The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
Curriculum Series: A Guide To Curriculum Reporting
Choosing the right homeschool curriculum can feel like navigating a labyrinth, especially with strict regulations in states like New York. I share my personal journey, from filing a notice of intent to crafting an Individualized Home Instruction Plan (IHIP), to help guide you through these challenges. We explore how the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) can be an invaluable resource for understanding state-specific laws and ensuring compliance. Learn to manage grade-level reporting and attendance requirements with confidence, equipping yourself with the practical knowledge and resources necessary for a successful homeschooling experience.
Unlock the secrets of assessing homeschool progress with insights into submitting quarterly reports and annual assessments. Discover the requirements for standardized testing and written evaluations across different grade levels, including the specific needs of high school students. Gain clarity on subjects that must be taught from K through 12, such as patriotism and fire safety, and see how to effectively communicate your child's progress in an IHIP. We reflect on the challenges faced, express gratitude for community support, and stress the importance of sharing this podcast to inspire and support future generations.
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Welcome to the Homeschool How-To Find my Curriculum, a series where we talk all about curriculum. I've been interviewing homeschooling families for over a year now on my main podcast, the Homeschool How-To, but I really wanted to zero in on curriculum. There's so much out there. How do I know what would work best for me and my child? How do I know what works for one child would work for the other? I might like the curriculum I'm using now, but how do I know there's not a better one out there, especially if I don't know all the curriculums? And what about supplemental curriculum? Should I be using that too? This series is to help you decide just that. I'm going to interview parents who are using all the curriculums so that you can decide the absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. The absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. Welcome to this week's episode of the curriculum series on the homeschool how-to.
Speaker 1:I have something a little bit different for you today. I have been doing the reporting for my son and I thought this might be something cool to share with you guys, because I had no idea what this was going to look like or had to look like until I started doing it. So I hope this helps people. I did register with HSLDAorg, which is Homeschool Legal Defense Association. You do not have to do that. It's like an annual fee. I don't know, maybe it was $100, but I figured for the podcast that would be great to do, just to know all of the legal stuff so that I can relay that stuff to you guys. But it is a great resource. It gives you all the information that you need to know about homeschooling and the laws in your state. I think you can get access to a lot of that information even if you don't become a member though. So definitely check out HSLDAorg and I can link that in the show's description. So I am in the state of New York. We have a lot of reporting requirements here and it's true what they say If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, and that is true of a homeschooler. We have the strictest laws in the country for homeschooling. It looks like Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are also very high regulation. So I will give you what we are required to report to our school and definitely check with your state, because it's probably not as strict.
Speaker 1:We have to give a notice of intent prior to the school year and we have to basically just state I intend to homeschool my child, this is his or her name, this is their age and this is the grade that they will be going into. This starts at age six. So at age six you can actually say I'm registering them for kindergarten and then if you choose to do first grade curriculum with them, no harm, no foul. But if you register them for first grade and they don't keep up, then you're kind of backtracking and have to look at ooh, do I have to leave them back any of the years? So this is a trick that I know some people do just register their six-year-old. You still have to report and everything for that, even if you are doing kindergarten, but you will always be ahead of the game and then you can always graduate them early. I didn't do this just because I didn't really understand this concept when I went to submit my notice of intent. So we did age six for the school year, first grade school year. I did, however, list some of the curriculum that I did last year as a kindergartner, because some of the curriculum just didn't correlate year as a kindergartner, because some of the curriculum just didn't correlate with a specific age or grade. So it was stuff that we had done in the past, but I will be reporting it for what we're doing this year.
Speaker 1:Now the notice of intent you do have to check and see who you need to send this to. For us it was the superintendent of the school, but every place has something different. So make sure that you find that out beforehand and you would email it. But make sure that you have a return receipt on the email so that you can verify that they received it. If you are sending it in the mail, send it certified mail, return receipt requested, and you would send it to the superintendent of your school district by July 1st of each year.
