Ca Homeschooling Decision An Opportunity

CONSERVATIVES and homeschooling parents are naturally worried and upset over the recent decision by a California state appeals court, in Re Rachel L, that parents lacked a presumptive right to educate their children in their own way. Parents needed to get a credentialed private tutor if they didn’t send their children to school.

But I am not discouraged. I take the view of the great Senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry. Bring. Them. On.

It’s encouraging, for a start, that both of the Smart Guys, liberal law school prof Erwin Chemerinsky and conservative law school Dean John Eastman, in their review of the case on the Hugh Hewitt Show, came out in favor of the right of parents to homeschool . Said Chemerinsky:

I think they’re going to reverse the California Court of Appeal here. I think based on the Supreme Court precedence we’re going to talk about, I think the California Supreme Court is going to say though the government has a compelling interest in making sure that children are well educated, there’s a way of achieving it that’s less restrictive of parents’ rights than completely outlawing home schooling.

Conservatives and school choice advocates must understand that the education blob isn’t going to go quietly. They have developed a government monopoly that gets paid to educate our children but that has no real accountability. Why would this protected elite give up a privilege like that for the hard work of actually having to produce results?

We need fights, public fights, that put the average homeschooling parent in the role of helpless victim being bullied by an uncaring government bureaucracy. And we need the American people to observe these fights and we need to teach them to side with the little guy. Or next time it could be them!

I sent my $100 contribution in to the folks fighting the good fight on this, thePacific Justice Institute, using their online contribution page. You can too.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.