Inner-city Catholic schools are rapidly vanishing, according to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s new report, Who Will Save America’s Urban Catholic Schools? Since 1990, 1,300 Catholic schools have closed, displacing 300,000 students and costing taxpayers $20 billion to absorb these students into public schools. These closures have had little to do with performance and much to do with Catholics leaving the inner cities for suburbia.
The report calls on parishioners, philanthropists, and others who recognize the quality educational option Catholic schools can provide, even to non-Catholics, to support these inner-city schools directly and through development and marketing plans that will ensure Catholic schools remain a vibrant and valuable player in American education.
A great deal has happened since my Friday posting on the California home school decision -- In re Rachel L.First, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a press release on Friday striking out at the court decision:
"Every California child deserves a quality education and parents should have the right to decide what’s best for their children. Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children’s education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts and if the courts don’t protect parents’ rights then, as elected officials, we will."
This opens the possibility that political action, in addition to legal appeals, may lie ahead. However, proponents of home schooling in California are wary of a legislative option because a new law might codify a set of parent-school relationships that are less friendly than those in place before the court decision. Given the liberal composition of the California legislature, that is a justifiable concern.
Second, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has taken a step to nullify the decision. While the Rachel L. family and its California counsel plan to appeal the decision to the California Supreme Court, HSLDA has also posted a petition online collecting the signatures of those who would like the Court to "depublish" the opinion. HSLDA plans to formally ask the Court to depublish the Rachel L. opinion which would render it unusable "by other California courts" and eliminate the decision as a threat to other homeschoolers. By gathering signatures, HSLDA would like to demonstrate to the Court "that many other people, both in California and across the country, care deeply about homeschool freedom in California." Depublishing would be a simple way to alleviate this crisis.
Third, Eugene Volokh, a libertarian/conservative UCLA law professor and blogger wrote about the home schooling case on March 6th -- as edited by Alliance Defense Fund:
It’s pretty well-settled that the parental rights cases -- such as Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) -- don’t secure a right to home-school . . . .
Religious homeschooling is a different matter. Wisconsin v. Yoder held that the Amish could pull children out of school at age 14, and then vocationally train the children at home, notwithstanding a compulsory education law that generally required school attendance until 16. And Yoder survives the Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith (which mostly holds that the Free Exercise Clause doesn’t require religious exemptions from generally applicable laws, but which expressly preserves such claims in parental rights cases like Yoder).
What appears to be the crucial California case, People v. Turner (1953), has some difficult language for the proposition that there is a constitutional right to homeschool:
..., we have been unable to find a single case in which it has been held that so-called compulsory attendance statutes are rendered unconstitutional and void merely by reason of a failure to recognize home instruction as an alternative to attendance in the public schools.
Well, only one thing is certain -- we are destined to hear a great deal more about this case and the related legal arguments. A great deal has changed in California since 1953, and the Court would be wise to accommodate the educational arrangements that now exist for something like 200,000 students.
California Decision Highlights Judicial Trend against Parental Rights in Education
On February 28, 2006, a three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeal handed down a ruling that may threaten the continued viability of home school arrangements in California. In this case, In re Rachel L., a lower court decision holding that parents have a constitutional right to home school their children was reversed. The appellate court held that parents do not have such rights. Furthermore, the decision appears to have rendered the vast majority of California home schooling arrangements violative of state law.
According to the Los Angeles Times, California law does not address home schooling in its statutes – unlike thirty states that do. Apparently, the California Department of Education and local school districts have had a somewhat relaxed approach to home schooling. This has allowed the number of home schoolers to grow considerably. Estimates are that 166,000 children in California are taught at home, so the impact of this decision will be significant.
This case and two others of recent vintage, Fields v. Palmdale School District (U.S. 9th Cir. 2005) and Parker v. Hurley (U.S. 1st Cir. 2008), remind us of the fact that powerful elements within our society believe that parents have few, if any, rights over the educational content of their children. Once the state has spoken parents have to fall in line. In Palmdale, the Ninth Circuit used a dispute over psychological surveys that included questions about sex to assert that parents “have no constitutional right … to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise….” (The parents were not told about the sex-related questions when their consent for participation was sought by the school.)
In Parker, a Christian parent objected to his young child being given educational materials promoting homosexual parenting and marriage. Here again, the appellate court affirmed the district court’s ruling which stated that “the constitutional right of parents to raise their children does not include the right to restrict what a public school may teach their children.”
