But most of them are. So that their children are not found to be truants and hauled down to the neighborhood school, many parents essentially declare their house to be a private school, as the Rices plan to do once Corwin is old enough to run afoul of mandatory attendance laws. Either way, by jumping through a few bureaucratic hoops, in-home schools could be approved to receive vouchers. Even if they paid tuition to an independent-study school, they could save any money left over from the voucher for college costs. Philip Troutt, executive director of the Christian Home Educators Association of California, estimates that 120,000 to 150,000 youngsters are being home-schooled under conditions that might bring them under the voucher program.
Critics call it a dangerous loophole.
Aside from parents who already teach their own children, and thus incur legitimate educational expenses, some Prop. Cathy Duffy, who home-schooled her own children and also ran a small, privately funded voucher program in Los Angeles starting in 1998, has seen how low some people will sink. Duffy inherited the remnants of an earlier voucher program that listed more than 400 kids as clients. But when she started checking, she found that more than a quarter of those cases did not involve a child enrolled in a legitimate private school. Anything you can think of, somebody will try if you've got that much money at stake.