Home Schooling Declared Illegal in CA!

[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.