Vin Suprynowicz

Research conducted by the National Home Education Research Institute in 2001 shows homeschooled students, on average, outperformed their public school peers by 30 to 37 percentile points across all subjects, and that performance gaps impacting minorities and genders are virtually eliminated among the homeschoolers — a fairly strong rebuttal to the racist explanation for public-school failures that “It’s the raw material.”
For those who think the home-schoolers may have faked the tests, there are other measures, which begin to reach beyond the anecdotal.

On May 22, 2003, eighth-grader James Williams of Vancouver, Washington, became the second homeschooler in a row to win the National Geography Bee, taking home a $25,000 scholarship.

Although homeschoolers make up approximately 2 percent of the U.S. school-age population, they made up 12 percent of the 251 spelling bee finalists and 5 percent of the 55 geography bee finalists. The Cato institute actually reports the number of home-schooled winners of the National Spelling Bee (which includes Canadians) runs neck-and-neck with the number of winners who attend U.S. public schools — despite the public-school kids outnumbering the home-schoolers 49-to-1.

And the 2002 homeschooled winner of the geography bee was 10 years old, the youngest in the event’s history.

This can be deeply embarrassing to supporters of the notion that only “certified” teachers with years of ticket-punching behind them in the Ed schools can possibly succeed in the difficult task of educating children.

So it’s hardly surprising that Lloyd Porter, a member of the board of directors of the California Teachers Association, told the San Francisco Chronicle “We’re happy” at news that California’s Second District Court of Appeal last week declared the parents of most of the state’s 166,000 home-schooled children to be outlaws, ruling California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or else have them taught at home by “credentialed” tutors — which most home-school parents, presumably, aren’t.

“We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting,” Mr. Porter preened — a position about as hard to predict as other union officials declaring that all trucks should be driven by Teamsters.

“California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28.

And those parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Judge Croskey made clear.

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare,” the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue.

Imagine that. Not the Three R’s, but “loyalty to the state.”

Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said the ruling would effectively ban homeschooling in the state.

“California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home,” he said in a statement.

“The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming,” The San Francisco daily reported March 7.

“At first, there was a sense of, ‘No way,’ ” homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach who is active with her local homeschool association, told the Chronicle. “Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation.”

The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching state “credential.”

The parents said they also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy in Sylmar (Los Angeles County), which considers the Long children part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year.

As dissatisfaction with the public schools grows — based on violence and concerns that children are being propagandized on non-academic topics (“loyalty to the state”?) as well as crumbling scholarly performance — it was inevitable that someone would try to dam the trickle of home-schooled escapees before it becomes a river. And it’s hardly surprising that the first blow would fall in nanny-state California.

Although in Pierce v. Society of Sisters in 1925 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Oregon law which would have prohibited parents from satisfying a state compulsory attendance requirement by sending their children to private school, no such definitive defense of a right to home-school has yet been handed down.

But that’s not to say the California ruling is in the mainstream.

The Pierce decision further asserts the parents’ right to keep their children free from government standardization, finding: “The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excluded any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right and the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

In the 1927 case Farrington v. Tokushige, the Court explained “The capacity to impart instruction to others is given by the Almighty for beneficent purposes and its use may not be forbidden or interfered with by government — certainly not, unless such instruction is, in its nature, harmful to the public morals or imperils the public safety.”

In Prince v. Massachusetts in 1944, the Supreme Court again placed the responsibility and right of parents to control the upbringing of their children above that of the state, holding: “It is cardinal with us that the custody, care, and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the State can neither supply nor hinder.”

As recently as 1972, in Wisconsin v. Yoder, the court ruled Amish parents can pull their kids out of the public schools after the eighth grade in order to school and apprentice them in useful trades at home, Chief Justice Warren Burger writing: “This case involves the fundamental interest of parents, as contrasted with that of the state, to guide the religious future and education of their children. The history and culture of Western civilization reflect a strong tradition of parental concern for the nurture and upbringing of their children. This primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring tradition.”

Everywhere, it now appears, but in California.