The liberal think tank the Rockridge Institute is holding an online discussion on homeschooling. Just FYI if you are interested in getting in your two cents. The discussion was sparked by the controversial California ruling against homeschooling without teaching credentials.

The internet is already abuzz with commentary about a recent case involving a homeschooling family, where a California judge,  Justice H. Walter Croskey, wrote, "Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children."

And so people have taken that one line and started lining up on either side of the issue, with homeschooling advocates threatening to take it "all the way to the Supreme Court" and homeschooling foes apparently declaring some sort of victory. The defendant himself declared he believes the ruling stems from hostility against Christians and vowed to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

But when you look at the details of this case in context (which even some media didn't report), it changes the debate entirely:

LA Times

The appellate court ruling stems from a case involving Lynwood parents Phillip and Mary Long, who were repeatedly referred to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services over various allegations, including claims of physical abuse, involving some of their eight children.

All of the children are currently or had been enrolled in Sunland Christian School, where they would occasionally take tests, but were educated in their home by their mother, Phillip Long said.

A lawyer appointed to represent two of the Long's young children requested that the court require them to physically attend a public or private school where adults could monitor their well-being. A trial court disagreed, but the children's lawyer appealed to the 2nd District Court of Appeal, which has jurisdiction over Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

The appellate panel ruled that Sunland officials' occasional monitoring of the Longs' home schooling -- with the children taking some tests at the school -- is insufficient to qualify as being enrolled in a private school. Since Mary Long does not have a teaching credential, the family is violating state laws, the ruling said.

"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the district court. "Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program."

I am so grateful. Not only do I have two beautiful children, but they are healthy and happy.

My very supportive husband's catscan came up empty. Whew! If the pain in his lower abdomen persists, he will have to see a specialist. But as far as we know, it is not cancer.

As for my sister, she is feeling much better that she started running errands on her own yesterday. That takes the pressure off me who has been blending her food -- she can't swallow -- and shuttling her everywhere. Yes, all is starting to look up on my end. Now, if only my adorable baby would sleep...

From the mommy blogosphere: I have been following the homeschooling woes of Ella at most/least blog. Even though she is against “the idea of schools,” she has decided to place her son Harry in a local public school after reaching “rock-bottom personally.” Ella is taking care of a baby at home and is pregnant with her fourth child.

A very big thank you to everyone who emailed me after I reached such a low point last week. Many of you were surprised that Harry has gone back to school and were worried that I had rushed into the decision…

I sort of want to go into all the details of why I decided to return Harry to school. The first year of homeschooling is always difficult, but actually it had gone pretty well and Harry’s progress was wonderful. But I have reached rock-bottom personally after weeks of terrible sickness, Harry was refusing to do school work, I was feeling that the unschooling methods I had to use over the summer were not teaching him enough and perhaps worst of all, Ben who is a feisty, sometimes adorable, but mostly difficult twenty-one month old was being so demanding that Harry and I simply couldn’t really concentrate while he was around. Not Ben’s fault of course because all one year olds need a lot of attention but Harry’s education was suffering. Add to that the prospect of the new baby’s arrival next Spring and the fact that I will have even less time and it all felt like too much.

Reading this made my head spin and I was appalled at the people who e-mailed this poor woman to question her decision. Only in this country would we expect a woman to feed, clothe and educate her four children by herself. Insane.

On moms going insane: MomsRising.org is collecting “scary stories” about what it is like to raise children with inadequate resources. (Read expensive healthcare and childcare or lack of time with our children to pay for it all.) I felt for the women -- at least 10 of them -- who wrote in:

Hi all, yesterday my 2 year old son was sick when we woke up, so I took him to the doctors in the morning at 8 am. I left a message for my boss explaining the situation and telling her I'd be in a little late. When I came in later she became very upset and said, "I run a business here not a daycare!" I was shocked, not only because she could talk to me like that, but because when she hired me she knew my situation with a small child and she was a single mother to boy who is now a grown man. She must have forgotten what it's like to be a working mother, that's scary!

I am sure every generation says motherhood is easier for their own progeny. But don’t you sometimes get the feeling that the pressures and stakes have never been higher?

Education seems to be a running theme this week. Brain, Child ran a cover story on short-term homeschooling. In this case, writer Laura Brodie homeschooled her 10-year-old daughter for a year.

While she admitted that socially there was a void between short-term homeschoolers and those who considered it a permanent lifestyle, she did a good job highlighting the pros and cons of becoming her daughter’s full-time teacher and constant companion. She also presented the viewpoints of short-term homeschoolers, social libertarians who could not fathom placing their children in the public school system and neutral “experts.”

Most importantly, her story was rich with statistical information on what a burgeoning and acceptable trend homeschooling has become and who the typical homeschooling family is:

It turns out that homeschooling is one of the fastest-growing trends in American education. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (part of the U. S. Department of Education), in 2003, 1.1 million children were being homeschooled in the United States--about 2.2 percent of America's school-age population. Brian Ray, founder of the National Home Education Research Institute, places the total higher--somewhere between 1.7 and 2 million. Most experts agree that the number of homeschoolers seems to be expanding at a rate of about 7 to 10 percent per year.

It's impossible to describe a "typical" homeschooled student in America, though the 2003 government study provides a rough profile. Overall, white children in America appear about twice as likely to be home taught as their black peers, and four times more likely than Hispanic children. Most homeschoolers come from two-parent families where only one parent works full-time. Households with one or two children seem equally drawn to homeschooling, but in families with three or more kids the odds of full-time home education double. Families with an annual income of more than $75,000 are less likely to homeschool, and rural homeschoolers outnumber their urban counterparts ("urban" being defined as 50,000 people or more). Finally, the South is the U. S. region with the most homeschoolers--the Northeast has the fewest. (Northeastern states also tend to have the most strict home education requirements, with more detailed specifications for curriculum and testing.)

These statistics, however, are sketchy at best. According to Neal McCluskey, an education policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., who specializes in school choice, "You can't get systematic data on homeschooling because most homeschoolers want to be left alone." In other words, parents who shun government education also tend to avoid government tracking. The one thing McCluskey asserts with confidence is that homeschooling is "definitely expanding," and this expansion has taken it well beyond its traditional base.

I have met enough homeschooling families in Berkeley to stop flinching every time I hear of it. I admit, that the first time I heard of someone homeschooling, I was shocked. In my mind, I pictured a deeply religious family of twelve -- maybe Mormon or Amish -- in a log cabin in the countryside as if it were the 1800s. While this may have been true at some point -- and is still accurate in some places -- it is no longer your “typical” homeschooling family as Brodie’s article can attest. I have met many a secular, professional women who have added schooling as part of their SAHM duties. Like Brodie, they want their children to learn what they want and at their own pace and not surrender to rigorous, regular testing as required by legislation like No Child Left Behind.

And I respect these women for taking such an active role in their children’s educations, although I know I could not do it. I lack the patience, don’t feel like I know enough math and science to answer all my son’s questions and don’t want to get into power struggles with him. This anecdote by Brodie resonated with me as Ari is a very willful child: