The Homeschooling Handbook_ From Preschool to High School - Mary Griffith [21]
The program is not operated or instituted for the purpose of avoiding or circumventing the compulsory attendance requirement….
The pupils in the institution’s educational program, in the ordinary course of events, return annually to the homes of their parents or guardians for not less than two months of summer vacation, or the institution is licensed as a child caring institution….
According to homeschoolers involved in the legislative process at the time the Wisconsin statute was enacted, the main reason for distinguishing homeschooling from private schools at all was to make clear that home education programs were not eligible for federal and state funds for school lunch programs, transportation subsidies, and so on, as conventional private schools sometimes are. The explicit homeschooling category also makes it possible for the state to take a more accurate census of school-age children and the educational programs in which they are enrolled.
Home-based educational programs are simply required to file with the state department of public instruction a form that gives the number and grade level of children in the program and certifies that the program meets the criteria listed earlier. The state does not require keeping records to verify the instructional hours, although some homeschoolers choose to do so. Wisconsin’s law puts the burden of proof on the state to demonstrate that a home-based educational program is inadequate and fails to comply with the law, in which case the parents would be subject to prosecution for truancy violations. As in California, state education officials sometimes attempt more regulation of homeschoolers than the law allows, and Wisconsin homeschooling organizations actively monitor and limit such attempts.
Texas
The Texas Compulsory School Law states that “any child in attendance upon a private or parochial school which shall include in its course a study of good citizenship” is exempt from public school attendance. Until 1981, homeschooling families fit easily into this definition of private education. In that year, without any change in the law itself, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) declared as a matter of policy that “educating a child at home is not the same as private school instruction, and, therefore, not an acceptable substitute,” and it began prosecuting homeschooling families. In its prosecutions, the TEA maintained that the quality or success of any homeschooling program was irrelevant as a defense because no home, by definition, could qualify as a private school.
In May 1985, Gary and Cheryl Leeper, along with five other homeschooling families, filed a class action suit against the Arlington, Texas, school district and all other Texas school districts, seeking a declaratory judgment that homeschooling did in fact meet the statutory definition of a private school. When the trial court judge found in favor of the families, ruled that homeschools are to be considered private schools, and granted a permanent injunction against further prosecutions, the state appealed. The Texas Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court, going on to state that the action of the TEA against homeschoolers “amounts to bad faith, arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable conduct and is harassment.” The state appealed again.
Finally, in June 1994, the Texas Supreme Court affirmed the lower court rulings, agreeing that the TEA had no legal basis for prosecuting homeschooling families, who are indeed exempt from the compulsory attendance law. The Supreme Court lifted the injunction against prosecutions, because the ruling rendered it unnecessary, and, in an 8–1 decision, ordered the TEA to pay $360,000 in attorneys’ fees for the plaintiff