Some emails you learn to take with a grain of salt, and the ones last week about how California had banned homeschooling are a case in point. The hysteria was over the top, and the claims lacked important detail - at least that was my impression and I looked no further.
Well, it turns out that this case is a huge deal in the blogosphere, with vast commentary and claims and counterclaims. But the trendline is clear here: what was a hysteria a few days ago is now being looked at calmly and with some perspective. The California homeschool organizations, for example, have all said that while the decision is poorly worded, it has no impact on homeschoooling.
This morning, Deal Hudson offers a roundup that pretty well douses the flames of outrage completely. it turns out that the kids in question were actually enrolled in a publicly funded charter school. They were subject to attendance regulations. Instead they were merely taking tests and things at the school and were otherwise being homeschooled. This means that the case was not addressing the issue of homeschooling at all. It was addressing the question of outside tutors for kids in public institutions -- and the judge ruled that they must be credentialed. It doesn’t seem to affect the status of homeschooling in any other way.
Now, if Hudson is correct, the Homeschool Legal Defense Fund, which blasted away at the decision, and is currently petitioning for it to be depublished, was taken in, as well as the teachers’ unions, which praised the decision. The facts of the case seem to have no effect on homeschooling at all; the language of the decision, however, does seem overly broad. It comes down to a case of a judge who got carried away with his rhetoric and didn’t understand the law. This in turn misled the Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the case.
Despite the misinformation and fury, what’s nice here is to see just how passionate the homeschoolers are in fighting even the appearance of intervention. Would that other sectors of society were as excitable.
