Well, it looks as though the state of California has, for all intents and purposes, outlawed homeschooling. I was reading the comments for a post on this over at Justin Taylor’s blog, and it appears that some commenters want to deny the obvious — saying, for example, that this only disallows homeschooling when the parents don’t have teaching certificates. Right.
Others say that some homeschoolers don’t do an adequate job, and so it is in the state’s interests to ensure that they do. Let me first grant the initial point, which is that some homeschoolers don’t do an adequate job. How is that an argument for bringing in “quality control” from the king of all educational inadequate jobs — the state? And having granted the initial point, let me propose a little contest — let us compare SAT scores of all homeschooled California seniors and government school California seniors. Whoever loses has to be regulated by the other entity. If the homeschoolers lose, then the new law stands. If the government school loses, then we turn over the California Department of Education to a select committee of homeschooling moms. Ask them to fix it, or throw it away if it is beyond repair.
Having said this, let me make a comment on what this measure actually means. This is not really about the future of education in California, or even about the future of a lack of education in California. What this is is a government-mandated relocation program. California has determined that they have not yet gotten their massive drain of brains, industry, and thrift up to acceptable levels, and they want to do everything they can to get the kind of family most likely to be affected by this — patriotic, committed to family, hard-working, and so on — to think seriously about moving to another state. What oppressive taxation couldn’t do, what massive, uncontrolled immigration didn’t do, we will now accomplish by means of education harassment. Speaking for the Christians of Idaho, we don’t mind. Over the years, we have already gotten more than our share of this kind of family moving here to contribute to our church and school. Reasons for moving? “I had to get my family the heck out of California.”