Homeschooling. Is this possible? Well, if you’ve been following the news (SF Chronicle, Focus on the Family, Modesto Bee, SJ Merc News, LA Times), you might have noticed that the California Court of Appeals made a three justice ruling on a case that only involved one family who was charged with abuse. They happened to be homeschoolers. And the activist judges decided this was their opportunity to rule not merely on the merits of the case, but on all homeschooling families. Essentially, the argument boils down to these three judges saying that parents do not have the constitutional right to educate their children in the way they see fit. Rather than the judges taking homeschooling on its merits, which is to study the effects of homeschooling on kids and their education, they have made a broad sweeping decision that has NOTHING to do with the effects of homeschool. Instead, they have decided to play God when it comes to homeschooling.
Now I am not a radical homeschooler. I believe God can and does use families in the public schools. I believe families make that decision for themselves and I know that even if my kids were in the public schools, I can lead them to still have a heart for the Lord (though it’s the Lord who actually saves). However, I have also believed that I should be allowed to homeschool if I so wish. So if the case goes to the California Supreme Court and the Court rules that Homeschooling is illegal, we would have these options:
1. Leave the state so we can homeschool, which would mean leaving my church and home.
2. Send the kids to public school.
3. Send the kids to private school.
4. Continue homeschooling as civil disobedience in line with Romans 14, arguing that God’s law trumps the state’s law, but risk imprisonment and having the children taken away.
5. Have Shua get credentialed as a teacher.
For us, none of these decisions are easy. Only one other family in our church homeschools, so thankfully this doesn’t impact many in our church. But this is a trial for those of us who do. So if you wouldn’t mind lifting up a prayer to the Lord that God would lead the judges to bring all the families favor. There are over 200,000 kids who are being homeschooled in the state of California.
Even if you are not homeschooling your children, please consider signing this petition. You do not need to join HSLDA. As for us, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Sam, I stand with you in this and have signed the petition.
Posted by TimK | March 7, 2008, 3:12 pmI’m not a lawyer, but for at least two reasons, I don’t believe this decision will ultimately be sufficient to threaten the viability of homeschooling in this state, so while I think legal response is important, I also think it’s important not to overreact, or to overestimate the long-term impact of this ruling at this point. Why?
First, if I read the decision correctly, the appeals court erroneously stated that only credentialed teachers are qualified to teach children; but this rule does not even apply to traditional independent/private schools. As the CA Dept of Education website notes, the law only stipulates that private schools employ “persons capable of teaching” – most private school teachers are not certified per se, and this is completely legitimate. By the logic of the court, not only are homeschools illegal; so are all private schools, whether parochial or secular!
Secondly, the appeals court also suggested that a homeschool is “clearly” not a private school. But this clarity is exactly what is not present in the law; up to this point, it has been up to local school districts and administrators to approve any particular homeschooling arrangement as being suitable under the private-school exemption to the universal public schooling mandate. And unless the courts are going to begin taking over the function of ruling exactly which schools (home or private) are “clearly” schools and which are not, it seems unlikely that this ruling alone can abolish home schools in California.
With these obvious problems in the decision, I find it difficult to believe that the CA Supreme Court would simply stand by and let it be established as precedent. Moreover, I personally think it would be wise for the HLDSA to enlist private schools and their lobby in this fight; the implications clearly go beyond homeschooling because of the carelessness with which this decision was reached and written.
One last thing: while this case might reflect an instance of judicial activism, I also note that the ruling was prompted by the plaintiff; the state explicitly asked the court to rule on the constitutionality of home schooling, because (if I read the decision correctly) the public defender had made it a critical piece of the defense for the allegedly abusive parents (a poor strategy, given the ambiguity of CA law on this issue!!). So this appears to me to have been a legal strategy on the plaintiff’s part, not simply an arbitrary choice on the part of the appeals court to focus on a tangential issue. Of course, I might be misreading the decision; but if I’m not, then I think it’s unhelpful to rant on and on about this being an obvious example of careless judicial activism. A poor judicial decision, yes, but a reason to storm the steps of the Appeals Court, not necessarily.
Posted by Eric | March 9, 2008, 9:40 amWouldn’t it be better to change the law so that homeschooling was permitted. That is, remove the ambiguity of the current law.
Posted by archshrk | March 10, 2008, 1:15 pmI signed the petition at HSLDA website. No problem.
Didn’t plan to move out of state even if homeschooling was illegal.
Well, Wellspring can start an ISP for homeschoolers and/ Christian school (Shua, get your teaching credential!) just like Covenant Life church in Md.
Most CA homeschoolers who file the private school affidavit like the ambiguous law so they don’t have to submit to standardized testing, attendance, etc.
Posted by annw | March 10, 2008, 2:58 pmannw’s right: the ambiguity of the law is its strength as far as homeschoolers are concerned, which is why HSLDA is trying to have the decision depublished (so that it does not establish legal precedent). Removing the ambiguity of the law would likely introduce a whole host of additional bureaucratic difficulties as far as specifying exactly what a legal private or home school was like — which in some ways defeats some of the strengths of homeschooling!
Posted by Eric | March 10, 2008, 4:53 pm