Families turn to homeschooling after Newtown, Connecticut shooting

[Journeyman]

9. Actually, here in California homeschooling and private education serve to fortify public education…

I sent my children to private school for a good portion of their formal primary and secondary schooling. Throughout those years, I continued to pay all taxes for public education. The schools received my money but did not have to make room for my children, so the district benefitted.

There was a proposition on the ballot (38), about the time my eldest was in high school (2000), to create vouchers for education. I voted against it, as did more than half the parents whose children were in that private school. The proposition failed by a margin of 70% to 30%. A similar proposition (174) failed by a similar margin in 1993.

Both times, the margin of defeat was better than 2 to 1, and less than 50% of the parents at the private school supported it. And throughout those years, the percentage of California students in private schools never rose above 10, and has precipitously dropped in the last 12 years.