California Homeschooling – Get It Right!

I have read enough about this California Homeschooling ruling and folks need to do a little homework to stop spreading bad information.  Here is some inoculation to the bad "meme" as it were.

From Christianity Today (HT: Jim West):

The parents, identified in court papers only by the last initial L, but identified by several news organizations as Phillip and Mary Long, told the court that their religious beliefs for homeschooling "are based on biblical teachings and principles." But that's not enough for an exemption from California education requirements, the court ruled February 28.

"Such sparse representations are too easily asserted by any parent who wishes to homeschool his or her child," Croskey wrote.

This bit is at the end of the ruling in which the Long family attempted to invoke rulings favoring Amish exceptions to compulsory education. The point made here is that your religious conviction alone is insufficient evidence in the case.  Christianity Today put this at the top of their article which then skews the entire report which was therefore misleading and wrong to print.

But Christianity Today is not alone here.  The Christian Science Monitor also got it wrong:

A court ruling that California parents "do not have a constitutional right" to home-school their children has touched off anger and bewilderment throughout America's home-schooling community and prompted a denunciation from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The first line here is complete untruth since it is taken out of context.  That is not what the ruling is – at all!  According to the California statute, three conditions need to apply in order to receive legal exemption from the California compulsory education statute as follows from the case itself:

It is clear to us that enrollment and attendance in a public full-time day school is required by California law for minor children unless (1) the child is enrolled in a private full-time day school and actually attends that private school, (2) the child is tutored by a person holding a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught, or (3) one of the other few statutory exemptions to compulsory public school attendance (Ed. Code, § 48220 et seq.) applies to the child. Because the parents in this case have not demonstrated that any of these exemptions apply to their children, we will grant the petition for extraordinary writ.

This is not an attack on homeschooling or on religion.  It is upholding clear laws in place that constrain what the exemptions of schooling under the compulsory code in California actually are.   Homeschooling itself was not declared "unconstitutional" here and if you read the ruling it is markedly clear.

So where did this bit of bad information that is passing through fact checkers in the media (and blogs who trust those sources)?  The story broke in the LA Times this way:

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.

Advocates for the families vowed to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court. Enforcement until then appears unlikely, but if the ruling stands, home-schooling supporters say California will have the most regressive law in the nation.

But this quote from the same article is the kicker that is the source of the mis-information problem:

"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the district court. "Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program.

Articles have focused on that first line alone without any consideration of context whatsoever.  How this quote is written provokes the reaction to lead people to believe that homeschooling is suddenly unconstitutional.  The real issue is that the parents did not observe the latter conditions and therefore did not have a right to simply pull their kids out of school in order to engage in their own schooling program at home.  The homeschooling situation did not successfully meet the exemptions provided by the state for homeschooling and that is the issue.  The parents are the ones who are at fault for not following state statutes.  The idea or practice of homeschooling itself as an alternative entity for education is not at stake here.

Go here for another good analysis that goes into this a bit more (HT: Brian Saint-Paul).

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