At bottom, the current case in California (Rachel L.), Palmdale, and Parker indicate that parents, pro-family groups, and friendly politicians will have to fight for the right to protect their children. They will need to aggressively pursue legislatively corrections. That may be possible in California regarding the status of home schooling, but it will not always be possible. Barring a legislative fix, it becomes clear how important it is to have judges on the bench who understand that the rights of parents are not derived from the state. Rather, parents have inalienable rights that supersede those of government -- particularly when the moral education of their children is at stake.
FRC is honored to present a Witherspoon Lecture on Tuesday, February 12th at noon by Dr. John G. West. Dr. West will speak on Darwin Day in America? This lecture is co-sponsored with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) of Wilmington, Delaware. Dr. West’s new book is an in-depth analysis of the drive to replace Lincoln’s Birthday with an international secular holiday called Darwin Day. Dr. West is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute. He will critically examine the movement to indoctrinate students in Darwinian naturalism. Darwin Day in America shows how our politics and culture have been dehumanized in the name of science.
Please join us in our newly redesigned Media Center at 801 G St. NW for this stimulating lecture and discussion. Hardbound copies of Darwin Day in America will available for purchase at a discounted price. Dr. West has graciously agreed to sign copies of his book for attendees. To RSVP, please call 1.800.225.4008 or register online here. The lecture will also be webcast live at www.frc.org.
The FRC Action Values Voter Straw Poll has been making lots of news, but one of the poll questions that hasn't yet gained as much attention was question #3, which asked participants to rank the order of importance among a set of issues. Here are the results:
Here's the statistical breakdown:
ISSUE
VOTES
PERCENTAGE
Abortion
2398
41.52%
Same-sex "Marriage"
1141
19.76%
Tax Cuts
626
10.84%
Permanent tax relief for families
563
9.75%
Federal "hate crimes" legislation
331
5.73%
No vote on this question
181
3.13%
Taxpayer funding for abortions
151
2.61%
Prayer in schools
93
1.61%
Reinstatement of the "Fairness Doctrine"
88
1.52%
Public display of the Ten Commandments
57
0.99%
Enforced obscenity laws
54
0.94%
Embryonic stem cell experiments
48
0.83%
Voluntary, student-led prayer in schools
44
0.76%
Total
5,775
100%
Now that you've got the numbers, feel free to crunch away.
As a guest speaker for an assembly at Boulder High School in Colorado, UCLA psychology professor Joel Becker had a surprising message of "encouragement": Becker encouraged the students—some as young as 14—to have sex (with men, women, or whatever combination they prefer), to do drugs, and to "please masturbate."
The following audio clips from Becker's portion of the "sex and drugs" assembly were provided by KOA Radio in Denver:
"It's not just 'The Good Book'," said Georgia State Sen. Tommie Williams. "It's a good book." Williams was referring to the Bible in an interview about the state's decision to introduce Bible literary classes in the public schools. The movement to bring the world's best-selling book back into the classroom is gaining ground across the U.S., demonstrated, in large part, by a thoughtful Time magazine cover story on the subject. The article, "The Case for Teaching the Bible," argues that the social and cultural benefits of secular Bible classes outweigh any hypersensitivity about Church and State.
Drawing on polls that show over 60% of Americans favor teaching about Scripture in a secular setting like public schools, writer David van Beima discusses the consequences of our nation's Biblical illiteracy. Among them, he notes the lack of knowledge and understanding about Western civilization at large. Van Beima writes, "[In the end], what is required in teaching the Bible in our public schools is patriotism: a belief that we live in a nation that understands the wisdom of its Constitution clearly enough to allow the most important book in its history to remain vibrantly accessible for everyone."
What was lost in the sweeping 1963 Supreme Court case that removed prayer from public schools is the reality that the Constitution does not bar an objective treatment of the Bible and religion in schools. It encourages it. Yet the case triggered a mass exodus of any reference to Christianity in education. The time has come for our nation to experience a true revelation on the Bible's relevance--not only to our personal lives but to our identity as Americans.
Stuart Buck found an interesting quote in psychology professor Richard G. Medlin's article, "Home Schooling and the Question of Socialization," Peabody Journal of Education, Vol. 75 (2000): 107-23:
Shyers (1992a, 1992b), in the most thorough study of home-schooled children's social behavior to date, tested 70 children who had been entirely home-schooled and 70 children who had always attended traditional schools. The two groups were matched in age (all were 8-10 years old), race, gender, family size, socioeconomic status, and number and frequency of extracurricular activities. Shyers measured self-concept and assertiveness and found no significant differences between the two groups.
The most intriguing part of the study, however, involved observing the children as they played and worked together. Small groups of children who all had the same school background were videotaped while playing in a large room equipped with toys such as puzzles, puppets, and dolls. The children were then videotaped again in a structured activity: working in teams putting puzzles together for prizes.
