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Court: Parents must have teaching credential to home school kids
LOS ANGELES (AP) — California parents who don't have teaching credentials no longer can home school their children, according to a recent state appellate court ruling.
"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of Appeals.
Noncompliance could lead to a criminal complaint against the parents, Croskey said.
source:
EdWeek
What does a criminal complaint entail?
38 comments:
It's going to be interesting to follow this.
I assume the parent involved here will appeal to the "Amish exception" - ?
I increasingly find the "compulsory" aspect of public schools .... disturbing and even frightening.
I've begun digging into education law.
What does a criminal complaint entail?
They arrest you and charge you with a crime. The most likely charge will be truancy but (playing armchair lawyer here) they could file it as a case of felony child abuse since educational neglect is listed in that section of the code.
I think there is a distinction between compulsory education vs compulsory attendance.
I've been having trouble figuring out when it's correct to use the term "illegal" and when it's not.
Does this ruling make it correct to say that homeschooling without a teaching credential is now "illegal"?
Also: is it correct that parents can be charged with a crime in failing to educate their kids while schools cannot?
That is to say: when schools engage in a practice such as social promotion they aren't violating either criminal or civil law.
I think it will be a really good idea for local school boards to arrest parents.
I've been having trouble figuring out when it's correct to use the term "illegal" and when it's not.
My dad, a Washington lawyer with a droll sense of humor, used to ask people to explain the difference between "illegal" and "unlawful." People (like his unsuspecting children;-)) would mull this over and come up with a a variety of arcane and complex distinctions.
Then, with a twinkle in the eye, he would reply in a deadpan voice,
"Illegal is a sick bird."
;-)
Any way you slice, it's a bad day for homeschoolers everywhere.
You can read the court opinion HERE
palisadesk!
Just the person I've been wanting to talk to!
What word would one use to characterize the "legal wrongness" of group punishment?
Group punishment "violates due process" --- but how does one say it otherwise.
Is group punishment a sick bird?
This is my question.
Don't post when angry... Don't post when angry... Don't post when angry...
Didn't work.
I have about fifty different angry rants going through my head right now, and I can't sort through them all. Forgive me if I'm incoherent; it's taking all my effort right now to write anything other than 'HULK SMASH!', which is exactly what I'm feeling...
By this reasoning, are parents whitout nursing credentials no longer allowed to bandage their kids after they scrape their knees?
Wher the &^%$#@! does the constitutional argument come into play? Is teaching certification in the Calilfornia constitution?
I've been less hostile to teachers unions than many others, but, after this ruling, is there any argument to be had that they're anything less than a cartel?
Aaarrrrgggh!
I can't seem to load the court's website to download the opinion.
I was disappointed to see that the court did not reference Perchemlides v. Frizzle in its summary.
See Perchemlides v. Frizzle, Case No. 16641 (Sup. Ct. of Hampshire County, Mass. 1978.
In that case, the judge ruled that, in considering an application for homeschooling, the deciding committee was to, among many other things, "consider the competency of the teachers (and though certification would not be required, the presence or absence of the requirements that would lead to certification may be considered)."
Docket #B192878, In re Rachel L.
I'm hoping that there's more to the case than was reported in Ed Week.
"The dependency court
declined to make such an order despite the court’s opinion that the home schooling the
children were receiving was 'lousy, 'meager,' and 'bad,'..."
Apparently, the kids wanted to go to a school. Didn't the judge see the problem with using certification as the litmus test? As j.d.fisher points out, this has been dealt with before.
Sorry about the link. You can also access it through HSLDA (link at the bottom):
http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/ca/200803030.asp
Aside from more money for ed schools, it's the whole question of more power for ed schools and the ideology they espouse. Decisions such as this can only serve to further strengthen their stranglehold on American education.
JD,
I'm betting that reference will be brought up on appeal.
In general, this is creating a buzz with some homeschoolers in California but attorneys are nonplussed. I think that just means that it's a bad decision and will be overturned on appeal. That's what appeal courts are for.
As long as the case is pending appeal no one is going to being a new enforcement policy. On the off chance that it's upheld, the legistlature can pass a law legalizing homeschooling as homeschooling. California really has better things to spend its money on that prosecuting homeschoolers who otherwise are lawfully raising their children.
Of course, although it does not particularly apply to the case, there are other issues to consider, apparently:
"A Welfare and Institutions Code section 300 petition was filed on behalf of three minor children after the eldest of them reported physical and emotional mistreatment by the children's father."
"A Welfare and Institutions Code section 300 petition was filed on behalf of three minor children after the eldest of them reported physical and emotional mistreatment by the children's father."
