<p>To expand a little on my previous post:</p>
<p>This is not a case where the teachers' unions went after homeschooling, or where a bunch of liberal judges took it upon themselves to ban homeschooling. </p>
<p>This case arose because court-appointed advocates for two (out of six) children in a troubled family where the kids were already subject to family court jurisdiction asked a lower court to require that the two children be sent to regular school rather than be homeschooled, because they believed they had evidence of abuse and inadequate education in the home.</p>
<p>The trial court ruled -- clearly incorrectly -- that regardless of the evidence it had no authority to order the children to be sent to regular school because the parents had a constitutional right to homeschool their children. There is certainly a constitutional right to homeschool children for religious reasons, and possibly if push came to shove for nonreligious reasons, too. But that right is qualified by the state's right and obligation to protect children from abuse and to impose reasonable requirements on homeschooling that do not interfere with religion. </p>
<p>The children's advocates appealed that ruling. The parents were not represented in the appellate court, and appear to have been barely (and poorly) represented in the trial court. The adverse party in the appellate court was the state child protection agency, which was not trying to force the kids into regular school. It's completely unclear whether the agency did anything to inform the court about what the state's regulatory structure for homeschooling is, since that was more or less beside the point of the case. The advocates were not arguing that homeschooling was illegal, only that there was no definitive legal bar, constitutional or otherwise, to ordering that these kids be sent to regular school given evidence of abuse and inadequate education at home.</p>
<p>The court made an extremely broad ruling, with no consideration of any of the state's regulatory structure for homeschooling, probably because none of the parties in the case bothered to tell it anything about that structure, because the case was not about whether homeschooling was legal or not. My strong guess is that the court made a broad ruling because it was outraged at the trial judge's disregard of the evidence and didn't trust the judge to do the right thing if it simply sent the case back to him with instructions to consider the evidence. But as an appellate court, it couldn't rule on evidence that the trial judge hadn't considered. So instead it held that the children were required to go to school no matter what -- something just as overbroad and erroneous as the trial judge's ruling that they could never be required to go to school no matter what.</p>
<p>This could happen in California in the first place because, unlike everywhere else, there is no statutory authority for homeschooling in California. Instead, homeschooling has been governed by decades' worth of administrative rules and practices, based on tenuous statutory authority, but widely understood and tolerated. No statutory underpinning has been created because whenever anyone tries the pro- and anti-homeschooling forces battle each other to a standstill over just what the statutes should say. From a civics-class point of view, that is intolerable, but it's how the world works a lot of the time.</p>
<p>As the case shows, California's administrative agencies -- the child welfare agency and the education bureaucracy -- appear to be quite accommodating of homeschooling. Which is probably one of the reasons why the homeschooling community has not felt like it really needed legislative action. If anything good comes out of this case, maybe it will be to break the logjam over enacting some appropriate statutory authority.</p>
<p>I am certainly no homeschooling fan, but this is a manifestly dumb opinion, and its precedential value ought to be insignificant. EXCEPT for the actual, narrow ruling that lies beneath the court's flight of fantasy: whatever rights parents have to educate their children at home, they are not so absolute as to preclude abridging those rights if they are clearly being abused. Those of you who ARE homeschooling fans ought to agree with that, too. There is no reason to let a few really bad apples spoil a big barrel with some fine fruit in it.</p>
<p>EDIT: dntw8, I hope the above makes clear that I do not take the position that homeschooling is inherently bad. Of course children can be at risk in schools, too, and of course homeschooling is a way to pay attention to that. Provided the parents are willing to put a lot of energy and good faith into it. It's not a panacea.</p>