Home Schoolers Need Teaching Credentials?

A recent court decision in California is requiring home-schoolers (parents/caregivers who educate children in the home, and outside of the public school or private school systems) to have teaching credentials.

Right now, this decision only affects students in California, but it is sure to cause some debate in other states. Here in Pima County, Arizona, for example, home schoolers are only required to register with the Pima County School Superintendent (mostly just to verify that the child is, indeed, attending school when he or she may not be enrolled in any school system). Other counties in Arizona have similar guidelines.

As you can imagine, this is causing quite the rukus....on both sides.

Approximately 1 million children in the United States are currently being home-schooled, and this is a fast-growing trend in our country. There are home schooling clubs, organizations, and resource groups available for parents who wish to home-school their children, and the trend does not appear to be slowing down....yet.

In my experience, most home-schoolers choose to educate their children outside of the public school system because of religious beliefs that they feel are in conflict with what is being taught in the schools (or not taught, as some might argue). Even cursory exploration on the topic will reveal a propensity of Christian home school groups over any other type of home school group or organization.

For more information, listen to this story (recently featured on NPR- National Public Radio).

Thanks for reading,

Alisa