Homeschooling: A Family’s Journey

Earlier this year, a California appellate court ruled that parents without teaching credentials had no right to homeschool in that state, then, a few weeks later, vacated the decision and said it would re-hear the case. With the rehearing scheduled for June 23, suspense is building over what the court intends to do. In this post, HSC Legal team co-chair Debbie Schwarzer gives a lawyers-eye-view of recent events in the case, called In re Rachel L., and what to watch for next.

Debbi writes:

Things have been moving pretty quickly over the last couple of weeks. The parties had to get their briefs for the rehearing filed by April 28, and anyone interested in applying to file an amicus brief had to have their application (with the finished brief attached) in to the court by May 19. Parties then had until June 2 to file reply briefs answering points made either in the other party’s brief or in an amicus brief.

We had been wondering how selective the court would be in taking amicus briefs. The three major California-based homeschool groups, California Homeschool Network, Christian Home Educators Association of California and HomeSchool Association of California, jointly filed a brief on May 18 with the help of three prominent law firms, Baker & McKenzie, Munger Tolles and Olson and Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati (I was HSC’s representative in this process). We were thrilled to learn the next day that our brief had been accepted, then a little humbled when we figured out the court was basically taking every amicus brief filed. It didn’t surprise me. We had all criticized the court for reaching its original decision without hearing from all the different groups that would be affected by it, and by gum, they weren’t going to make that mistake again.

I can’t arrive at the same number twice when trying to count the amicus briefs, but it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 16. Undoubtedly clerks will read them all and prepare bench memos summarizing the key points of each, but whether the judges read them before the hearing is another matter.

The briefs fall into several different categories. More were filed addressing constitutional issues, both religious and non-religious, than any other. Several addressed statutory interpretation, several provided factual background information about the success and efficacy of homeschooling (I was also counsel on one such brief, representing several private schools that support homeschooling, several well-known California businesses that help homeschoolers, and other homeschooling support groups), one reviewed all 50 state laws. The joint CHEA/CHN/HSC brief covered some important procedural arguments about why the court should never reach any broad questions of the legality of homeschooling, but also covers statutory interpretation and parental constitutional rights. The briefs filed by the Governor and the Superintendent of Public Instruction basically supported private homeschooling in some forms. The one filed by the California Teachers Association seemed to say that some forms of private homeschooling were legal, but then tried to say, not surprisingly, that all homeschool teachers need to be credentialed. LA Unified filed an amicus brief but didn’t bother to serve the parents, as required by law, so the father is moving to either strike the brief or get extra time to reply to it.

The hearing is scheduled for Monday, June 23 in Los Angeles. Amicus parties and their counsel have been told they may attend, so many of us are planning to go. The court had originally scheduled one hour total for oral argument, to be divided equally between the two sides, but we all received notice early this week that the court was extending the time for oral argument to a total of one hour for each side.

We’re all still working on getting our presentation for oral argument on Monday ready. The parents have agreed that we can have 5 to 10 minutes of their oral argument time (there’s one hour for the state and education amici, and one hour for the family, Sunland Christian School and pro-homeschooling amici, and on our side we need to agree how to split it up or the court will do it for us, which no one wants) to make a presentation and answer questions from the court. As the only California-based representatives of California homeschoolers, we thought it important that we be ready with something to say in addition to being ready to clarify issues raised earlier in the hearing. An appellate specialist with Munger, Tolles & Olson, the firm that represented our group member CHEA (Christian Home Educators Association) who is well known to this court (and who clerked for Justice Scalia of the United States Supreme Court) will be making the presentation on our behalf.

The reason for that is simple. Oral argument is not an opportunity for attorneys to grandstand and restate all the brilliant points in their brief. To the contrary, it’s a chance for attorneys to explain any subtleties or ambiguities that they felt might not have come across completely in their brief and, more importantly, a chance for judges to ask questions of counsel, a process that can be brutal. Since we can’t read the judges’ minds, we don’t know what questions they have, so we’re trying to be ready for anything.

