Posted on 03/07/2008 6:36:30 PM PST by GVnana
(03-07) 13:37 PST SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger promised today to ensure that parents have the right to homeschool their children, after a state appeals court ruling severely restricted the practice in California.
"Every California child deserves a quality education and parents should have the right to decide what's best for their children," the governor said in a statement. "Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children's education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts and if the courts don't protect parents' rights then, as elected officials, we will."
An estimated 166,000 children are homeschooled across the state.
The ruling by the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles said all children ages 6 to 18 must attend public or private school full-time until graduation from high school or be tutored at home by a credentialed teacher.
The Southern California case stemmed from a child welfare dispute involving the children of Phillip and Mary Long of Lynwood (Los Angeles County). The couple's eight children have been home-schooled by Mary Long, who holds no teaching credential. The children were also enrolled in a private school through an independent study program, which included quarterly home visits. Although the case did not involve the question of the children's truancy, the court decision broadly addressed the legality of homeschooling in California while specifically ruling that the Long family's situation violated state law.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Maybe not you, but try this:
Go down to your local WalMart.
Take a look at all the folks in there.
Picture them trying to teach algebra or economics.
It's ONLY because he knows the State doesn't have the money to educate 160,000 more kids...
Remember: "Follow the money..."
Teacher “certification” is one of the biggest subsets of union criminal activity. It is the way the unions keep a death-grip on the schools and ensure that public schools fail. A Ph.D. in economics cannot teach high school math without “teacher certification.” An airline transport pilot with a flight instructor’s ticket cannot teach junior high science without a “teacher’s certificate.” Schools of education take the borrom quarter of a high school graduating class and then graduate Marxist dullards who are unemployable in any field other than public education.
Government school kids **graduate** every year not knowing these concepts! For the 30% or more that drop out before graduation it is likely they know even less!
How about some equality before the law? What ever is satisfactory for passing a grade in a government school should be satisfactory progress of a homeschooler! Since we **know** and have proof that illiteracy and innumeracy will get government children passed from grade to grade, then **that** should be the standard for all
They need objective testing for competence, and practical real-world exercises that bring meaning.
Whatever is considered passing for a government schooled child should be the standard for homeschoolers. At the moment passing for a government schooled child is illiterate and innumerate.
If there are penalties for the homeschooling teacher if a child fails to learn, then the EXACT same penalties should be applied to government school teachers and principals.
You can't allow a child to be cheated by a failure to apply standards.
Government schools cheat children every day and fail to apply standards. Homeschoolers should not be held to higher standards than the government uses for itself!
Did he clear this with Maria?
I just joined this forum because I could not let this ignorant comment pass. Any parent who lovingly teaches a child to use the bathroom instead of a diaper is more than qualified to continue lovingly guiding a child into shoelace tying, table manners, street-crossing safety, and LIFE. The EASIER part is including reading, writing, arithmetic, history and worm dissection. As a former home educator with children now in law school and college, I assure you that parents committed enough to choose home education access the abundant helps available to do the job with excellence. That is why the best credentialed teachers attend homeschooling conventions - they know where all the good resources are.
Uncle Swimmer will not be pleased.
Note that I didn't say it was "hard" to get a teaching credential, I said that it is costly and time consuming and ultimately frustrating for on-the-ball people.
My brother got so fed up with all the bureaucratic hoops he had to jump through as a teacher that he transferred out of the classroom. He is now a school librarian, and he tells me he has far fewer hassles.
The typical large-city school district is a vast bureaucracy, full of incompetents making gobs of money to sit in their offices all day long and generate tons of paper.
The teachers are poorly paid, overworked, and pushed around by administrators who haven’t a clue as to what should be done in the classroom.
(My two cents)
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Frustrating for people with an IQ above room temperature.
In Canada, those who can afford the best health care go to America.
The American super wealthy homeschool their own kids—even in California.
Schwarzenegger is protecting his own.
Expect a rise in private schools especially those who provide distant education for those parents who want their children close.
Expect also monopoly busting by upstart competing teacher unions.
Take a look at all the folks in there.
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Yep! Clean them up a little and they would definitely outshine the government teachers in my county.
In fact, the people in Wall Mart are likely more patriotic, can make change, and have a working knowledge, appreciation for, and experience in the free market of profit! ( profit: defined as **eeeevil** in the Marxist government schools.)
Actually, Salty, I doubt that is the case. I don't have stats, but I'll give you an example.
