LOS ANGELES — Home-schooling advocates have decried a recent California court decision that declares most forms of home-schooling illegal.
The Feb. 28 ruling by a California appeals court came in a juvenile court case involving a family that home-schooled and had the children tested occasionally at a Christian school.
“The fact remains that the children are taught at home by a non-credentialed person,” wrote Associate Justice H. Walter Croskey in an 18-page decision, in which two other justices concurred.
They ruled that public school enrollment is generally required unless a child is enrolled in a full-time private school or tutored by a credentialed person.
A lower court did not order such schooling based on a belief that the parents had a constitutional right to home-school, but Croskey wrote, “California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children.”
The Home School Legal Defense Association has started a petition to “depublish” the appellate ruling, a move that would mean the case is not binding on any other family in the state.
“If not reversed, the parents of more than 166,000 students currently receiving an education at home will be subject to criminal sanctions,” said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute in Sacramento.
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