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Home schooling challenged

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A ruling by the California Court of Appeal that parents who  teach their children at home must have credentials has prompted Governor  Arnold Schwarzenegger to promise to push through legislation to  protect the rights of parents, if higher courts dont reverse the  edict.
The decision came last month as the result of a case involving  a Lynwood family, Phillip and Mary Long, who were taken to juvenile  court by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family  Services (DCFS). The judge in the case found that the children were  being poorly educated, but did not order that two of the youngsters,  ages 7 and 9, be enrolled full-time in a school.
On appeal, the 2nd  District Court of Appeal told the juvenile judge to require the parents  to comply with state law by enrolling their children in a school.
The  California Department of Education allows home schooling as long as  parents file an affidavit with the state establishing themselves as a  small private school, hire credentialled tutors, or enroll their  children in an independent study program run by a charter or private  school or a public school district. In these scenarios, the children can  still be taught at home.
Further, the California Education Code  exempts children in private school from mandatory public school  attendance.
A spokesperson for Superintendent of Public Schools, Jack  OConnell, said that the burden of verifying whether a school is  actually a private school falls on local school districts who are  required to enforce truancy laws.
Jennifer James, co-founder with her  husband, Michael, of the National African American Alliance of  Homeschoolers (NAAAH), said the ruling might have a chilling effect on  the involvement of African American parents in the homeschooling  movement.
It creates the stigma again. Homeschoolers worked so hard  to drop the stigma that they are this weird sect of people that keep  their kids inside. I think this will re-ignite the stereotype and scare  people away from possibly homeschooling, said James.
According to  the association co-founder, African Americans are the fastest growing  segment of the homeschooling population. She estimates they make up a  little more than 10 percent of the total population, which equates to  about 100,000 African American children nationwide.
A lot of parents  are fed up with their children not being given the same opportunities.  There was one parent in Charlotte, NC, who said her child was in a  school that had resource books from the 1980s. Those are the types of  things that push African American parents to consider homeschooling,  James added.
The movement for black parents to homeschool began  strongly during the early 1990s in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area,  according to the NAAAH co-founder. There were a lot of well-to-do  blacks in these areas, but they werent well-to-do enough to send their  children to private school, so they began homeschooling, and it started  to trickle across the country.
James said what previously kept  African Americans from homeschooling was the belief that this option was  not available to them. But as the phenomena became more prevalent in  the media, James said the concept began to click with black parents, who  reasoned they could do the same thing.
Back in California,  homeschooling proponents as well as the Longs have said they will appeal  the decision by the 2nd District Court. Meanwhile, the State Department  of Education said the ruling does not immediately impact what they  doaccept private school affidavits.

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