SunWuKong
03-06-2008, 07:49 PM
thumbs up or thumbs down?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/06/BAJDVF0F1.DTL
Court limits home-schooling to credentialed teachers
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, March 6, 2008
(03-06) 14:26 PST LOS ANGELES -- A state appeals court has struck a blow against the home-schooling movement, ruling that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home.
The ruling was issued by the Second District Court of Appeal in a dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Phillip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been home-schooling their eight children. Mary Long, who has no state credential, acts as their teacher.
The Longs said they have also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy, which considers them part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year. A juvenile court judge looking into one child's complaint of mistreatment by Phillip Long found that the children were being poorly educated but refused to order two of the children, ages 7 and 9, to be enrolled in a full-time school, saying parents have a right to educate their children at home.
But the appeals court said state law has been clear since at least 1953, when another appellate court rejected a challenge by home-schooling parents to California's compulsory education statutes. Those statutes require children between 6 and 18 to attend a full-time day school, either public or private, or to be instructed by a tutor who holds a state credential for the child's grade level.
"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling, issued Feb. 28. "Parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling under the provisions of these laws."
Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.
The court told the juvenile judge to require the Longs to comply with the law by enrolling their children in a school other than Sunland Christian School, because that institution "was willing to participate in the deprivation of the children's right to a legal education."
The court did not specify how the law should be enforced in other cases. A lawyer for Sunland Christian School said today that 166,000 California children are being educated at home and that the ruling threatens every one of their parents with prosecution.
The decision "not only attacks traditional home-schooling, but also calls into question home-schooling through charter schools and teaching children at home via independent study through public and private schools," said attorney Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which represented the school.
Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said the ruling would effectively ban home-schooling in the state.
"California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of home-schooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home," he said in a statement.
But Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles, which represented the two children in the case, said the ruling did not change the law.
"They just affirmed that the current California law, which has been unchanged since the last time it was ruled on in the 1950s, is that children have to be educated in a public school, an accredited private school, or with an accredited tutor," she said. "If they want to send them to a private Christian school, they can, but they have to actually go to the school and be taught by teachers."
Heimov said her organization's chief concern was not the quality of the children's education, but their "being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety."
The Longs argued that the state laws violated their freedom of religion. They cited a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing Amish parents in Wisconsin to take their children out of school after the eighth grade and devote their lives to the religious community.
But Croskey said the ruling does not authorize parents who object to the educational system to remove their children, even if their objections are based on religious beliefs. The Amish ruling was based on factors that the current case did not share, he said: deep religious convictions held by an organized group, intimately related to daily living, whose centuries-old existence might be endangered if their children had to attend high school.
By contrast, he said, the Longs simply asserted that they have religious objections to sending their children to school. "Such sparse representations are too easily asserted by any parent who wishes to home-school his or her child," Croskey said.
The ruling can be viewed at links.sfgate.com/ZCQR.
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/06/BAJDVF0F1.DTL
Court limits home-schooling to credentialed teachers
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, March 6, 2008
(03-06) 14:26 PST LOS ANGELES -- A state appeals court has struck a blow against the home-schooling movement, ruling that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home.
The ruling was issued by the Second District Court of Appeal in a dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Phillip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been home-schooling their eight children. Mary Long, who has no state credential, acts as their teacher.
The Longs said they have also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy, which considers them part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year. A juvenile court judge looking into one child's complaint of mistreatment by Phillip Long found that the children were being poorly educated but refused to order two of the children, ages 7 and 9, to be enrolled in a full-time school, saying parents have a right to educate their children at home.
But the appeals court said state law has been clear since at least 1953, when another appellate court rejected a challenge by home-schooling parents to California's compulsory education statutes. Those statutes require children between 6 and 18 to attend a full-time day school, either public or private, or to be instructed by a tutor who holds a state credential for the child's grade level.
"California courts have held that ... parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling, issued Feb. 28. "Parents have a legal duty to see to their children's schooling under the provisions of these laws."
Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.
The court told the juvenile judge to require the Longs to comply with the law by enrolling their children in a school other than Sunland Christian School, because that institution "was willing to participate in the deprivation of the children's right to a legal education."
The court did not specify how the law should be enforced in other cases. A lawyer for Sunland Christian School said today that 166,000 California children are being educated at home and that the ruling threatens every one of their parents with prosecution.
The decision "not only attacks traditional home-schooling, but also calls into question home-schooling through charter schools and teaching children at home via independent study through public and private schools," said attorney Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which represented the school.
Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said the ruling would effectively ban home-schooling in the state.
"California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of home-schooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home," he said in a statement.
But Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles, which represented the two children in the case, said the ruling did not change the law.
"They just affirmed that the current California law, which has been unchanged since the last time it was ruled on in the 1950s, is that children have to be educated in a public school, an accredited private school, or with an accredited tutor," she said. "If they want to send them to a private Christian school, they can, but they have to actually go to the school and be taught by teachers."
Heimov said her organization's chief concern was not the quality of the children's education, but their "being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety."
The Longs argued that the state laws violated their freedom of religion. They cited a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing Amish parents in Wisconsin to take their children out of school after the eighth grade and devote their lives to the religious community.
But Croskey said the ruling does not authorize parents who object to the educational system to remove their children, even if their objections are based on religious beliefs. The Amish ruling was based on factors that the current case did not share, he said: deep religious convictions held by an organized group, intimately related to daily living, whose centuries-old existence might be endangered if their children had to attend high school.
By contrast, he said, the Longs simply asserted that they have religious objections to sending their children to school. "Such sparse representations are too easily asserted by any parent who wishes to home-school his or her child," Croskey said.
The ruling can be viewed at links.sfgate.com/ZCQR.
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.