Login to Change.org
Use Facebook to connect with friends and mobilize your social network.
Create an Account
While most states have some guidelines for homeschool families to abide by, most of these rules are very easy to circumvent. Questioning school officials can often be mollified with a simple "yes, they're doing quite well in their schooling" and the supervising teachers that some states (wisely) assign can be very biased and turn a blind eye to questionable homeschooling practices or curriculum. While parents do have the right to educate their children at home, they do not have the right to provide a substandard education in lieu of traditional schooling. The way the system is currently set up, the student is robbed of his or her own right to have some say in his or her education; until his/her 18th birthday the parents have all the power in the world to pull the student out of school and teach nothing, or potentially worse, anything.
Homeschool regulations
To whom it may concern
As they currently stand, the laws put in place to regulate homeschooling are easy to circumvent and therefore potentially dangerous to students and their academic development. In most states there is no way to confirm that requirements, particularly time requirements, are met, and also no way to ensure that the student is progressing at an acceptable rate comparable to or greater than that of the standard set by the local school board. The supervising teachers utilized by many states are unreliable; many of them are biased and some may let their personal bias interfere with their job, resulting in an inaccurate assessment of the student and possibly letting questionable methods or curriculum go unnoticed. My proposals to address some of the issues with the current system regarding homeschooling are listed below:
Standardized testing:
Homeschooled students should be required to take a standardized test under administrative supervision twice every semester to ensure that they're advancing academically at a rate comparable to what is expected of students in their local school district. All core subjects in public school curriculum would be tested, and a failure on any section would result in the student being enrolled in the public school system for the remainder of the academic year.
Student consent:
From the 6th grade on, students should be required to sign a form under administrative supervision that indicates consent to be homeschooled at the beginning of each semester.
State approval for curriculum:
All books intended for use in homeschooling should be required to be cleared by the state in order to count towards the student's graduation. No material would be censored; if this was to be instituted then certain books simply may not be able to pass as curriculum based on the state's judgment. They would still be available for sale and acceptable for use in addition to state-approved curriculum; students would simply not receive credit towards graduation for unapproved curriculum.
[Your name]