ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, March 20 2008

California court strikes a blow against individual liberty
By Colleen Carroll Campbell


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.

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.