Home schooling in CA

[scaeagles]

While my kids go to private school, I am a big supporter and advocate of home schooling as well.

While I do not completely know all of the aspects of the case, I am concerned about this.

If a parent does not have a college degree and a teaching certificate, they are deemed unworthy to teach their own children. I find this law (which admittedly has been around on the books for quite a while, but only recently a child welfare case made this a headline issue) to be troublesome. One example of a concerned parent in CA is a woman with a law degree but no teaching credentials. She is not worthy or able to home school her children????

Here's what really, really got me, though.

But Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles, which represented the Longs' two children in the case, said the ruling did not change the law.

"They just affirmed that the current California law, which has been unchanged since the last time it was ruled on in the 1950s, is that children have to be educated in a public school, an accredited private school, or with an accredited tutor," she said. "If they want to send them to a private Christian school, they can, but they have to actually go to the school and be taught by teachers."

Heimov said her organization's chief concern was not the quality of the children's education, but their "being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety."

Am I misreading that? A duty to ensure their ongoing safety? As if a parent home schooling their own child does not have that as a higher priority than a public education system? I've seen some pretty brutal public schools, and I can be certain that 99% of the time a home schooling parent is just a bit more concerned about the safety of their child than the teachers or administrators.

Am I making more of this than it is? Does anyone else see a problem here?