Is Home Schooling legal in your state?

Home Schooling is legal in all fifty United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and many other countries. In no U.S. state is a home schooling parent required to be a certified teacher, and I expect such a rule will never come to exist. While you may not have heard of home schooling when you were in school, it did exist. It just wasn't quite as common as it is today. Home schooling actually came long before public schools existed in the United States. It did not start because parents didn't want their kids to associate with children of different neighborhoods or cultures. Parents started home schooling for a number of reasons, and it continues and becomes more and more popular today not solely for cultural or religious reasons, but for the educational and social advantages it provides. Just about any home schooler you ask, with some exceptions of course, will tell you that one of if not they key reason they homeschool is because it provides their family with a lot more educational and social freedom and opportunity than they'd have in public or private schools. It's the option that will usually fit a family's needs, wants, and general lifestyle the best...because it is what you make it out to be. Some states do have curriculum guidelines, but all this means is that there is a list of subjects you are required to cover and a periodic test, usually annually, but sometimes every three years or so, that your kids need to prepare for. How you teach these subjects or prepare for this tist is entirely up to you unless you choose to work through an online public school or private school...which isn't quite the same as home schooling.

Yes, it's legal in all 50 states. There are different laws and regs in each state, and those laws must be followed, but it is completely legal. Most countries also allow homeschooling - Germany is the only one that I know of that doesn't, and that's because of a law set by Hitler stating that all children must be schooled by the state. The parent does not need to be a certified teacher; honestly, certification and homeschooling have nothing to do with each other. Teaching in a classroom is a whole different world from homeschooling - and a teaching certification does absolutely nothing to prepare a parent to teach in a homeschool setting. Each state has its own regulations that state minimum curriculum requirements. A huge majority of homeschool families go well beyond this minimum, and often go beyond the scope and sequence of their local district. It did exist in many states in the 60s and 70s, it just wasn't as popular. Homeschooling has little to do with schooling children in the way of one's culture; it has a lot to do with offering our kids an education that just isn't available in our local schools. Schools are designed to teach to the "average" child - audio visual learning style, structured teaching and classroom management, rote learning, etc...which is terrific for the many kids that learn in that manner. However, many kids don't...and for them, the way that most schools teach can actually hinder learning. Homeschooling allows us to tailor a curriculum to the needs of our individual children - something that many classroom teachers would love to be able to do, but just can't. Edit - I'm not trying to come across as snarky, but you're missing a lot of what actually happens in homeschooling. Being homeschooled doesn't mean that our kids learn only from us...quite the opposite. It means that we work with them to choose the best instruction to meet their needs. Some kids are very independent learners and will learn quite a bit, given the right resources; for others, homeschooling gives them the opportunity to pick and choose their instructors based on their needs. Schools don't allow this to happen...it's really a crapshoot as to whether you'll end up with a teacher that is able to teach to your needs. And homeschooled kids don't just rely on "playdates". They do when they're 5, but really, what's wrong with that? Older kids take classes, volunteer, are often heavily involved in sports, Scouts, 4H, community classes, etc. There are literally tons of opportunities out there in many areas...my 6th grader actually asked me to run things by him before signing him up, his schedule was getting so busy he had no time to himself. Many homeschool kids enter college around 16 (or earlier, in many cases), and many graduate with several college credits and very nice scholarships. They are actually courted by colleges and universities who prize their independence, responsibility, and diversity. Because they have the time and motivation to seek "out of the box" educational opportunities, they often end up to be very well rounded adults. Edit again...Scott, did you ever consider that maybe the only homeschooled kids your wife ever sees are the ones that weren't actually homeschooled? Successfully homeschooled kids are generally not put back into the public school system, since homeschooling is working for them. Sadly, there's been a rash of people pulling their kids without researching what homeschooling requires...and their kids end up back in school without needed skills. Kids who are actually homeschooled tend to score, on average, 20 points or more higher than both their public and private schooled age mates. You might try doing a bit of research outside of your wife's experience...homeschooling is alive and well past the fourth grade.

