Homeschooling - SUPPORT GROUP

[room onthebroom]

For the sake of furthering my child's education, I swallowed some of my irrational fear of the unknown. DD1 & I went down to the local Community College & talked to one of the admissions people who was really nice & a wealth of information. She gave us the normal admissions application, one additional form because DD is a minor & asked us to bring in a PSA sheet from the board of education proving that she is actually homeschooled. We both felt really good after we left & felt that the process would be much easier than anticipated. We also took a little time to wander around the campus a bit.

The only thing I have to do now is register our homeschool with the state board of education. This is my biggest fear of all. I've never done it before, because I hate the possibility of a strange government facilitator butting in & telling me how & when to do things. This is one of the reasons we decided to homeschool to begin with. If I want to teach cursive handwriting, ignore Common Core & maintain Pluto's tile as a real planet, that's my business (don't even get me started on my very rational fear of lice!) Anyway, to help ease my ongoing anxiety over this, I called my states Homeschool Network. The women there let me know that it was really unusual for me to have gone all these years without registering, or being affiliated with anyone. She said that its just a simple form & that no one ever comes knocking on your door demanding curriculum, admittance records, test results, etc...

Questions;
Do any of you have experience with this?
Am I really one of the rare few that hasn't registered with their state board of education, or another homeschool group?
Has anyone ever had a stranger knocking on their door asking them any questions about your child's education?
Do you give your children annual standardizing tests, or do you just move them up when they're ready?
If you do give annual state tests, do you submit those tests to the board?
Anything that I'm not asking, but you think I should know?

 

[Alaskan]

Questions;
1.Do any of you have experience with this?
2.Am I really one of the rare few that hasn't registered with their state board of education, or another homeschool group?
3.Has anyone ever had a stranger knocking on their door asking them any questions about your child's education?
4.Do you give your children annual standardizing tests, or do you just move them up when they're ready?
5.If you do give annual state tests, do you submit those tests to the board?  
6.Anything that I'm not asking, but you think I should know?

1. Nope

2. Eh.... I independently homeschooled for years. I signed up with a public school charter school homeschool group when eldest entered highschool....because spouse wanted a transcript for the kid....and here in Alaska if you sign up you get money from the state to homeschool and we were/are running broke. So...now I am fully registered...all kids.

My baby sister is in Texas, she independently homeschools. I have friends in Pennsylvania, they MUST register every year with the school district and keep and turn in records.

3. Never. Not me, not my sister in Texas, and not even my friends in the psycho state of Pennsylvania.

4. My sister just teaches whatever she thinks they need, grades shmades. Poor friends in Pennsylvania probably have to do that kind of crud...but I never asked.

I just teach what they need... who cares about grade level. We might use some stuff two years below their technical grade level, and other things two years above their technical grade level. I don't care, and don't pay much attention. The charter school I am with doesn't care either. For highschool, with the charter school they are more picky...but really just for the course titles, so that it all lines up with public school. But within the same course title I can give my kid the remedial jock level class, or the AP or CLEP level class. Whatever. Rah.

So there is no "move them up when they are ready" I just repeat the stuff I think is important until they have it in longterm memory, and then I move on.

I did a few times when I was just starting out, and spouse (pretty anti-homeschooling) was having fits, give them standardized tests that I downloaded from the internet. Just to see how we were, or what spots I had missed.

That WAS very interesting since I downloaded a math test from Florida, and another from Texas, and their scores were WILDLY different. Different terminology was used on the tests, I forget which state used all that stupid "number sentence " terminology, but my kids bombed that one. They had no idea what was being asked.

5. My sister in Texas I think has done zero testing. Once enrolled in the charter school I had to let my kids be tested and have the test scores recorded. However, last years test was so bad, and tgeir was such a stink from parents, that this year we got to opt out. So no testing this year.

The charter schools here in Alaska though are VERY pro-homeschool. So, even if your kid bombs the test the kid is not taken away, no home visits etc.

And yes, when I signed all of the kids up, my youngest was forced to test, and TOTALLY bombed. Giant fail. But the charter school just gave me a sheet that went over all of the stuff he failed, and listed all of the things that I should be working on with him, and that was all.

Friends in Pennsylvania, totally testing...yeppers.

6. Can't think of anything else. Your kid is thinking of doing the jump start, right? Nothing wrong with that.

 

[DMRippy]

Dual Enrollment should be pretty easy. When I worked at a private college in Admissions we actively recruited four our program. I know state schools had it too but not sure about cost. In TN they are offering free tuition for 2 years to a state school... High grads and OLDER now. They probably offer free tuition for dual enrollment. I have been out of that loop for 10 years.

As for registering with the state... it is required here in some form. We have several options here... with the state, with the local school system and umbrella and another option. Umbrella school was the easiest for me. It gave us the most flexibility.

 

[hbhoffman]

Well, did you do it? Did you figure out what needed? Usually the key is getting beyond our fears and taking that first step for dual enrollment...

 

[room onthebroom]

Well, did you do it? Did you figure out what needed? Usually the key is getting beyond our fears and taking that first step for dual enrollment...

Yes, we're working on it right now. The Fall schedule just came out & she's pretty excited. We've been trying to come up with an appropriate name for our homeschool. I think filing the name is all we really need to do. Selfishly, I'm already starting to feel the pinch of a regulated schedule... No more spontaneous road trips for us I guess.

 

[hbhoffman]

Well, yes and no for the road trips. If you try to get the classes for MWF or Tues./Thurs. only then field trips are still a possibility. And you will have the different holidays and long breaks to go on trips. I loved when it was Tuesday/ Thursdays! Until another one came along and now for one it was MWF and the other was TTH! And another one was Sat. am and Mon. night.! Lol. That semester I drove about 4-5 hours daily and averaged 500-700 miles a week- all local! It was worth it!

 

[herfrds]

I have been floored! Found out our home schooling group decided to form a co-op. I have nothing against it but I guess it would have been nice to have been told they did it right away instead of finding out a few months later.

So there are 3 families including us who had no clue, but we decided ok. Let's go have fun!
So we are planning several trips. One is to a town north of us who had to move the businesses underground after the town burned down. I know several points of interest on our local river so going to talk about doing a day trip.

 

[hbhoffman]

If you and other families join, it will be a great opportunity to form friendships and support. I miss ours deeply.

 

[MommaHen2Many]

Hi All, I just found this thread. We have homeschooled from the start. We are located in E. Washington. Our eldest is a son who is 13--middle child a girl 11 and youngest a girl 9. We have 12 chickens and they all have names! In an earlier post there was a question about an incubator --my son & I made one 2 years ago from a youtube video. It has worked great! we have hatched two batches of chicks, we typically put in 12-15 eggs. Last batch we had 7 roosters ugh! but the kids are asking again to have babies, so we may try a batch after july 4th. I've read a few of the posts here, but I'll have to back track a bit and catch up!

 

[hbhoffman]

Welcome, MommaHen! That was me. Didn't make one...yet. Too much going on. My last one just officially graduated last weekend! Then in 2 weeks we go on a missions trip together. Still need a few hundred but God is faithful! It's going to be really close! If you have time at some point,I would love to know more on how you made one. Perhaps it could be of use to others to use in homeschooling.