Posts Tagged ‘k12’

Homeschooling Laws

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

I’m sure that every parent dreams of providing their child with the best type of education, don’t they? For many parents this just means looking at the different schools within their home catchment area. For others, it can mean looking at appropriate home schooling plans. While there are lots of different types of home schooling courses available, each individual state has its own set of rules and regulations concerning home schooling within its authority. It is well worth consulting these laws on home schooling before you remove your child from school and enroll him or her in a home school syllabus.

To find out what your local home schooling rules are exactly, you will naturally first have to find out what your state’s policy towards home schooling is. This is because of the fact that some states appear to have no need for documentation from parents or home schooling programs about their enrollment policies or the subjects that they are going to teach.

When you look for this information on the Internet, you will find that there are four categories of home schooling rules. These rules range from no legal requirements about home schooling to very stringent laws regarding home schooling. At present there appears to be about six states where the home schooling laws are very stringent. While on the other hand there are 10 states where there are no home schooling rules at all and notification of your intentions is not required.

These assorted differences in home schooling laws are also to be found in the territories of the US. Because different states have several different criteria for home schooling courses, there are times when you will have to supply documentation as the parents of home schooling children. The records will include parental notification to the state about your child’s studying as a home school student.

For the states where the home schooling laws are very strict, the state requires more than a casual notification from the parents. Among the documents that you may have to produce are accomplishment test scores, a home school course approved by the state and a professional evaluation of your child’s educational development.

You will also need teaching qualifications for you and your spouse, if you are both to be the teachers of your children, while they are occupied in home schooling. Some states may demand that state officials visit your home to check whether the children are indeed in receipt of an adequate high school education from you. These are just a few of the diverse documents and pertinent facts that you will need to be aware of concerning your state’s home schooling laws.

Since each state has different rules regarding home schooling, it is a good plan if you find out the information, regulations and rules that your state has passed appertaining to home schooling. The main fact that you should keep in mind about state laws and home schooling is that before your child becomes a home school student, you will have to discover what the home schooling rules are in the precise area where you live.

If you are searching for information on home schooling regulations, please go over to our web site now called Home Schooling.

Thought on Home Schooling.

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Home schooling or homeschooling, if you want (in fact, you even see it hyphenated, as in home-schooling) has been around for about 30 years now, although, of course it was all pupils had before state intervention in education. Out of the way thinly-populated areas in huge countries like the USA, Canada and Australia still have to rely on home schooling to a great extent, although it is less difficult now with the popularization of radio, television and the Internet. Video cassettes also have an important role, as do books still.

Nevertheless, home schooling has become very popular in the cities as an alternative to urban public schools, which are often seen as hotbeds of disruption, anger and narcotics, especially by the middle classes and not without some due cause, to be honest. However, there are also other valid reasons for opting for home schooling, which we will go into later.

Firstly, it must be said that the decision to opt for home schooling must be a family one. This is because it will turn “normal family life” on its head and place an added monetary strain on the household purse. For instance, one parent will have to stop work. This cannot be allowed to be a source of bad feeling, or both parents could take part-time employment and share the children’s tuition time. Whichever way you go, you will not have two full-time incomes any longer. Working from home on the Internet could be a partial solution here.

Home schooling will also upset everyone’s social life. So, the parents’ social life is restricted by not meeting work colleagues every day, but so is little Johnny’s, particularly if he has already spent some time in a normal classroom. He won’t see his friends from class as much and they may drift away from him or even resent him.

On the positive side is that the family will become a lot more solid as a unit by studying together at home schooling. Both parents will have a thorough knowledge of what their child is learning and will be learning. While maintaining a broad-based education, you might nonetheless opt to focus on aspects of, say, history or science, that especially interest your child. It gives you the freedom to tailor your child’s education to his or her own interests, something that state education cannot do well with over-sized classes. Your child will also come less under the influence of the rowdier pupils in school and be able to concentrate more on studying.

A note of caution may be useful at this point. Do not be tempted to compel your child to learn too rapidly. It is tempting for a non-professional teacher-cum-proud parent in home schooling to push the child much harder than he can go. Remember that most people are only average. You must be on look out for signs of burn-out and bad feeling at all times.

Once you decide to opt for home schooling, you will have to choose a basic curriculum, run through it yourself to familiarize yourself with it, buy or locate in the library any supplementary books, videos and software, make a load of notes and stock up on pens and paper, folders, binders and filing cabinets and you’ll be ready for your first semester at home schooling.

If you are searching for additional information on home schooling, please go over to our website now entitled http://www.home-schooling.the-real-way.com