As many have already pointed out, homeschooling is legal throughout the United States. The requirements and laws regarding homeschool are dictated by each individual state, so it's going to vary from Alaska to Colorado, to Kentucky to Michigan. Our state dictates the core subjects (i.e., English, versus each little individual point) and the number of hours of instruction throughout a school year. Making each kid stay in a certain "grade" would really defeat a major point of homeschool. My kid is in an early first-grade level Phonics/English, but starting third-grade Math, and in the middle of second-grade Science. Technically he's "supposed" to be in second grade. Why speed him up for something he's not ready for, and why hold him back when he's raring to go? I was in school in the late 70s. Compulsory public school had only been around for 70-ish years at that point. A vast majority of our forefathers were homeschooled, and the literacy rate was in the very high percentiles...above 90. In the 1800s, kids either learned at home or went to the small schools which each community paid for, or sent them to private school. There weren't any truancy officers looking for "strays" at that point. In the early 1900s, this country got all caught up with the Industrial Revolution, and as we began to shift our focus from the individual creator/artist/craftsman to the assembly line, we shifted that idea to the individual person, too. We had a huge influx of new immigrants, many of whom didn't "blend in" like we thought they should, and the idea of mandatory, publicly-funded schools which could mass-produce "quality" people, just like cars, began to catch on. It was mainly pushed by the industrial titans of the time. Read "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto. It's a great read, explains a lot. Gatto was a career-long teacher in New York, won Teacher of the Year for several years running. Back in the 60s and 70s, nearly the only types of people who homeschooled were the ultra-religious ones and the free-thinking hippie-radical-types. As politics make strange bedfellows, these two groups fought quite a bit for the homeschooling rights we have today. Many parents today are finding homeschool to be a viable alternative to the radical failure of our public schools. In the city where I live, the schools have actually lost accreditation, and have been taken over by the state. There's a huge p*ssing match between the mayor and the school board and who knows what all. Expanding beyond the city failure, we have our entire state. In our state, the average achievement scores on the standardized tests is in the 35th percentile. (!!!!) Nation-wide, about 1/3 of the kids don't even graduate. School continues to basically grind kids into hamburger, yet we insist on throwing more and more money to the education beast. I like many of the private schools around here, but I personally don't make enough money to have an extra $1,400 a month for tuition fees. And private school doesn't address the abysmal social situation that school forces onto kids. Homeschooling is an option for many parents for a wide variety of reasons. Very few of them top their list of reasons with "xenophobic cultural racism."

Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states. The specific requirements differ from one state to another. Most homeschool families are homeschooling to give their kids a better education than they can get in public school, and to provide them with a better environment and more chances to socialize than they have in public school. (Yes! Homeschoolers are generally BETTER socialized than public school students!)

yep it's legal in my state :) But I've never been home-schooled, I'm a public school girl, thanks

Yes, homeschooling is legal in my state. Required to gave a high school diploma, equivalent or help from someone with a bachelor degree. Curriculum guidelines are vague. Certain subjects need to be covered, math, english etc. And like 1000 hours a year, but nothing about how it is to be spend specifically. Nothing about grade level at all. When math and science get to high levels, many homeschool kids take them at community college. There are other classes too, co-ops, small private classes, continuing ed. etc. Parents don't teach everything to their kids. Socialization occurs in many places in and out of school. There isn't any evidence to suggest people are better socialized if they were homeschooled or traditionally schooled. But, then it's not something that is oft measured. I am curious as to the mention of culture preservation. I haven't heard that before. BTW, in my experience most people do not quit homeschooling. Certainly not 95%. And to measure the ones that do is akin to using public school drop outs as a standard for public schoolers. When someone quits homeschooling, it obviously didn't work for them, that isn't the norm. Hope this answers all your questions :)

While homeschooling is legal in all 50 states, each state is allowed to set their own rules. To find out the laws and requirements for your state, I suggest going to www.hslda.org. This site is The Homeschool Legal Defense Association and they keep tabs on every state including overseas. Many states require nothing from you for homeschooling, while other states will ask that you have a Masters or BA. I live in Virginia and you are required here to hold a High School Diploma or higher ( no GED's), unless you claim religious reasons which takes you completely out of their line of sight ( they can't ask for anything, demand anything or do anything to you). Some states will require that you use a particular program for teaching or that you use an Umbrella School ( this type of school holds your records and grades and sends you what you need for learning. You are placed on a time restriction, meaning that you have to do the work within a particular timeframe and get it back to them or risk failing). Every state is different, just like every parenting style is different. When our schools were decent, there were few complaints as to how or what our children were learning. Unfortunately the schools are changing and not for the best. Teaching sex education to Kindergarten, forceing unneeded tests, removing the right of the Teaching Staff to discipline but expecting them to 'raise' our kids ( why teach manners at home when Mrs. Jones will do it) and parents who don't deserve to be parents, have all led to the downfall of the educational system. Homeschooling is having a revival because the parents who CARE want their kids to actually LEARN and have VALUES.

I do not agree with home schooling. I feel as if the children are too sheltered from the real world and going to school helps them develop social skills.

Nevada here. My wife assures me the home school kids seldom complete middle school at home, this is about the time parents bring them to public school. She assures me that they all perform below grade level and are usually social misfits. So give me the thumbs down, but this is a real middle school teacher's experience on the subject. Come now, give me the THUMBS DOWN for telling the truth about 95 percent of homeschooled kids.