neighborhood are lacking in some manner or you’ve got some sort of religious issue with public schools, why not just send your kids to an appropriate private school? If cost is an issue, most private schools (religious or secular) offer pretty generous scholarship packages.
California also has a court case pending on this issue. The University of California System is trying to bar any high graduate from acceptance if the kids were not taught certain subjects (propaganda of social thought and evolution as fact). Specifically they are targeting the private Christian schools and their curriculum. In other words, it’s okay to go to a non-indoctrination center (Christian school) so long as you still receive the indoctrination.