and as continuation on the topic of home schooling, here is an interesting piece. I rarely agree with the author but this time I am on his side.www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080323/OPINION/803230308/1001/newsfrontMaking tutors hold licenses an assault on home schooling
By Ruben Navarrette Jr. • March 23, 2008
There is a lot to criticize in an outrageous California appellate court decision that threatens to outlaw home schooling in the state. But there are also a few things worth celebrating.
Citing a truancy law that requires children ages 6 to 18 to attend public or private schools or receive tutoring from a credentialed teacher, the Southern California-based court ruled that parents cannot home-school their children unless at least one parent has a teaching credential.
Oh, is that all? An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 students are home-schooled in California, and there are many thousands more around the country. Some of these families are affiliated with organizations, often religion-based, from which they buy curricula, receive training and organize classes.
But few of the parents have teaching credentials. And for many, going through the training for a teaching credential — part instruction and part indoctrination — would defeat the purpose of home schooling, which is, in many cases, to escape the orthodoxy of the public education system.
When you think about it, much of education reform revolves around this notion of escaping. Those who advocate vouchers, or call for failing schools to be shut down, or — in this case — defend the right of parents to home-school their children, want to give students a means of escape from low-performing schools, poorly managed districts and all the rest. Those who resist such efforts have constructed elaborate arguments against reform efforts, but mainly what they want is to keep students from escaping in order to keep power concentrated in the public schools and the bureaucracies that run them.
The appellate court ruling on home schooling stemmed from a case involving not education or truancy, but — of all things — child welfare. The children belong to Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, Calif., a couple who had been referred to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services on various charges, including accusations of child abuse. It just so happens that Mary Long — who holds no teaching credential — home-schools all eight of their children. They are also enrolled in an independent study program through a parochial school, which makes periodic visits to the home.
A lawyer appointed to represent two of the Long children in the child welfare case requested that the court require them to physically attend a public or private school, where adults could keep an eye on them. The appellate court did that — and more. It ruled that the family's arrangement with the parochial school doesn't amount to the children actually being enrolled in the school and that, ergo, the Longs are breaking state law.
That's the part that deserves criticism. The court overreached and turned a child welfare case into an assault on home schooling. How do you go from one to the other? This was a good moment for judicial restraint. At the very least, this decision should be limited to the unique circumstances of the Long family, and not stand as a precedent that leads other families who home-school to worry that they, too, could be ordered to stop teaching their kids.
The part worth celebrating is that the ruling is so over the top and contrary to common sense that it has put the issue of home schooling front and center and has motivated the defenders of the practice to set their sights on California. Home-school advocates vow to help the Longs appeal the ruling.
And they have a heavyweight in their corner. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger immediately denounced the appeals court ruling and promised to change state law to guarantee that parents have the right to teach their children at home. Parents should decide what is best for their children, he said, and "not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children's education."
The governor is quite correct, and I'm glad to see him in this fight. Home schooling isn't perfect. But look around. Neither is the public school system, which needs all the reform it can get. That's why we can't stop looking for viable alternatives that augment traditional teaching — and, just as importantly, challenge traditional thinking.
Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a nationally syndicated columnist.
