Bak 2 Skool
Syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin takes on the California public education monopoly, which is attempting to criminalize home-schooling, in this on-target column.

"The public education monopoly can't stand the thought of 'unqualified' parents teaching their own children. That is why they are cracking down on home schooling, even as a new study shows that thousands of public school teachers themselves are shamefully unqualified to educate the nation's students," writes Malkin. "Our public schools are filled with substandard math teachers who never took math in college, French teachers lecturing about biology, art teachers masquerading as history teachers and other instructors who have absolutely no expert knowledge or intellectual curiosity about the subjects they've been assigned to teach.

"This is a system whose first priority is self-preservation of its tax-subsidized employees, not academic enlightenment of its captive charges. And they dare to accuse home-schooling parents of educational malpractice."

Malkin notes that, in mid-July, the state Deputy Superintendent of Schools sent a memo to all school employees statewide informing them that home schooling is not an authorized exemption from the state's regulations governing mandatory public school attendance. Home-schooled children absent from the schools will be considered 'truant' unless the parent is a certified teacher licensed by the state.

Already, Sonoma County and San Diego school officials have issued memos declaring home schooling illegal.

Why is California's public school monopoly attacking home-schooling?

Because it is successful.

More than 1.2 million children nationwide are home-schooled and they are running rings around public school students in academic competition, on national tests and in college. This "poses a mounting threat to the government-run education monopoly and to the public school teachers' unions," notes Malkin, adding that "mocking home schoolers as fringe radicals and religious extremists, meddling with their teaching materials, and forcing them to beg public school officials for permission to educate their own children wasn't enough to defeat the growing movement. So now California's educracy has adopted a new motto: If you can't beat 'em, criminalize 'em."

It's sadly ironic given a new report by the Washington, D.C.-based Education Trust, which found that one of every four secondary school classes in public schools are taught by teachers untrained in the class subject.

Thanks to Chuck Muth, head of the American Conservative Union, for bringing Malkin's column and the California assault on home-schooling to my attention. If you don't get Muth's free daily email, you should. Just go to ChuckMuth.com to subscribe.