Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children

My question is, why shouldn't they? Any law that tells me how to parent isn't one I'm terribly fond of.

Should parents have a right to just let their children play and not try to teach them anything? Do they have a right to just leave them in the garden all day?
No, they don't. It's an almost comically extreme example, but it makes the point: Children have a right to an education, and anyone who stands in the way of that, be they school districts not accommodating special needs, or parents not bothering to teach children, will get steamrollered over. And rightly so.
Now how the children get that education is to a degree left up to the parents, and that includes homeschooling, but if children have a right to an education, then the state has a right to enforce standards upon parents who choose to homeschool. I don't think requiring some form of teaching qualification (how hard are they to come by in CA, out of interest, anyone know?) is an unreasonable requirement if a parent is going to be responsible for their child's education.

It's worth remembering that in actual practice, Californians do homeschool their children all the time.

This case came to court because the parents were suspected of abusing and neglecting their children. Getting them in school was a way to monitor that.

Where in the constitution does it give you the right to homeschool? If there were such a right, wouldn't all the laws about compulsory education be unconstitutional?

It's worth pointing out that California could choose to add more statutes that explicitly address homeschooling, and it's also worth remembering that in addition to informal homeschooling, that in California there are charter schools set up for online learning and also charter schools that are independent study, in both cases with materials furnished by the state. In addition, if you want, you can go to your local school and set yourself up for independent study, get counted as part of the enrollment, and in exchange get free books, materials, and curricula.

That's a lot of requirements that certainly seems to be aimed at reducing homeschooling dramatically.

Our state has zero requirements. Nada.  You don't have to register, take tests, show that you're doing anything, nothing.  I'm kind of against no requirements, but I'm not that familiar with what would be reasonable.

I don't have an opinion on homeschooling either.  I think homeschooling can be done well, or horribly.  Same for traditional schooling.

The law has been on the books for decades and has always been interpreted to prohibit homeschooling by non-credentialed teachers.  The court was following previous decisions saying the same thing.  

Whether or not the law is a good idea is worth discussing.  And whether or not the law applies to tiny "private schools" that some parents set up to home school their children is also another issue.  

But it is not a new law and these requirements have existed for years.

Actually I would support it also. Some parental behavior is way out of any gray area, so why not.

I remember reading a long time ago about a kid, early teens, who with the help of his CPS lawyer was suing to legally divorce his parents, basically to emancipate himself before the legal age. I believe he was trying to find some way that his foster family could adopt him.

The article in the Chron (I tried to post the link, but you have to subscribe, a pain) mentioned charters and private schools being vulnerable. It was indeed a front page story with giant letters that I spotted from many feet away, for this reason.

Whoops. Decision looks good, but I'm hardly an expert. A couple of quotes:

a substantial body of case law has confirmed the power of the States to insist that attendance at private schools, if it is to satisfy state compulsory-attendance laws, be at institutions which provide minimum hours of instruction, employ teachers of specified training, and cover prescribed subjects of instruction. Indeed, the State’s interest in assuring that these standards are being met has been considered a sufficient reason for refusing to accept instruction at home as compliance with compulsory education statutes. These cases were a sensible corollary of Pierce v. Society of Sisters: if the State must satisfy its interest in secular
education through the instrument of private schools, it has a proper interest in the manner in which those schools perform their secular educational function." (Id., 392 U.S. at pp. 245-247, fns. omitted.) The Allen court cited Turner as a case in which home instruction was rejected as a means of complying with a state’s compulsory
education laws.

As far as Federal law and US constitutional law is concerned, there's no question - states have the right to regulate education, but must give parents a choice. As the states have an interest in regulating standards, and because it would be impossible to visit and check a large number of homes, there's no requirement to allow home schooling, however. They do have to allow private schools because parents have to have a choice, and checking schools wouldn't be as onerous a task as checking individual homes.
There's no California constitutional question here, so it just comes down to what California law says. And CA law says you have to have a teaching qualification of a qualified tutor if you're going to home school. That seems to be the guts of the decision. Seems reasonable to me.

Incidentally, it does seem like under the first amendment, there's a right to pull your children out of normal education if you have a religious objection, but the bar is set high to prove that that's the case (from a case involving the Amish). Just saying so isn't good enough. And even then, you have to show that children will get some form of education that'll be appropriate to their future life.

I absolutely agree with your point- you abuse, you lose. And that's why it's a damn shame this is a story of abuse and not schooling really. But keeping your kids home and unschooling them is in NO WAY abuse. So to have a law that says "you cannot make that choice" I think is appalling.

Q: ZOMG, math is hard! What parent could teach Chemistry and Sociology and Economics?

A: By the time they're high school aged, most homeschoolers are doing some kinds of academic work either in depth on their own, or in an outside setting. There are online classes. Parents band together to teach homeschooling classes, sometimes hiring a teacher. Lots of homeschoolers take classes at local four year colleges and community colleges. Parents hire tutors.

And plenty of parents are capable of teaching Chemistry and Sociology and Economics. I taught my son microeconomics. He got a 5 (highest score) on the AP Micro exam his "freshman year."

Bonus Q: What about the prom?

A: Why would my son need to go to school not to go the prom? He can not go to the prom as a homeschooler just as easily.

in the sfgate version of that article:

"A credentialed teacher ain't gonna come and educate my child for free," Long said.

Meanwhile, at least some of the homeschoolers seem to have relaxed and are saying maybe they don't want a new law that sanctions (and thus regulates) homeschooling:

There is no provision in the California Education Code or elsewhere in state law that addresses the issue of homeschooling. Homeschool advocates want to keep it that way, despite the governor's support for a new law to help them.

They believe current code supports their practices and that new laws would include regulations and possibly restrictions on homeschooling.

"We just want to leave it alone because it's good the way it is," said Loren Mavromati, who homeschools her two children and volunteers with the California Homeschool Network, an advocacy organization made up mostly of homeschooling parents. "The law as it stands is working well in California."

The case law as cited by the ruling judge looks pretty rock solid. Remember, in that case, which is a child abuse proceeding, the children's attorney is asking for a particular kind of school arrangement, one where they attend 5 days a week, which is more restrictive than is required by the state. His declaration that there's no "constitutional right" to homeschooling won't be overturned. But, there's also no reason that a wave of court cases will begin because of it.