Home Schooling Declared Illegal in CA!

[Thetagirl218]

According to a writ issued by the Second Appeals Court in the State of California, parents do not have the right to home school their children unless they hold a valid teacher's certificate. I have read the ruling and the subsequent articles (In fact I have highlighted both!)

This ruling will effect many people in the State of California, including private schools. I am holding my opinions and my background for right now because i want to see what ya'all think........What do you all think?

Article about the ruling

The actual writ (It is PDF Format)

[Fawn Liebowitz]

parents do not have the write to home school their children

pssst...wouldn't that be the "right"?

[Drolefille]

Do I get to tease you about using "write" instead of "right?"

I'm not super thrilled about the decision, but I think it addresses the fact that children need a complete education, not one governed only by the parent's interest or area of expertise. My dad's an engineer, could he teach me literature? Not really. There are parents out there doing it "right" but there are some out there doing it wrong as well.

Though there's some teacher's union pandering here, I think that the heart was in the right place, I just don't think it was the right solution.

[Thetagirl218]

Originally Posted by Fawn Liebowitz

pssst...wouldn't that be the "right"?

What can I say? Its been a long day....!

[AGDLynn]

A few years ago, someone I worked with "home schooled" her kid although I'm not sure how b/c she was at work for more than 8 hours a day, about an hour both ways to work. Hubby worked in the middle of the night so I'm not exactly sure who was supposed to do the teaching.

[texas*princess]

Originally Posted by Thetagirl218

According to a writ issued by the Second Appeals Court in the State of California, parents do not have the right to home school their children unless they hold a valid teacher's certificate. I have read the ruling and the subsequent articles (In fact I have highlighted both!)

This ruling will effect many people in the State of California, including private schools. I am holding my opinions and my background for right now because i want to see what ya'all think........What do you all think?

Article about the ruling

The actual writ (It is PDF Format)

What will all those kids who are wanna-be Hollywood stars do??? They can't possibly star in feature films AND go to school at the same time!

[DSTCHAOS]

This is a good and necessary change.

[LucyKKG]

I don't feel like I know enough about home-schooling to properly judge this situation. My first instinct is to say OF COURSE kids shouldn't be home-schooled. However, there are so many situations where it may be necessary/preferable, and I honestly know very little about the program(s?).

My cousin (in OR, not CA) was home-schooled because that part of the family is Jehovah's witnesses. I think he ended up graduating early, but I don't really get how that works.

[PeppyGPhiB]

I think this is probably a good thing. Too many parents take their kids out of public school because they just want to teach their kids what THEY want them taught, not what the kids need to learn in order to function in this world. There are many parents that do a great job at homeschooling, but there are so many that mess up their kids, too. Frankly, homeschooling has allowed a lot of hellicopter parents to control every aspect of their kids' lives.

Furthermore, I think homeschooling has allowed our states to ignore the state of public education in this country. Instead of being the "only when necessary" option that it once was, it's become an acceptable solution whenever parents just don't like their local public school...basically giving up on public schools. It's for this same reason that I don't really like charter schools - good schools are good for our society, and we should want to provide a good education to everyone.

[UGAalum94]

At first this decision seems reasonable then you stop and think about how getting a teacher credential is such junk. Having one doesn't demonstrate that you actually know much or could determine what a good general education would be. (And I say that having a teaching certificate, so please don't be insulted if you are a teacher or on behalf of teachers. Just ask yourself if you really learned that much content from teacher ed classes and ask yourself if you only had to teach one or two kids and you had access age appropriate materials, would you have needed what you did learn.)

I think much better methods to ensure that home schooled kids are getting a good education would be first, as AGDLynn pointed out, to make sure that the parents are actually offering instruction to the kids (some people claim to home school to get around truancy laws) and then, rather than worrying about the parents' credentials, to assess the kids on what they know by using the same exams that the kids in public schools have to take.

Even these requirements are more intrusive than I think parents should have to put up because I don't think parents should be obligated to provide the state academic authority over their kids if they don't want the service provided and there's no other evidence of neglect or abuse. Decision making from on high in public school (curriculum, methods, materials, discipline, etc.) is sketchy enough that if you have the resources and the will to do it, you probably could do a better job at home and there are plenty of other programs for kids in the areas of socialization.

I have no idea what the California constitution says about education and from what I understand the terms of the decision are actually narrower than what's being described in the news.

