<p>It’s a well-known maxim that hard cases make bad law, and it’s also true that bad law can get made in cases with people who don’t know what they are doing. From a quick read of the case and some articles about it, I think it’s clear that (a) California has a very unusual set of laws as far as homeschooling is concerned, in that there is no clear statutory basis for homeschooling there, and (b) no one competent in the case was paying attention to the needs of legitimate homeschoolers in California. The kids’ advocates weren’t even arguing that homeschooling is illegal in California, only that it was not so constitutionally protected as to prohibit a judge from ordering parents to send their kids to school in a case of strong evidence of abuse associated with the homeschooling. It was unclear to me that the parents were represented competently, if at all. The opinion was way broader than it needed to be to resolve the case, perhaps because the appellate panel did not trust the trial judge to do the right thing if they sent it back to him.</p>
<p>My guess is that this will get worked out with a flurry of attention from intervenors anxious to avoid any disruption to the weird structure for homeschooling kids in California, which seems to have resulted from a bizarre alliance of traditional unions (who don’t want to legitimize homeschooling) and homeschoolers (who don’t want the degree of regulation that almost every other state imposes on them).</p>
<p>All of that said, this case – and the discussion here – raises a really important issue that people who care about this ought to consider:</p>
<p>(1) Yes, it’s true that people can do a great job homeschooling their kids, often a much better job than the local school district can do.</p>
<p>(2) But it’s also true that many, many kids are at risk in their own homes from abusive, negligent, drug-addicted, or just plain crazy relatives and their significant others. </p>
<p>This issue plays out a lot with very young children, where most are “homeschooled” with relative care. Problems at institutional day cares make headlines, but day in and day out there is a stream of young children who are injured (or worse) by negligent or abusive care from relatives.</p>
<p>Are all kids at home at risk? Of course not! Are enough at risk to constitute a problem worth paying attention to? I think so.</p>