Courtside home/school cooperation?

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 78, Issue 9, 1997, Pages 727-728

  Zirkel, Perry A ^a  

^a LEHIGH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 0040609727     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (7)

1. The Oklahoma courts have interpreted the state constitutional provision for "other means of [compulsory] education" to include home instruction so long as it is equivalent to public or other school attendance. Wright v. State, 209 P.2d 179 (Okla. App. 1922).
2. Swanson v. Guthrie Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 1-1, 942 F. Supp. 511 (W.D. Okla. 1996). I obtained supplementary information via telephone interviews on 24 January 1997 with Todd McKinnis and Jerry Richardson, the primary attorneys for the plaintiff family and the district defendants respectively.
3. This legislation was a response to a Supreme Court decision that had lowered the governmental burdens under the free-exercise clause. Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990).
4. See, for example, Perry A. Zirkel and David Rubin, "Home Schooling," in Religion, Education, and the U.S. Constitution (Washington, D.C.: National School Boards Association Council of School Attorneys, 1994), pp. 29-48. For a more recent example, see Battles v. Anne Arundel Sch. Dist., 907 F. Supp. 471 (D. Md. 1995).
5. See, for example, Perry A. Zirkel, "Home Sweet ... School," Phi Delta Kappan, December 1994, pp. 332-33. The two-family case described in this column in the January 1991 Kappan ended, on appeal to the Michigan supreme court, with a First Amendment free-exercise ruling in favor of one family and a 14th Amendment parental-liberty ruling against the other family. People v. DeJonge, 501 N.W.2d 127 (Mich. 1993); and People v. Bennett, 501 N.W.2d 106 (Mich. 1993).
6. Seven states - Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Oregon, and Washington - have reportedly enacted legislation requiring access for home-schoolers to public school extracurricular activities (telephone conversation with Christopher Klicka, senior counsel for the Home School Legal Defense Association, 27 January 1997). In the absence of such a statute or at least an interscholastic athletic association policy, home-schoolers are without a legal entitlement. See, for example, Bradstreet v. Sobol, 650 N.Y.S.2d 402 (App. Div. 1996).
7. The National Home Education Research Institute estimates an increase from 92,000 children being schooled at home in 1983 to 900,000 in 1996. See Jeff Archer, "Today, Private Schools Span Diverse Range," Education Week, 9 October 1996, p. 15. Meanwhile, the membership of the Home School Legal Defense Association has grown from 2,000 (staff of 2.5) in 1985 to 52,000 (staff of 50) in 1996 (telephone conversation with Christopher Klicka, 27 January 1997).