[SWTXBelle]

I have homeschooled my 18 year old senior.
Her ACT scores are in the top 5% of the country.
Study after study has shown that home schooled students do BETTER than their public and private schooled peers.
NO ONE knows a child better than a parent, and it doesn't take an education degree to be a good teacher.
What am I basing that on? Maybe the fact that when I graduated with my B.A. in English I had TWICE as many English courses under my belt than someone "certified" to teach. Maybe on the fact that while I am considered unfit to teach public school, I got to spend 13 years flunking graduates of public school in college. (I can't tell you how many of them couldn't even write a decent paragraph, had no idea what subject/verb agreement was, or a thesis)Or perhaps the 7 years I spent teaching AP English to private school students who went on to become National Merit Scholars, Scholastic Writing Award winners, and Academic team state champions, not to mention the litany of top-ranked schools they went on to attend. Maybe my experience with the education majors who took a few English classes with me as I went for my graduate degree - and who complained about having to write papers every week, and were amazed that we had to write a thesis and have a comprehensive examination - neither of which they were required to do.
Homeschooling was largely illegal only 20 years ago, and the fact that it is now the fastest growing sector of education is a testment to the HSLDA and the many dedicated parents who have seen fit to put their childrens' education first. Studies looking into everything from academic progress to social skills have shown that homeschoolers don't just do okay, they perform above their peers.
Homeschooling does not mean that only the parent teaches the child, although that is often the case. I had other parents help by teaching classes in things like math which I did not feel comfortable teaching. My daughter has successfully passed college calculus and chemistry, taught by college professors. The curriuculum and materials out there are just incredible - far more innovative than anything I came across while teaching high school.
My daughter was never held hostage to the lower half of her class - never was bored because she had learned the material but her teacher had to keep trying to get the others in the class up to her level. She is an incredible writer, a gifted musician, and has a far more comprehensive grasp of subjects such as history, philosophy and anatomy, for example, than any other high schooler I've known. (Certainly more than I, a graduate of public schools, could have dreamed of back in 1982)
Given the success of HSLDA in the past, I have no doubt that this ruling will eventually be overturned. Education is properly the responsiblity of the parent - please show me in the Constitution where the federal government was given that duty. Homeschooling scares the teachers' unions and the status quo not because it doesn't work - but because it does.
No, I've never taken the 3 hour course in bulletin boards that some of my sisters who were eduation majors have. So perhaps my bulletin boards weren't up to snuff. But I can point not only to my daugher, but to the dozens of high school students and hundreds of college students who have passed through my classes and gone on to be successful in their college and professional carrers, as the proof that an education degree is not required to be a great teacher.
Do I wish I could in good faith send my children to public school? Yes. But I am not willing to sacrifice their education and well-being to a social experiment. The public school system as we know it has failed, but no one is willing to say so and do what needs to be done to address its many problems. A band aid here, a band aid there is the best that they will do.

[bejazd]

This one hits pretty close to home for me, as I live in a semi-rural area where many students are home schooled. There are also 3 public high schools within 2 miles of each other, one of which just went charter. I can understand the many reasons for choosing home schooling- I would not put my child on a school bus (some kids here can be on a bus for up to 3 hours a day!)

I agree with what the judge was trying to do in trying to make sure that home schooled children are actually being educated. I wonder why he didn't enforce something like enrolling the children in their school districts' home school program, which gives the parents some guidelines, offers free textbooks, and can give parents the option of sending their children to a traditional school for just one or two classes.

[UGAalum94]

SWTXbelle, I have no problem with homeschooling and agree with many of your points, but I'm not sure that I'd say that the public school system has failed. Is it failing some places? No doubt. Are the educational bureaucrats often making it worse? Absolutely. Could it be better almost everyplace? Sure.

But I know that the public school where I teach with the assistance of the students' parents produces 300+ competent graduates a year (along with a couple of incompetent ones whose parents worked against us) and probably at least 150+ of them are very well qualified for college level work at selective colleges. It isn't failed or failing as an institution by any reasonable measure.

But anyone who wants to home school their children is certainly welcome to in my book.

[DeltAlum]

We know a number of people who home schooled their children who did very well in college or whatever they decided to do later in their lives.

There are certainly some people who shouldn't be allowed to teach children, but, unfortunately, some of them hold college degrees and teaching certificates. They just aren't any good at being a teacher. Conversely, there are a lot of parents who are great teachers.

I'll bet there is an appeal on this.

[Jimmy Choo]

While homeschooling itself is a whole 'nother ball of wax, it sounds like there were other issues in this home. The quality of their schooling only being one.