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California Court Strikes Blow Against Individual Liberty
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Friday, March 21, 2008

ARTICLE
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Publication Date: March 20, 2008

California always has been known as a freedom-loving place where nonconformity reigns. So it came as something of a shock last month when a California appeals court effectively outlawed the most innovative new trend in American education: home-schooling.

The sweeping court decision, made in the context of a much narrower child welfare case, asserted that "parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children" and that parents who home-school must undergo the expensive, time-consuming process of earning state-certified teaching credentials or face criminal prosecution.

Since what happens in California rarely stays in California, all home-schooling parents -- and all parents who value their right to make educational choices for their children -- should worry about this latest bout of judicial activism.

In their ruling, the judges made little effort to conceal their contempt for the emphasis on individualized, values-based education that drives the home-schooling movement and the larger crusade for school choice. Quoting the finding of a different court in a different case that the state's educational system "was not designed to accommodate the personal ideas of any individual," the judges scoffed at the religious-freedom rationale given by the parents in the case. The parents said that they home-schooled to pass on "Biblical teachings and principles" to their children. Such "sparse representations," the judges said, are "not factually specific" and "are not the quality of evidence" that warrants concern about a violation of parents' First Amendment rights. br>
As for the argument that home-schooling suits some students better than the one-size-fits-all model that dominates public education, the judges repeated a different court's declaration that "A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state. . . ."

The totalitarian tone of the ruling and its dismissal of parents' rights have rattled America's home-schooling community, whose ranks have swelled from an estimated 345,000 students in 1994 to as many as 2.4 million today. Although their numbers are dwarfed by the 48 million students who attend public schools nationwide, home-schoolers are part of a vibrant, fast-growing phenomenon driven by dissatisfaction with the educational status quo.

Not surprisingly, defenders of that status quo have denounced the newfound popularity of home-schooling. Although home-schooling was the norm in America until the mid-19th century and home-schooled students who take standardized tests tend to outperform their public-school peers, critics deride home-schooling as a cultish fad that gives parents undue influence and exposes children to educational malpractice.

Echoes of that criticism could be heard from teachers' union officials who cheered the California judges' demand that only credentialed teachers educate children. In casting teaching credentials as a guarantor of educational excellence, union officials conveniently ignored that California's credential-rich public high schools have a 30 percent dropout rate. California's educational establishment busies itself implementing social experiments such as the new state law that forbids any school activity that "promotes a discriminatory bias" against homosexuality, bisexuality or transsexuality -- a law that some see as a mandate for unisex bathrooms and taxpayer-funded instruction in favor of gay marriage. Meanwhile, fewer than a quarter of California's students are meeting national standards for reading and math.

Such drastic failure calls for drastic measures. For parents who see their children languishing in public schools that cannot meet their needs and for whom private-school tuition payments are too steep, home-schooling offers an attractive alternative.

Home-schooling's labor-intensive demands make it an unlikely option for most parents. And the academic rigor of home schools varies, of course, as it does in conventional schools. But in a nation defined by individual liberty and limited government, parents who take the initiative to educate their children should be commended, not chided, for their choice.

-- Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St. Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.