Right.
To me this makes it all the more bizarre that they invoked these other reasons, which had nothing to do with the case at hand, when making their decision. A family under authority of CPS has no choice but to comply with the demands of CPS or CPS comes back and charges them with child abuse.
CPS gets a complaint and comes to visit the family. They tell the parents to jump through a bunch of hoops, get vaccinations, attend parenting classes, clean up the house, stop spanking the kids, put the kids in school and there won't be problems. No charges against the parents will be filed even the the original complaint was about abuse. Otherwise they take the kids, have you arrested, and charge you with felony child abuse.
If you've got the stones to stand up to this and risk losing your kids and getting a criminal record you can do so. The few parents who are really innocent and have stood their ground to find that they spend a long time separated from the children as their kids are off in foster care while the case is pending. Sure they are found innocent and the judge orders the kids to be returned but that's after months or a year or more.
You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride.
wow Myrtle
beautiful
so.....have I ever mentioned the time it looked like the State of New York might come take my dog away and kill him?
I think I did.
Back on the old site.
It was a whole big thing.
Surfer had gone out in the yard early one morning and gotten in a fight with a HUGE raccoon. The raccoon was a beautiful animal; he was the the size of a toddler.
My neighbor called animal control, which turned out to mean the police, who spent 45 minutes shooting the raccoon with a gun & killing it.
(That was awful, and I've never gotten over it. Don't want to talk about it.)
So then the Animal Control guy was hinting around, asking me this, asking me that, not listening to my answers. He was clearly trying to tell me something, but I wasn't getting it.
Turned out he was trying to warn me that Animal Control was now within its rights to:
a) assume that the raccoon was rabid and, therefore, that Surfer was now rabid, too, because he had blood on his fur
b) take Surfer from me, kill him, and autopsy his brain to test for rabies
The guy was trying to get me to come up with a plan to prevent this from happening. He was also trying to get me to shut up about Abby, our other dog; he was trying to tell me, "Let Surfer take the rap so you don't lose both of them."
I was oblivious.
Later that day, my vet explained the situation to me.
"We have a little problem," he said.
The little problem was that the only way I could prevent the dog-impounding sequence from playing out was to produce a certificate of vaccination proving Surfer had had all his shots.
That was a little problem because, as it turned out, Surfer hadn't had all his shots.
oh, he'd had shots, alright. Lots of shots.
Problem was, he hadn't had enough shots.
He hadn't had enough shots because we and our vet had been under the impression that the animal shelter where we got him had given him his first set of shots so our vet had started with the second set of shots.
But there was no record of the first set of shots to be found in my house, which turned out to be due to the fact that the first set of shots had never been given.
So at that point I got it. Finally.
They can take my dog.
I refused to give this credence, but I did spend the next few hours plotting out exactly how I was going to hide Surfer from The Authorities should the authorities actually present themselves at my doorstep with a warrant for Surfer's arrest.
They're not takin' my dog.
That was about as far as I got.
The whole thing turned out to be moot when my vet reminded me that Surfer had run away a couple of years before and had ended up acros the county at the the pound in New Rochelle, which refused to give him back to me until they gave him shots and I paid the bill.
If they had a record, that would be the missing set of shots.
They had the record.
A few weeks later animal control called to say that the raccoon had been autopsied.
He was a healthy animal, no sign of disease at all.
He shouldn't have been shot to death in my yard, and I should have had the right to throw the police and the animal control guy out.
While we are discussing CPS, it is frightening the power that this agency has. It is even scarier the power schools have in conjunction with CPS.
I heard of an incident where CPS was called by the school because a kid told the assistant principal that he was pushed by his father. Come to find out the kid was making it up because he was angry that his father took away his video games.
Many times parents are judged guilty before they are found innocent. Trust me, I know.
Catherine,
See if they can take your dog...
my dog
thanks for reminding me
I saw one horrific abuse of power by CPS - damaging to the child, who was developmentally disabled but very high functioning and terrified by what was done to child by the agency and school.
Catherine,
Cool pick of Surfer!
I think you may have emailed me this story, but somehow I never got it. My story ended fine, but my husband and I are still pretty steamed at the school.
I meant cool picture of Surfer!
update:
Ace of Spades has a much better article that EdWeek or LA Times on this. Apparently, both EdWeek and LA Times totally misinterpreted the ruling.
here:http://ace.mu.nu/archives/257230.php
excerpts:
The short version: The LA Times got it wrong in the first sentence of their article. Parents without teaching credentials can still educate their children at home under the various exemptions to mandatory public school enrollment provided in § 48220 et seq. of the Cal. Ed. Code. The parents in this case lost because they claimed that the students were enrolled in a charter school and that with minimal supervision from the school, the children were free to skip classes so the mother could teach them at home. There is no basis in law for that argument. If only the parents had attempted to homeschool their kids in one of the statutorily prescribed methods, they would have prevailed.
allison beat me to it!
