“If this decision stands, it is an effective ban on home-schooling for virtually all families. Unless a parent is a credentialed teacher, home-schooling will be illegal.” 

That’s the gloomy forecast of Michael Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), a significant number of whose 80,000 members reside in California, where the 2nd District Court of Appeals recently ruled that parents “…do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children.” 

The three judge panel’s ruling could affect the families of California’s approximately 170,000 home-schooled children and possibly the 1-2 million home-schooling families nationwide.
 
The entire debacle began as a child welfare case with a unique set of circumstances involving just one family.  One of Philip and Mary Long’s eight children filed a complaint of abuse and neglect with the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services. The DCFS discovered that the Long children were being home-schooled by their un-credentialed mother while enrolled in independent classes at a private school. 

The agency asked the court to require that the children attend public school, so that teachers could check for any signs of abuse.  But a juvenile court ruled that the Longs had a constitutional right to home-school their children, which led the DCFS to appeal the case to the 2nd District Court.

That court’s sweeping decision warns that families of California’s home-schooled children could face “a criminal complaint…subject to imposition of fines…”  Not surprisingly, a spokesman for the California Teachers Association responded to the ruling gleefully, saying, “We’re happy.”

Pro-family leaders were quick to denounce the decision. Dr. James Dobson said the ruling was “an all-out assault on the family, and it must be met with a concerted effort to defend parents and their children.” Even California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, no pro-family stalwart, said, “This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts and if the courts don’t protect parents’ rights then, as elected officials, we will.”

Farris, whose HSLDA exists to “defend and advance the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children and to protect family freedoms,” told this column that he believes the court’s decision is “a blatant attempt by child's rights advocates and a cooperative appellate court to end home-schooling in one fell swoop.”

Parents choose home-schooling for a variety of reasons. Some do it for moral or religious reasons, others for financial reasons. Some homeschool because the “one-size-fits-all” approach of the public education bureaucracy does not meet the specific needs of their children.

But much of the increasing popularity of home-schooling (there has been a 29 percent increase in number of home-schoolers since 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics) can be attributed to the superior education home-schooling students often receive.  Home-schoolers fare better on standardized tests like the ACT and SAT, and numerous studies show home-schoolers score in the 80th percentile or better in all subjects.

A 2003 study of 7,300 adults who had been home-schooled—the vast majority for seven or more years—found they were much more likely than their piers to have gone to college, be involved in their communities, live happy lives, be active and engaged in politics and vote.  Ninety-five percent of home-schooled adults said they were glad they had been home-schooled, and, perhaps most revealing, 3 in 4 currently home-school their own children. 

Home-schooled children often do better because home-schooling allows parents to focus on educational outcomes (acquisition of knowledge and skills) rather than on mere inputs (dollars per student, computers per classroom, class size, teacher quality, the length of the school year) or outputs (graduation rates, number of teaching hours generated by faculty, or types of service or research products).  This outcome-based approach gives home-schooled students an advantage in America’s increasingly results-oriented job market. 

So, what recourse do home-schoolers have?  According to Farris:

“All of our efforts at the moment are focused on getting a reversal of this decision. There is a motion for reconsideration being submitted to the Court of Appeal. If this is not successful, there will be an appeal to the Supreme Court of California.”

An alternative to full review, says Farris, who, with his wife, has home-schooled all ten of his children, is to file a motion to ask the Supreme Court to “depublish” the decision, which means that it will be binding only on the Long family. 

And if that does not work, according to Farris,

“…then our solution, of course, is legislative.  There is a great deal of concern about the direction in which the California legislature may go with this issue. Accordingly, we are devoting every resource we have to gaining a judicial victory over this overt act of judicial activism.” 

I hope the California courts reverse this unconstitutional ruling.  You can support HSLDA’s efforts on behalf of home-schooling families by signing their petition online at www.hslda.org.