Hand Over Your Children. Or Else.

A court in California has decreed, in all of its majesty and wisdom, that parents may not school their children at home unless they have been certified as teachers, by the state.  The courts, which are an arm of the state, don't guarantee that they will educate your children or even keep them safe.  But the state doesn't like competition.  The reason for this is simple enough ... it can't compete.  If the education establishment (a government subsidiary) could compete, it wouldn't fight so tenaciously against school choice in all its forms.

In the absence of vouchers and a marketplace in schools, many parents have chosen to educate their children themselves.  Using the reliable tactic of credentialism,  the state of California has made this exceedingly difficult.  In Vermont, the bureaucrats still rely on primitive tools.  Forms, red tape, unfathomable regulations, etc. etc.  Vermont's Charity Tensel homeschools her children and somehow finds the time to tell the story of her struggles with the regulators on this engaging site. 

In a perfect world, the state would be doing all that it could to support and encourage parents like Ms. Tensel who are passionate about their kids' educations.  In the real world, we get decisions like the one in California.  If it holds up on appeal, we can probably expect something like it here.  We'll be told it is "for the children." 

Isn't it always.

* update:  The union likes the ruling:

"We're happy," said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. "We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting."

Comments

[Art Woolf]

Putting some statistical flesh on those bones, the National Center for Education Statistics found (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/tables.asp) that 1.1 million students were homeschooled in 2003, 2.2% of all the students in the U.S.

[Lazarus Long]

But if you let that 2.2% slip through the grasp of the NEA it could increase to 3.0%. Think of the loss to the establishment.

[Jon Harrison]

So the state of California, and not the parents, are the primary authority over the children? Judicial tyranny at work yet again. Activist judges plus teachers' unions are a terrible mix.