Each child's behavior was rated by two observers who did not know whether the children they were rating were home-schooled or traditionally schooled. The observers used the Direct Observation Form of the Child Behavior Checklist . . . , a checklist of 97 problem behaviors such as argues, brags or boasts, doesn't pay attention long, cries, disturbs other children, isolates self from others, shy or timid, and shows off. The results were striking -- the mean problem behavior score for children attending conventional schools was more than eight times higher than that of the home-schooled group. Shyers (1992a) described the traditionally schooled children as "aggressive, loud, and competitive" (p. 6). In contrast, the home-schooled children acted in friendly, positive ways.
Montgomery County, Maryland, which had its last sex education curriculum thrown out by a federal judge in 2005, has started implementing a new version. In the new curriculum, condoms are demonstrated on a piece of wood (not a cucumber as before) and lessons on homosexuality no longer bad-mouth the long list of historic world religions that disapprove of it. But the lessons still fail to explain the high health risks of certain sexual acts favored by homosexuals and still stigmatize those who disapprove of homosexual behavior by using the loaded term "homophobia."
Two citizens' groups that oppose the curriculum, Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum (CRC) and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), appealed the curriculum to the State Board of Education--but the county rushed the pilot program into use without even waiting for a ruling on whether it complies with state laws and regulations. FRC's Peter Sprigg, a Montgomery County resident who served on a committee that reviewed the curriculum, will speak on its flaws at a town hall meeting tonight in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Order his pamphlet, "Homosexuality in Your Child's School," to learn how you can fight the homosexual agenda that is affecting schools across the country.
South Carolina: Learning Their Lesson on School Choice
Despite the sagging test scores in South Carolina and disappointing graduation results, The Wall Street Journaltells an inspiring story about one school that is raising the grades--and hopes--of low-income kids. In Charleston, Capers Preparatory Christian Academy has gotten by on a measly $160,000 budget, holding school in rented office space with a total of 42 students. As the WSJ tells it, teachers are either volunteers or work for a humble $8 an hour. "Only five students come from two-parent homes, and most of the students are African-American. Each year, [the principal] is forced to dip into her retirement account to keep the school running."
As the state debates whether or not to spend a small amount of government money on school choice, the Capers school makes a good case for why it should. Despite Capers' modest budget, the students' SAT scores are 164 points above the state average. Each graduate is expected to go on to college.
As the South Carolina lawmakers debate whether to create a tax credit for middle-class parents and a "scholarship" for poor students in failing schools, we urge them to look no further than Capers, where a small investment is paying dividends in the future of our next generation.
Federal Judge: No Room for Parents in the Classroom
According to a federal judge, public schools--not parents--have the right to control the curriculum to which children are exposed. Joseph and Robin Wirthlin sued Lexington, Massachusetts schools for allowing their son's second-grade teacher to read the homosexual fairy tale, King and King, to the class without prior notice to the Wirthlins. A couple FRC interviewed for Liberty Sunday, Tonia and David Parker, joined the suit when their son brought home a book about families that included two gay adults. Judge Mark Wolf sided with the school, saying, "...Under the Constitution public schools are entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become productive citizens in our democracy." Wolf continued by saying that if parents don't agree with the curriculum, they are welcome to send their kids to a private school. "It is increasingly evident that our diversity includes differences in sexual orientation."
Clearly, this is not about diversity but a political agenda. Massachusetts law on homosexual marriages was imposed by judicial decree and is far from settled. The government seems bent on overpowering parents and dictating what's in the best interest of children. At the very least, the Parkers, Wirthlins and others deserved to be informed about the content of the curriculum and to have their kids exempted from lessons that violate their moral beliefs. School administrators argued that the books did not focus on human sexuality but family structures. If they truly believe that, Lexington officials must be living in the very fairy tales their schools are promoting.
It's no wonder America is failing miserably to keep up with international test scores. Public schools are consumed with teaching not the basics reading and writing but the chic and the radical. Both couples will appeal the case to the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, where we can only hope that the inherent authority of parents will fare better.
Dr. Steven Taylor, associate professor of political science at Troy University, is depressed by his student's lack of geographic knowledge:
Out of 16 students in my general studies World Politics class only 1 could identify Iraq and Afghanistan on a blank map on their exam. One other student found Iraq and another correctly located Afghanistan.
Pardon me while I go weep quietly in the corner.
Well, it's not exactly as if those countries have been in the news lately. Perhaps we just need more globes in the classroom -- or more military veterans.
