The Hall Monitor

Hassling home-schoolers

March

Parents who home-school their children in California might be breaking the law. A California appeals court ruled that parents who teach their children at home must have teaching credentials or use a tutor who has the credentials. Otherwise, the children are considered truant and the parents could be subject to legal penalties. (Read the story here.)

New York law does not require parents who home-school to be credentialed, so the ruling won’t have any effect here. But the central question remains: Do you think children who are home-schooled get the same quality of education as those enrolled in public or private schools? Also, have you faced any hassles from authorities by choosing to home-school? Please share your thoughts and experiences.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 12:10 pm by Dwight R. Worley.
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One Response to “Hassling home-schoolers”

Nicole Neroulias March 11th, 2008 at 5:33 am
I wrote about home-schooling in the Bay Area a few years ago. I was surprised to find that it was a viable, at times preferable, alternative to in-schooling, provided the parents were well-educated and still involved their kids in group activities, rather than home-schooling in order to isolate them from other religions, cultures, etc.
One of the families I interviewed had developed a lot of interesting educational activities (easy to visit lots of museums and travel all over the world when you don’t have to adhere to school schedules!) and their kids still participated in extracurriculars at the local public school, along with study and social groups with other home-schooled kids in the area. Libraries in the area had even started creating activities specifically for home-schooled kids, during the school day.
Interesting stuff. Just don’t get me started on how flawed any statistics reported on home schooling vs. public schooling are, though! (Hint: the type of people who can afford to and are qualified to home-school their kids are NOT representative of the average American!)

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