California's Education Atrocity

A Wall Street Journal editorial informs us that a California state judge, in what the WSJ aptly terms an act of "judicial imperialism" that benefits only the teachers' unions, has ruled that parents who wish to home-school their children must first be certified by the state.  Given that home-schooled students on average out-perform their publicly-schooled peers on tests and also on attendance, the ruling is clearly one that reflects the egregious biases of the political class, which affirms the prerogative of educrats over the needs of students.

The case turned on construction of California law.  Judge H. Walter Croskey cited the state's constitutional provision re education of children:

California’s Provisions for Compulsory Education of Minor Children Article IX, section 1 of California’s Constitution states:  “A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the Legislature shall encourage by all suitable means the promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural improvement.”

The judge then said that under California's education laws, save for a few narrow statutory exceptions, only full-time private-school students or home-schoolers tutored by state-credentialed teachers can be home-schooled.  The case partly turned on the apparently sub-par education, plus allegations of parental abuse.  But as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said: "Hard cases make bad law."  Judge Croskey's citation of the state constitutional provision is disingenuous.  Nothing in the text of the state constitution itself requires what the court ordered; rather it is the statute enacted by the Legislature that does so.  Statutes being subordinate to legislative laws, the Judge could have found non-credential home-schooling constitutional.  Given the overall record of home-schooling, "all suitable means," per the state constitution, could easily be held to include home-schooling.  That he chose not to do so suggests that he, like so many judges today, will back the education establishment, regardless of harm done to students.  There are 166,000 home-schooled students, plus their parents, who have been made truants and criminals by this appalling ruling.

The ruling will be appealed to the state's highest appeals court, the California Supreme Court.  The Governator called the ruling "outrageous."  One home-schooling parent wrote a marvelous article that presents the true face of home-schooling.  There are 1.1 million home-schooled students nationwide, and the number is growing at double-digit rates.  Contrary to popular perception, home schooling did not originate with religiously-motivated parents.  Pray that judges on the state's highest court actually read the constitutional text straight, and find the state's education law unconstitutional.