Chris Klicka, Rest in Peace

Yesterday homeschooling activist lawyer Chris Klicka died after a 15 year battle with multiple sclerosis.  Klicka was hired by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) in 1985 before it had really gotten off of the ground, and he helped grow it into the powerhouse advocacy organization that it is today.  In my book on [...]

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Olsen on the Constitutionality of Homeschooling

This post reviews Chad Olsen, “Constitutionality of Home Education: How the Supreme Court and American History Endorse Parental Choice” in Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal 2 (2009): 399-423
Olsen, a law student at BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School, here provides a fascinatingly detailed, though flawed, analysis of the famous In re Rachel L. [...]

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Cambre on Religion in Cyber Charters

This post briefly reviews Belinda M. Cambre, “Tearing Down the Walls: Cyber Charter Schools and the Public Endorsement of Religion” in Tech Trends 53, no. 4 (July/August 2009): 61-64 [Available fulltext here]
Cambre, an education professor at the University of New Orleans, here summarizes the legal background of the public education and religion issue and then [...]

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Schwartz on Homeschooling Laws

This post briefly reviews Brian D. Schwartz, The Law of Homeschooling (Dayton: Education Law Assn., 2008) [ordering info here]
Let me begin by saying that I have not read this book.  When I was writing the legal chapter in my own book on homeschooling I looked at the older edition of this text (published in 1994) [...]

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Howard Ahmanson’s Astonishing Political Switch

This blog is usually not really bloggy, in the sense that I don’t normally comment on other blogs posting about this or that passing tidbit.  But today I’ll break from my normal modus operandi for a truly remarkable tidbit.
Yesterday I read on Rod Dreher’s “Crunchycon” blog that Howard Ahmanson, the famous Orange County Billionaire whose [...]

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Cooper and Sureau on Homeschooling Politics

This post reviews Bruce S. Cooper and John Sureau, “The Politics of Homeschooling: New Developments, New Challenges” in Educational Policy 21, no. 1 (Jan and Mar 2007): 110-131 (available online here)
Cooper, editor of the recent anthology Homeschooling In Full View, and his collaborator Sureau here summarize legal, legislative, and public-image developments in the homeschooling movement.  [...]

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Khalili and Caplan on Homeschoolers and Vaccinations

This post reviews Donya Khalili and Arthur Caplan, “Off the Grid: Vaccinations Among Homeschooled Children” in Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics 35, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 471-477.
Khalili, a University of Pennsylvania law student, and Caplan, director of Penn’s Center for Bioethics, argue here that the large number of unvaccinated homeschooled children in the United [...]

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Yuracko on Regulating Homeschooling

This post reviews Kimberly A. Yuracko, “Education off the Grid: Constitutional Constraints on Homeschooling” in California Law Review 96, no. 1 (Feb. 2008): 123-184.
Yuracko, a law professor at Northwestern University whose work deals primarily with antidiscrimination law, here makes the case that state statutes and the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution require that [...]

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Plecnik on Homeschoolers’ access to public school programs

This post reviews John T. Plecnik, “Equal Access to Public Education: An Examination of the State Constitutional and Statutory Rights of Nonpublic Students to Participate in Public School Programs on a Part-Time Basis in North Carolina and Across the Nation,” published in the Texas Journal on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, Fall 2007 (13: no. [...]

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