The big debate here is whether the judges want to rule narrowly or broadly. Some people think that the court, in granting the rehearing (which really isn’t that common a thing for an appellate court to do), is saying, “You know, we screwed up. We stepped in it big time. We realize that we affected way more people than we should have by our ruling, and we’d like to rule in a narrow way that really only touches the parties to this case.” If that is true, several of the briefs do an excellent job of pointing the court to a variety of narrow grounds they could choose from in their ruling.

Others are more pessimistic and feel that the court is out to get homeschooling and has no intention of trying to craft a narrow ruling that is limited to the children in this case, no matter what Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jack O’Connell said. For those reasons, many of the briefs have explained, very well, how well-settled principles of statutory interpretation show that California law permits homeschooling as presently practiced, and how a ruling that required parents to hold credentials would violate other well-settled constitutional principles.

We think it’s possible that, in the first few minutes of the hearing, we’ll get a sense of which way the court is heading. We might not, but if we do, the attorneys on the pro-homeschooling side will be ready to help the panel see how a broad ruling just won’t cut it.

The Parade Magazine Intelligence Report on June 1 offered a brief item about the California appellate court decision denying that California parents have a right to homeschool. Parade quoted only one source in the piece, and that source suggested that homeschoolers aren’t much concerned with a good education:

“If upheld, the California ruling will send shock waves nationwide,” says Richard Kahlenberg, the author of a number of books on education. He says the case “pits those who believe parental rights are paramount against those who place a premium on well-educated citizens.”

Accompanying the item is a poll offering readers the opportunity to vote on whether homeschooling parents should have teaching credentials.

Writing in the New York Times on Sunday, June 1, scientist Brian Greene says

… our educational system fails to teach science in a way that allows students to integrate it into their lives…It’s striking that science is still widely viewed as merely a subject one studies in the classroom or an isolated body of largely esoteric knowledge that sometimes shows up in the “real” world in the form of technological or medical advances. In reality, science is a language of hope and inspiration, providing discoveries that fire the imagination and instill a sense of connection to our lives and our world. f science isn’t your strong suit — and for many it’s not — this side of science is something you may have rarely if ever experienced. I’ve spoken with so many people over the years whose encounters with science in school left them thinking of it as cold, distant and intimidating.

Instead, Greene advocates:

Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that’s been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings. Science needs to be taught to the young and communicated to the mature in a manner that captures this drama. We must embark on a cultural shift that places science in its rightful place alongside music, art and literature as an indispensable part of what makes life worth living.

Although schools apparently can’t, or won’t, do this — homeschoolers can and should.

About a year ago, the violinist Joshua Bell played incognito in a Washington metro station. It was a newspaper stunt, and the Washington Post published an article about it. One episode was memorable enough that, a year later, it’s still worth noting:

..,it is Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” which surprised some music critics when it debuted in 1825: Schubert seldom showed religious feeling in his compositions, yet “Ave Maria” is a breathtaking work of adoration of the Virgin Mary. What was with the sudden piety? Schubert dryly answered: “I think this is due to the fact that I never forced devotion in myself and never compose hymns or prayers of that kind unless it overcomes me unawares; but then it is usually the right and true devotion.” This musical prayer became among the most familiar and enduring religious pieces in history.

A couple of minutes into it, something revealing happens. A woman and her preschooler emerge from the escalator. The woman is walking briskly and, therefore, so is the child. She’s got his hand.

“I had a time crunch,” recalls Sheron Parker, an IT director for a federal agency. “I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evvie off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement.”

Evvie is her son, Evan. Evan is 3.

You can see Evan clearly on the video. He’s the cute black kid in the parka who keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell, as he is being propelled toward the door.

“There was a musician,” Parker says, “and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time.”

So Parker does what she has to do. She deftly moves her body between Evan’s and Bell’s, cutting off her son’s line of sight. As they exit the arcade, Evan can still be seen craning to look.

We homeschool so our kids can linger, look, and listen — because the extraordinary often goes incognito as the ordinary.

