The 2nd Appellate District in Los Angeles California today ruled today that homeschooling is permissible in California, laying to rest a question that was opened back in February when a California court declared it a crime for parents without credentials to teach their children.
The juvenile court case that spawned the homeschooling decision was dismissed last month, but the larger issue of the legality of homeschooling wasn't dealt with until the ruling today.
WorldNetDaily indicates the judges left a back door for opponents of homeschooling to threaten homeschooling families, but for now the matter has been decided.
The opinion said the judges were not deciding whether homeschool should be allowed. "That job is for the Legislature," they said.
"Homeschooling was initially expressly permitted in California, when the compulsory education law was enacted in 1903," the court said. "In 1929, however, homeschool was amended out of the law, and children who were not educated in public or private schools could be taught privately only by a credentialed tutor."
However, since then, "subsequent developments in the law call this conclusion into question. Although the Legislature did not amend the statutory scheme so as to expressly permit homeschooling, more recent enactments demonstrate an apparent acceptance by the Legislature of the proposition that homeschooling is taking place in California, with homeschools allowed as private schools," the court ruling said.
"Recent statutes indicate that the Legislature is aware that some parents in California homeschool their children by declaring their homes to be private schools. Moreover, several statutory enactments indicate a legislative approval of homeschooling, by exempting homeschools from requirements otherwise applicable to private schools."
The court said, "it is our view that the proper course of action is to interpret the earlier statutes in light of the later ones, and to recognize, as controlling, the Legislature's apparent acceptance of the proposition that homeschools are permissible in California when conducted as a private school."
Many in the education establishment oppose homeschooling for a number of reasons, and are eager to see it eliminated.
Homeschooling diminishes the number of students enrolled in public schools, which in turn diminishes the amount of taxpayer funds schools receive.
Homeschoolers usually out-perform their public school counterparts, which makes the education establishment look bad. After all, the public education system spends several times as much per student than the homeschooler, yet usually under-performs homeschoolers.
And in California, especially, where the education establishment has a radical social engineering re-education agenda that includes undermining the family and promotion of homosexuality, homeschooled children are falling outside their sphere of indoctrination.
This is good news for today. But unless the California legislature acts definitively to protect homeschoolers, the "Brave New Worlders" will be back another day.
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