It would be interesting if home schooling in California was banned via a court decision. Can you imagine what would happen when the initiative re-legalizing home schooling hit the ballot? How much money the teachers unions would pile into the race?
Or, if the requirement to hold a credential was upheld, how quick a streamlined home school degree was offered by one or more on-line schools? A course that would just teach to the test?
In fact I see you can already get a teaching credential from University of Phoenix and DeVry today.
But the Ace of Spades analysis sounds more plausible to me. The family involved do not sound like a great test case for home schooling, which has boomed in the sate in the last ten years.
The key issue is that the court did not only consider whether a particular parent or parent was qualified to homeschool, the court set out to determine whether ANY parent can legally homeschool. "In this dependency case (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 300), we consider the question whether parents can legally 'home school' their children." This court used the facts in the instant case to make the sweeping determination of whether or not "parents have a constitutional right to school their children in their own home."
At this point it threatens every parent-- whether you homeschool or not or whether you live in California or not. This court is establishing legal precedent that determines just who has more say so about decisions parents make pertaining to their own children. According to the opinion: "However, California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children."
Clearly, reading the court ruling is more revealing than whatever the LA Times or some local news operation has to say about the matter. However, I have to disagree with Allison. This is a very serious threat to homeschooling, and not just in California. In fact, it's a threat to parents everywhere.
The court does, in fact, state that there is NO constitutional right to homeschool.
Yes, the court does set forth exceptions that will continue to allow a person to homeschool "legally" however, the court ruling challenges the validity of ISP's -Independent Study Programs (which many families participate in) and requires parents to be certified in each grade they teach (if I'm certified to teach middle school, for example, I would not be able to homeschool my elementary school child). Therefore this court opinion places a stranglehold by narrowly defining who can legally homeschool a child. I read that something like 10% of current California homeschoolers would meet this narrow definition.
It is clear to us that enrollment and attendance in a public full-time day school is required by California law for minor children unless (1) the child is enrolled in a private full-time day school and actually
attends that private school, (2) the child is tutored by a person holding a valid stateteaching credential for the grade being taught, or (3) one of the other few statutory exemptions to compulsory public school attendance (Ed. Code, § 48220 et seq.) applies to the child.
If you read the entire opinion you will find that the court does a good job of making option 3 virtually impossible for most parents to accomplish. In effect, it does set out to make homeschooling if not completely illegal, nearly impossible for most parents.
I agree that it is a terrible test case for homeschooling. This case perpetuates the myths and fallacies of homeschooling that so many of us come up against every day. If it were not a threat at the level that it is, Home School Legal Defense Association wouldn't be getting involved.
So CA has a compulsory public schooling law, not a compulsory education law. I'm completely ignorant of whether this is the case in most other states, too.
According to the statutes the judge cited, full-day public school attendance is required unless you physically attend a full-day private school or you're tutored by a licensed teacher. (Education is the assumed byproduct, I suppose, of attendance.)
Would it be too much to ask CA (and all other states with similarly-worded statutes) to just make *education* compulsory and then list public school, private school, and homeschooling as equivalent choices?
Would it?
---However, I have to disagree with Allison. This is a very serious threat to homeschooling, and not just in California. In fact, it's a threat to parents everywhere.
I'm sorry, but please don't attribute things to me that I didn't say or didn't think.
I said that Ace of Spades said various things. I haven't read enough to know what was decided here. I didn't claim to have such a statement or an opinion one way or the other yet, because I'm not yet informed enough to know.
ConcernedCTPArent said that the decision said
---"However, California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children."
If you read the constitution of CA, there is no constitutional demand that children be schooled, either.
See, this makes it clear that logic don't help you understand law at all. Of course statutory CODE does not give constitutional rights. DUH. Constitutions enumerate (or otherwise allow for unenumerated ones) constitutional rights. To claim that courts used lower legislative elements to declare what is or is it present constitutionally makes no logical sense.
But again, reading the constitution of CA you can't find anything about school being mandatory anyway.
Layman's legal analysis has little to do with how the legal system does it.
Sorry Allison. I clearly misread and should have attributed it to Ace of Spades.
I was assuming you agreed that the media had totally misinterpreted the ruling.
This is so surreal. I live only a few blocks from Sunland Christian School. I drive past it several times a week.
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