This is a beautiful site dedicated to understanding color. Learn what colors complement or clash, why, and how painters, web designers and others use color. Or just soak up all the color.

Helen Hegener of Home Education Magazine skewers an entrepreneur who allegedly aims to “completely and effectively take over the homeschool market”.

I’ve waited two days to write this post, believing it’s best to err on the side of caution when the stakes are potentially very high. Having waited two days, and having considered all the harassing phone calls, all the blisteringly-written letters, all the provoking emails, all the threatened lawsuits… well… enough is enough.

New York’s Village Voice finds homeschooling getting more popular among the city’s African Americans:

In the 2006–2007 school year, the city’s Department of Education says that 3,654 students in New York were homeschooled. Most are white, but a growing number are African-American. Black parents tend to take their children out of the schools for other than religious reasons, and homeschooling groups say black children taught at home are nearly always boys… some of New York’s parents have concluded that the school system is failing the city’s black boys, and have elected to teach them at home as an alternative.

Joanne Jacobs spotlights research finding that black boys who start school as high achievers fall behind even faster than low achievers:

African-American children tend to be taught in predominantly black schools, where test scores are lower on average, teachers are less experienced, and high-achieving peers are harder to find.

The website of National Black Home Educators is a good starting point for families interested in an alternative to such schools. It offers resource information and personal contacts in several states.

National Public Radio’s David Kesterbaum offers a profile of Kristen Byrnes, a teenager who challenges orthodoxy about global warming.

And she has a quality scientists try to cultivate: she is skeptical. Has someone made a claim? She wants to see the data.

That’s what science is supposed to be about, right?

I don’t remember how old I was when I started getting into global warming,” Kristen says. “In middle school I remember everyone was like: ‘Global warming! The world is going to end!’ Stuff like that … so I never really believed in it.”

Kristen’s website is Ponder the Maunder.

It’s April 15 — dies irae, tax day. But many school teachers will be able to smile at least a little as they take a $250 deduction for what they might have spent on school supplies and such. If you’re new to homeschooling, you may wonder whether you can, too. The answer is “no”. The IRS says that homeschooling expenses are non-deductible. For a quick backgrounder on taxes and homeschooling, see the following:

Bankrate’s 2008 Tax Guide explains the educator discount.

Ann Zeise briefly and clearly summarizes tax rules for homeschoolers.

The HSLDA tax issue folder offers useful background on educational tax credits, whose rules vary from state to state.

Not only are there no tax deductions for homeschooling expenses, but there are no Federal tax credits for homeschoolers. Of course, nobody likes writing checks to the IRS, and many homeschoolers who pay taxes to support schools they don’t use think it’s only right that they get a credit. Others recognize that tax credits come with strings attached — strings that can be tightened — and would rather keep paying up than risk the strings. When you finish filing your tax return today, let us know what you think.

Daryl Cobranchi spotlights the threat to Michigan homeschoolers in a trenchant post quoting a school official who seems to claim ownership of Michigan’s children, by saying, “They’re still our students and families.”

There’s a lot of history behind that quote — and others like it. The American school system still rests on foundations laid around the beginning of the twentieth century. Whenever we hear judges or legislators or school officials speak of the importance of turning children over to credentialed teachers, or of giving the system more jurisdiction over families, we hear the echo from those foundations.

Educational historian Herbert Kliebard covers the history in depth in his book, The Struggle for the American Curriculum: 1893-1958. Kliebard notes that social philosopher Edward A. Ross, who strongly influenced the development of the American curriculum, actually welcomed the decline of family influence. Kliebard writes:

The school in his view was actually in a better position than the family to instill ‘the habit of obedience to an external law’. Anyone can be a parent, while the certification of teachers is a matter of state control.

Or, as Ross himselfwrote,

Copy the child will, and the advantage of giving him his teacher instead of his father to imitate, is that the former is a picked man, while the latter is not.

Ross wasn’t the only influence on the development of schools as we know them, and in future posts we’ll look at some of the other founding fathers and mothers.