The appelate judges reversed the ruling so homeschooling is legal and parents are not required to be credentialed. Thanks to the 60+ lawyers representing the 100,000+ CA homeschoolers, pro bono! I urge all homeschoolers to join a state wide homeschool organization to be on top of the legislation where you membership dues help support your basic parental rights to choice of education.

It is being reheard now. Not that they will come up with a ruling right now but it's being reheard to see what will come next. It's a process.

I thought this ruling was going to be appealed?

No only have homeschoolers won spelling bee's and geography bee's but for those states that do require standardized test of homeschoolers have scored higher than their public school peers. Now I am not saying all public schools are bad. I am saying though that homeschooling has proved in many different areas that it does work. Collages now are actively excepting and looking for homeschool students.

Does homeschooling always work? No not always but then again neither does any other form of education. So I really hope California doesn't make it illegal to homeschool without credentials.

This issue is headed back to court today. It will be interesting to see if the court sways in favor of homeschoolers given that Gov. Schwarzenegger and State Superintendent O'Connell are in favor of allowing parents to homeschool. The evidence in my mind is clearly in favor of homeschoolers given that many have shown fantastic results for their kids--national spelling bee winners and admission to college.

This is so unfair, when private schools can and do hire anyone off the street to teach. Why penalize honest parents who are not looking to make money, just to educate their children? Why are private schools, such a big business, so completely unregulated?

No worries. I just wanted to let you know ;) Thanks though!

I'm sorry, I'm registered with so many major news sites, I forget which require registration or not.

LA Times does require registration, but it is a free site. I use a throwaway email account and a password and I'm in. Next time I link I'll mention the registration.

San Francisco Chronicle doesn't appear to require registration, so Denali's link below should be fine.

I tried to go to it but it say's I have to be a registered user. Thanks though.

The LA TImes news article regarding Gov. Schwarzenegger's response is available at www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-homeschool08mar08,1,2410058.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Thank you for posting all the info. All though I do not live in California I am a homeschool mom so this is very important to me. Thanks again.

Thanks for so much information!

I live in California, and you should have heard the talk shows on this issue. Many callers backed the ban because "parents will fill their kids' heads with junk" or "anybody without a (teaching) credential is incompetent to teach"

The San Jose Mercury News had a balanced article

www.mercurynews.com/losgatos/ci_8486520

Court Ruling would make California strictest on home-schooling


It is hard to say for sure, but many homeschoolers in the Silicon Valley don't fit the religious fundamentalist stereotype -- I'd say there are many kids who are being homeschooled because parents don't want their kids held to the NCLB curricula, or the family's local school district is in crisis, etc.


The Governator has come out in favor of homeschooling:

www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/07/INCHVG0SD.DTL&type=politics


"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised today to ensure that parents have the right to homeschool their children, after a state appeals court ruling severely restricted the practice in California.<br /><br />"Every California child deserves a quality education and parents should have the right to decide what's best for their children," the governor said in a statement. "Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children's education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts and if the courts don't protect parents' rights then, as elected officials, we will."<br /><br />

The legal scholar Eugene Volokh's take on the issue

volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_03_02-2008_03_08.shtml#1204845642


Doc's Sonrise rants, in which he avers that the ruling is not a problem.

docsdomain.net/blog/?p=663

I disagree with Doc's analysis, which is essentially "No problem--just form a private school". As I understand it, if the ruling stands, enforcement will be left to the districts. And individual districts can be helpful or punitive -- more or less at the whim of the Superintendent or the school board.

Also see here:

community.greatschools.net/groups/12143/discussion/151233?cpage=1#comment_151412

It is sad that this occurance could make the court rule in this way. It seems like they didn't take the whole picture into account and were going on pure emotion, which a court is not supposed to do.

We had a case several years back in Tucson where the natural father and his live-in girlfriend were abusing his 10 year old daughter - the girlfriend knew and participated in all of it. They had the girl locked in a room with no food or water or clothing and raped & beat her daily. She was taken out of public school & registered as homeschooled since age 7 or 8, and even though they'd lived in the neighborhood for many, many years nobody wondered what happened to the girl. There were other younger kids in the house, the children of the girlfriend, but they were allowed to go to school under the threat that if they ever told anyone that they would be beaten. She eventually escaped, I think with the inadvertant help of the other kids, and the father and girlfriend were jailed.

It brought to light the use of homeschooling as a cover for abuse in our own community but the statistics showed (and the news actually & surprisingly covered it fairly) that abuse in homeschooling families is no more than abuse in any other family where the child attends an outside school where their clothing covers the marks made or threats are made to prevent the child from talking.

This has been a debate across the country I think ever since homeschooling began to pick up steam.

The only thing that can stop legislation like this are grassroots campaigns to educate people about the facts of homeschooling as a real option, and the facts about abuse.

According the article, the state doesn't plan to come after families--they're saying it's the local districts' job. But with money in tight supply, don't be surprised if some districts actually do look at their options in trying to get these kids into the district (and then the schools get paid for them).

I have read a little about this case and from what I have read that they had some grown children they graduated from homeschooling. Another thing to is they recently did the study www.bobsheppard.com/Home_School/brian_ray_article.htm on homeschooling and parents with a high school diploma, parent's without a diploma and parents that have some or a graduate of collage. Interesting finding that even of children of parents who didn't have a highschool diploma (one or both) did better than their public schooled peers. Just some information. Not saying if I know the parents in the story was abusing their kids or not I just wanted to show you what the studies have shown.

This is atrocious! I feel badly for the kids in this case, but I highly doubt that their experience is representative of the majority of home schooled kids. Even if most homeschoolers were/are Christian that certainly does not mean that their parents are abusive or under qualified.

I suppose there may be an argument for encouraging parents to get certified - I don't know enough about the general picture. But I do know that the penalties listed above are far too harsh!

Thanks for posting this Denali.

I've always had in the back of my head that if I needed to homeschool my kids, I could. They've always managed to get in the schools I wanted them when I wanted them in, but there's always a chance the luck will run out. I've also always been terrified that something like this ruling would come about and the witch hunt would begin.

This case is the extreme example of who should not homeschool, and doesn't represent the many families I am aware of that homeschool in my area (simply because so many of the schools are huge here--and HORRIBLE). I coach sports and the homeschooled kids are at the same places as their public school counterparts--in many cases they're far ahead.

Very little they do in CA anymore surprises me, but this comes as a big shocker.

I want to add two more links

Homeschool Association of California

www.hsc.org/

Homeschool Legal Defense Association

www.hslda.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1