Here in my home town, the county school district has a program called AFE, or Alternative Family Education. My son is a member. Each month he meets with a reviewer to make certain that he’s on track to graduate by meeting all the requirements for both mandatory courses and time spent on work. The reveiwer goes over his work each month to make certain that it’s up to standards.
It’s also possible to buy prepackaged curriculums from various companies for students to follow, though we never bothered with that.
Probably the biggest control is going to be the child themselves and/or a very dedicated stay at home parent. If the child is not good at working with little supervision, and the parent doesn’t have the time every day, then home-schooling is going to be much more difficult for the child to succeed at.
Oh, I forgot to mention one popular way to homeschool that works all over the US: you just enroll in an umbrella school, and do the whole thing by correspondence course. There’s something for every level and style: K12 is Bill Bennet’s baby, Laurel Springs is secular and advertises that it has a lot of child-star clients, BYU does high school, (just a regular hs program, not religious–that’s Karl G. Maeser school’s job) there is Calvert and A Beka and Bob Jones and I don’t know whatall for Protestants, Sonlight caters to families living overseas, it goes on and on. There’s a lot of paperwork involved, but you can do a fully accredited school program all the way through high school entirely by correspondence. Sometimes it’s mostly on the computer, sometimes not.
I know you’re joking, but I posted a thread last week about dropping apostrophes. If I had search capability I’d find it for you. You might learn something, although I have no authority. Also, it’s always funny to see someone try to mock someone else’s typos and then put a typo into their own post. Karma at work.
We have three options here in California (with a few variations on the themes):
[ul]You can have your child tutored by an accredited teacher. This is fine if you are yourself an accredited teacher, or you have plenty of money.
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[ul]You can enroll in an “independent study” program through a public or private school. This is the option we are using with our son. He is enrolled at a local Charter School, which is a public school, so he is technically a public school student. Through our school’s charter, we are free to teach any curriculum we want; our only requirement is that we teach 180 (IIRC) days per year. We must keep an attendance sheet, which we provide to our advisor every other week. We also provide samples of work and copies of our lesson plan.
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[ul]Finally, you can declare your home a Private School simply by filling in a few forms for the State. Since private school teachers do not need to be accredited, and since you are teaching only your own children, there are really no restrictions.
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As far as testing goes, our school does administer the standard state tests each year. There are required because we have chosen to take the Charter School route; if we chose to go the “Private School” route there would be no mandatory testing. In California it really is very self-regulated, and there is definitely potential for abuse, but the same is true for “traditional” schools. Yes, you can “declare” yourself a homeschooler, then simply fail to do any teaching, and simply skirt the entire educational system. You can also send your child to school every day, where he stays long enough to be counted in the attendance rolls, then heads home to play Playstation all day while you are at work. It really all comes down to the level of involvement, on the part of both the parents and the students (and the school). If all are involved and interested in the welfare and education of the child, then everything will go well. If any of the parties are lacking, then there will be problems. The benefit of home schooling (in this sense) is that the parents and the school are one and the same, thus simplifying the equation.