Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Charges against California Home Schooling Family that Led to Homeschool Ban Likely to be Dropped

The family court judge overseeing the two homeschooled children has terminated his jurisdiction over them

The charges against a California family that led to an Appellate Court decision to ban home schooling in the state have been dropped by the family court judge involved in the original case. The Appellate Court's ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, California, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Two years ago, court-appointed lawyers had asked that the two youngest Long children be ordered to attend a school outside the home. That request became the basis for the Appellate court's February ruling that homeschooling is illegal in California.

The family court judge overseeing the two homeschooled children at the center of the case, however, has now terminated his jurisdiction over the children. Now Mr. Long's attorneys are asking the Appellate court to drop the homeschooling case altogether.

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said the decision of the family court to terminate jurisdiction will likely lead to the Appellate court dismissing the case. "This development likely means that the horrible Court of Appeals decision outlawing home schooling in California will not be resurrected," he said. "That's good news for the 200,000 home-schooled kids in that state." "Apparently the state decided it either didn't want to pursue the parents or the court decided that they couldn't pursue the parents," Mr. Hausknecht explained. "And so, essentially, there is no case left, no parties left for the appellate court to actually apply their decision to."

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, said the Appellate Court is expected to decide in the next few weeks whether to drop its earlier ruling. "If that were to happen, we would be back at square one as if this whole mess had never taken place - at least legally speaking - because there'd be absolutely no precedent on the books," Mr. Dacus said in the Focus on the Family Action report.

Mike Farris, chairman and founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said, "This is a significant favorable development toward preserving homeschooling freedom in California."

With both state schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger throwing their support behind the state's homeschoolers, it appears increasingly likely the Appellate Court will reverse its earlier decision. O'Connell released a statement supporting the rights of parents to homeschool their children, despite the Second District Court of Appeals ruling to the contrary. "I have reviewed this case, and I want to assure parents that chose to home school that California Department of Education policy will not change in any way as a result of this ruling. Parents still have the right to home school in our state," O'Connell said.

Governor Schwarzenegger said the court ruling stating that parents must have a teaching credential to home school their children was "outrageous." "Every California child deserves a quality education and parents should have the right to decide what's best for their children. Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children's education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts and if the courts don't protect parents' rights then, as elected officials, we will," he said.

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In Rochester (NY), Almost Half of 7th and 8th Graders Fail Exam -- Even When Given Some of the Answers

Given how much grief charter schools and other creative initiatives get from the government-school establishment if they don't instantly turn at risk kids into Einsteins, along with the hounding of homeschoolers that seems to be on the rise, this story shouldn't be allowed to fall through the cracks, or remain confined to its local area.

Last Sunday's Rochester Democrat and Chronicle story (HT One News Now), which really should be read in full, would be humorous ("Kids Get Answers, Still Can't Pass") if it weren't for the fact that real children are clearly not getting educated. This systemic failure will affect them, and, to at least a slight degree, everyone reading this, for years to come:
Rochester students get peek at exam questions

Thousands of city school students got a sneak peek at dozens of questions on two exams last month - a scenario that has baffled testing experts, outraged local officials and raised concerns about the validity of the exams and the Rochester School District's method of test preparation. The multiple-choice questions appeared in review materials produced by the district and issued to teachers to prep seventh- and eighth-graders for their final social-studies exams, one of four required district exams.

..... District officials could not say how many of the 4,329 students who took the exams had also participated in the review sessions or received copies of the materials. But those who did so were drilled on multiple-choice questions and answers that were identical to and presented in the same sequence as those on the tests.

..... Each of the exams totaled 100 points, and the multiple-choice questions were each worth one point. The exams, in turn, accounted for 25 percent of the final grade in each course.

..... District officials defended studying actual exam questions in advance of a test as a legitimate method of preparation and expressed little concern about the potential impact that repeated questions might have on the validity of the exam's results. They noted that the final social-studies exams, unlike those for math and English, have no bearing on whether a student is promoted to the next grade.

Connie Leech, the district's supervisor for secondary schools, said the fact that the questions and their answers appeared in the same order on the review as the exam was "probably not in the best judgment" but added that she doubted any student could commit the order of so many questions to memory. "I'm not concerned that it's a cheat," Leech said. "What we were doing is giving kids a better sense of the knowledge that they needed for the test. It's like giving them an open-book test. This isn't a Regents exam."

..... Exactly half of the seventh-graders passed their exam, an increase of 6 percentage points over last year, according to the district. The passing rate in the eighth grade was 56 percent, compared with 51 percent a year earlier

In my opinion, the newspaper's headline and text characterizations of the students' exposure to answers as "peeks" represent a deliberate attempt to understate the seriousness of what is being described. The district is acknowledging that at least some students "received copies of the materials." Some "peek."

Reporter Dave Andreatta appeared not to ask if any disciplinary actions would be taken; based on Ms. Leech's defense, it would appear not. Andreatta also used what happened as a jumping-off point to air teacher grievances over having to "teach to the test" -- as if any of that is relevant to what really should be seen as an obvious case of cheating. Finally, even though the mulitple-choice questions were only a part of the exam, he seemed oddly indifferent to the appalling failure rate, even given the artificial help.

You can explore the paper's pages over the week that has since transpired to gauge reader reaction, which you will see ranges from understandable calls for get-tough measures to inexcusable excuse-making.

This story is a more glaring example of what I believe is a common local media tendency to cut underperforming public schools -- especially urban public schools -- breaks they don't deserve. Meanwhile, as noted earlier, media sympathies usually are not with ideas designed to help parents looking for better alternatives that will enable them to break away from the public school monopoly, or with those who choose to take on the serious responsibility of educating their children themselves, and tend to perform that task fairly well. Why is that?

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Helicopter parents

The New York Times devotes some of its front page to a story about overbearing parents who torture summer camp administrators with their specific instructions, whiny demands for exceptionalism, and unreconstructed anxiety. This is an excellent use of that newspaper's valuable real estate. Anxious and controlling parents are as great a threat to this country's posterity as, say, climate change or Islamic terrorism. As the article makes painfully obvious, parents are teaching their children all the wrong lessons with their interventions, which include attempts to eliminate every discomfort, redress every injustice, and break any rule (such as the ban on cell phones) if it is an obstacle to intensive parent-child contact. These parents are teaching their children to be easily discomfited, hypersensitive in the defense of their own prerogatives, and disrespectful of rules, all traits that are opposite to those required to be a good citizen.

There is some good news in this, at least if you believe that social mobility is a good thing (and I certainly do). Most of these children are from affluent, highly-educated families. If by dint of their upbringing they turn out, on average, to be as dependent and petulant as is the likely consequence of this much parental intervention, they will not be successful and will be displaced in the upper quintile by the children whose parents actually taught them to be adults.

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