A 20-ish co-worker of mine, black girl, was taken out of high school by her single parent mother (religious woman) when this girl started "getting into trouble."
This girl ended up graduating high school at the age of 16, spent a year in college on a scholarship in Australia, came back to the states, became a registered nurse and is now working on a marketing degree.
One of the most competent, self-assured young people I have ever known. Mom made great sacrifices to turn out that kid.
GOOD point! The upper classes are moving into homeschooling. Why? Because the results are self evidently SUPERIOR!
Also,,,Arnold is looking at his state budget. The true number of homeschoolers is likely **twice** the size of the puny 166,000 that the state reports. He likely *knows* this! Having all those kids move into the government schools would definitely make his state budget worse.
“public” employees’ unions = GOVERNMENT employees unions
and, since the government has no incentive to keep its labor costs down, there isn’t the standard labor vs management balance, and the unions’ power grows unchecked.
Add to that the fact that gov’t has the monopoly on the legal use of FORCE to get its way, and you’ve got a gross leviathan on your hands.
‘zactly
In a manner of speaking, you are correct; however, the elitist private schools and the home school have one thing in common---they are not controlled by, or run by, the NEA.They have their own boards/support groups and problem don't get the state's help.
The NEA & the state think they should have power over both sets of children.
After reviewing at least part of the official court document about homeschooling, I’m of the opinion that this is an isolated case where the parents simply failed to properly follow simple paperwork procedures. But if you are correct then I’m sure that I’ll get to that point eventually after the dust has settled.
Even a blind squirrel will find an acorn every now and then....
That one goes into my collection of faves.
1. I agree wholeheartedly with what wintertime has written.
2. If you think American public schools are doing a competent job of teaching algebra and econ (much less doing a better job than homeschoolers), you have been living in a cave for at least a decade now. I don’t think they even offered econ as an elective at my high school, and I graduated in 1989.
3. Do you really think the average homeschool parent would only be qualified to work at Wal-Mart? The last three I talked to were a businessman doing several million in sales a year, a computer consultant who usually is a project manager and the director of activities at a nursing home. At my house the science teacher is a registered nurse and the history teacher used to write a history column for the local paper. That said, I’m pretty sure the computer guy, the business guy and the nursing home gal could figure out how to pass on the same information they were taught, given a good curriculum. And so could Joe Six-pack from Wal-Mart.
4. Is it really your contention that the state of California is going to be a better judge of these childrens’ needs than their parents? Are you really thinking this is anything but an attempt to end home schooling in the state?
5. I recall seeing an article that Walter Williams referenced while hosting for Limbaugh. The article described how a shocking number of California teachers were unable to answer basic math questions on the CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test) exams. A sample question Williams shared that had given a lot of them a problem was: 4 + 4x = 32. Solve for x.
Could the average Wal-Mart worker solve that?
Should a teacher who can’t solve it be teaching algebra or econ?
Should a state where 20% of the teacher candidates fail the test at least once be in the position of telling people what a good teacher is? (http://www.dailyrepublican.com/cbest_test.html)
(BTW, my older two children took about a second to solve that one, and the youngest got it as soon as I explained that 4x means 4 times x. I wonder if they could pass the CBEST...)
6. What is it about ed school that qualifies one to teach algebra that isn’t provided to them by their high school algebra teacher? In other words, Joe Blow easily passed algebra, he has an algebra textbook, why can’t he teach his kid algebra? What is it about the bachelors in math or ed that makes the difference?
7. Is it really your contention that a member of the Wal-Mart crowd is not only incompetent to teach algebra and econ, but is incompetent to write the check for a tutor or self-study curriculum? Wal-Mart guy can’t go to Amazon and order a Walter Williams book for his high schooler to read? He can’t enroll his kid in a computer-based school, a distance learning course or (as you can here in Illinois) enroll his kid in a couple of high school elective classes that he feels he’s not the best teacher for?
8. My mother, who taught me to read when I was three years old, works at a Wal-Mart. At the time she left the workforce to raise me, she worked at a Mammoth Mart in Maine. According to the state of California, she was not competent to teach me to read, and according to you she should have had a certificate because she is, as a retail employee, too dumb to mold the mind of her own child.
9. Item number 8 has nothing to do with the following: When I go to Wal-Mart, I don’t get on my high horse and see the great unwashed. I see the sort of people who make this country work. Please take your elitist, class warfare snobbery and cram it in whatever orifice your species traditionally crams things in.
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