Home schooling could provide a case study in how different states take different approaches to the same issue (laboratories of democracy and all that). Indiana, for example, has almost no requirements for home schooling. The students are supposed to get "the equivalent" of a public education, for example, but equivalency is not defined, and there are no curriculum requirements. No tests are mandated, either.
California has decided to go a different way:
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.
An estimated 166,000 students in California are home schooled.
California has allowed home schooling if parents either file paperwork to establish themselves as small, private schools; hire a credentialed tutor; or enroll their child in an independent study program run by an established school while teaching the child at home.
The state might as well put out a notice, "No home schooling allowed," since that is the clear intent of the law. Although Indiana could stand to tighten its home-schooling guidelines, California's extremism is the worse sin.
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This is one court in California. It won't stand as policy across California. The Gubenator and the state education honcho have already spoken out against the ruling.