Homeschooling in California

Great Debates
1

A California appellate court recently reached a decision that will, if upheld, severely eviscerate the ability of California parents to home-school their children. The decision says that every school-age child must either attend a public full-time day school, be enrolled in a private full-time day school and actually attending that private school, or be tutored by a person holding a valid California state teaching credential for the grade being taught.

Parents Jonathan and Mary Grace L. challenged the law, seeking a finding that they had a constitutional right to home-school their children. The court disagreed.

I find the distinction interesting, especially when you consider that in California, a “private full-time day school” may use teahcers that do not hold valid California state teaching credentials. But I’m not prepared to say that the court is wrong.

Comments?

2

Requiring education as the state sees fit is a valid exercise of the state’s police power. I can think of plenty of rational reasons to draw a distinction between a private school and a home.

I do not like courts creating rights. I see no reason to extend a right (parental rights) that is not even in the Constitution.

3

Actually, the SCOTUS has found such a right in the constitution, and the CA court agreed such a right exists, but that CA can still regulate homeschooling.

Here’s a discussion of the CA case (with a link to the opinion). It argues that the decision is unlikely to mean an end to homeschooling in CA. I imagine they’re correct, I suspect this will just lead to the legislature allowing parents to register as “private schools” with some minimum of State oversight (which as I understand it, is pretty much how homeschooling is done in CA now anyways).

4

I aware that the Court claims there is such a right. The Court finds all kinds of rights that are not really in the Constitution: right to an abortion, right to engage in sodomy, etc.

5

If you’re interested, you could read up on the homeschooling folks’ perspective here. Start at the bottom for chronological order.

The way most independent homeschoolers operate in California is to register as a private school. This is what I do. It is simple, and allows me great freedom. The family in the court case was registered in a private umbrella school. I don’t know why they decided to try to challenge the existing arrangement, which is a very good one for California homeschoolers.

Currently no one thinks that homeschooling will become “illegal” in California, with that opinion becoming enforced (which would be nigh impossible for practical reasons). The worry is that legislators will look at our nice comfy lack of regulation and decide that oversight, regulation, and generally lots of control is in order. Independent homeschoolers don’t want this to happen for several reasons:

–It’s very difficult to write a good law. It is far more likely than not that we would end up with cumbersome yet unhelpful hoops to jump through.

–In general, homeschooled students in states without much regulation do better (by the usual testing measures) than homeschooled students in more regulated states.

–It’s not like California has lots of money to invest in a new layer of educational bureaucracy. Homeschoolers tend to feel that since the CA public schools aren’t educating the kids they already have up to their own standards, it makes little sense to start trying to control the homeschooled ones as well, who are mostly doing better than that.
We like our freedom to tailor our children’s educations to their individual needs. This is the great strength of homeschooling, and regulation undermines that. I homeschool independently because I want to do it myself, without someone else telling me what to teach–if I wanted that I would join the local public ISP (there are 3) and get free materials. But I have a different system than the state does. I don’t want to be told what to teach for, say, 2nd grade science; we are quite happy doing astronomy this semester instead of whatever it is the public schools do. I also enjoy the freedom to use materials of my own choosing. If I want to use a Mennonite grammar text (as I do), then I jolly well don’t want anyone telling me I can’t.

So what we want to do is get the judge’s opinion depublished, so that it won’t serve as precedent. We also want to emphasize that we’re doing just fine and we don’t need regulation, so please don’t start designing any.

People worry about abuse, it is true. However, as you can see, the family in the original case (which is a trainwreck, and not a good test case) was taken to court under the welfare laws, which provide every power the courts need to deal with such cases. The judge had the power to send the kids to school under the welfare laws, but chose to drag education law in so that he could make a statement about homeschooling in general.

So there are a few of my thoughts, unorganized as they are.

6

The First Amendment is in the Constitution, isn’t it?

7

In other words, you would like the state of California to continue to ignore its own statutes on the subject of home-schooling, statutes that home-schoolers have been violating for years?

How about a different concept: the state re-writes the home-schooling laws to conform more closely to what is actual practice in California.

Or, how about an entirely novel concept: the home-schoolers in the state begin to actually follow the law?

Oh, yeah, right, silly me…

8

Of course, but it does not apply.

(And even if it did never should have been incorporated in the first place.)

9

What if the law in question is on shaky constitutional ground, much like those laws in the late-19th and early-20th century that sought to bar parochial education?

10

How so? I fail to see any reason that the state should have more power than a parent in determining a child’s education. In fact, “education as the state sees fit” sounds vaguely totalitarian to me.

Yes, since its statutes are a violation of individual rights.

11

Please explain how it doesn’t - said amendment provides not only for the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech but also freedom of assembly. And that latter freedom has been broadly interpreted to include assemblies for the purpose of disseminating information.

12

No one says you cannot get together a group of kids and give them information. The state is just saying you have to educate your children in the manner required by our laws (which are a valid exercise of the state’s police power). So if you want to have an assembly of children go for it, just do not think it will satisfy the state’s education requirements.

13

In California, it is legal to homeschool in 3 different ways:

By having a teaching credential.

By enrolling in an umbrella school such as a public or private ISP, of which there are many.

By establishing the family as a private school.
I’m a private school and registered with the state as such. AFAIK, I have followed the law. I could expand my school and take in more students, but I have no plans to do so at this time. California homeschoolers have been successfully doing this for 20 years. Why fix it if it ain’t broke? Any new legislation would almost certainly be worse and more expensive.

14

But it was pointed out earlier that if those requirements are too strict, they will run afoul of the Constitution. Certainly the Supreme Court had issues with laws crafted to severely restrict parochial education. Why should laws that similarly severely restrict home schooling just get a pass?

You are arguing as if the requirements of the state are paramount here - when I believe courts will look at these in conjunction with how they impact those First Amendment issues I mentioned earlier.

15

Yes, but the Ninth Amendment states:

Why do you think the government should be able to limit my right to do what I wish with my body with other consenting adults (sodomy)? What would be the government’s justification for denying this right?

16

Comes under the state’s (every state’s) general plenary police power. The legitimacy of federal government involvement in education is debatable, but not state.

17

Nobody really knows what the Ninth Amendment means, nor the Tenth either; there has never been any significant case law construing them.

18

But home-schoolers generally base their arguments not on the First Amendment but on a “zone of autonomy” which the Constitution has frequently been held to imply even though it’s nowhere spelled out; same principle underlying the SCOTUS decisions that states can’t ban abortion, sodomy or mixed-race marriage.

Furthermore, nobody says homeschoolers can’t hold their own educational sessions, with or without state-accredited teachers, in addition to what the state requires; the issue is whether such sessions can substitute for state requirements, and on that issue the First Amendment is completely irrelevant.

19

Eh? You mean, incorporated so as to apply to state government as well as federal? Whyever not?

20

So you think the 9th Amendment creates (or protects) judicially enforceable, individual rights that can negate state (not federal) laws?