Speaker 1:Okay, next you would submit an IHIP, which is an Individualized Home Instruction Plan, and this is according to section 100.10C1 of the regulations of the Commissioner of Education. If you are a member of HSLDAorg, they will supply you with the forms that you need. They also supply you with the legal defense should you ever encounter needing that. So the IHIP is what you intend to do for the year Now. The IHIP would be submitted by August 15th, prior to starting that September, or the within four weeks of the receipt of the IHIP from the school district, whichever is later. The IHIP form requires you to submit your child's name, age and grade level and a list of the syllabus, curriculum materials, textbooks or plan of instruction, the dates for your quarterly submissions, which you would pick unless the school says otherwise, and the name of whoever is giving the instruction Now.
Speaker 1:Now you do have to comply with attendance, so it is up to you what you label as in attendance. Is it cooking in your kitchen? If that is the case, then you would just want to make sure that you have either a handwritten or Excel sheet where you have attendance written down and that's how many days a week, how many hours a day your child was in attendance, and you would put in any time that they were sick and you didn't do the work, or that you maybe were on vacation that didn't involve any sort of education component to it. You are required to meet hourly attendance requirements of 900 hours of school per year in grades one through six and 990 hours of school per year in grades seven through 12. Okay, so that sounds like totally crazy, right?
Speaker 1:What this looks like for us is an Excel spreadsheet that I have my son's first grade. I wrote that we do 48 weeks per year, which is 240 days. We do school for five days a week and for 3.75 hours per day. So what that looks like as I write it out is the week you know, august 12th 2024 through August 16th 2024. We did Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, from 8.15 to 12. And I just have all of that out in a spreadsheet so if there ever were to be any questions and you can organize it how you want to Do, you want to do. You know I have that. We do it for most of the year. But if you want to condense it into nine months a year, like the standard school day, you would just do longer hours in a day. If you want to do four day a week instruction, you just organize your spreadsheet accordingly. You just have to make sure that you meet those 900 hours in the year. Now it's important to know that you would not submit the attendance to the school unless they request it. But it is always good to have these records somewhere in your home so that you can retrieve them if asked.
Speaker 1:Now your quarterly report. So on your IHIP you state what dates you will be submitting your quarterly report and then, when those dates come, you fill out the quarterly reports and this is saying what you have done. So the IHIP is saying what you intend to do and your quarterly report is saying what you have done and you do evaluate them. You can grade your child or you can just write a little evaluation. So what this looks like for us and let me tell you what we are actually required to do here. To do Okay, now we do have assessing your child annually.
Speaker 1:However, an annual assessment is required every year in grades one through three, you can have your student take a standardized test or you can choose to submit a written narrative evaluation for your student take a standardized test, or you can choose to submit a written narrative evaluation for your student. In grades four through eight, standardized testing is required at least every other year, with the written narrative evaluation available as an option in the years that you do not use standardized testing options. So, for example, if you could use a written narrative evaluation in grade four, you would need to use a standardized test in grade five, and so on. Standardized testing is required every year in high school. So the standardized tests can be administered in your home or any other reasonable location by a New York certified teacher or by another qualified person, including the student's parent, with the consent of the superintendent.
Speaker 1:So you can do this test at home with your child. You just have to get the superintendent's permission beforehand. You can obtain consent by simply notifying the superintendent in your third quarterly report what test you will be using and who will be administering it. So if they don't write back, I guess no news is good news. Chances are they will not write back, so it's important for you to have that confirmation that they did receive your email or letter so you can use the following test the Iowa test, california achievement test, stanford Achievement Test, comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, metropolitan Achievement Test, a State Education Department Test or another test approved by the State Education Department, such as the Personalized Achievement Summary System Pass Test. I have not had to do this yet, but I will probably just pick one of these and do it in my home and then mail it in.
Speaker 1:However, on the years that you're doing the written evaluations, they may be conducted by a certified teacher, home instruction, peer group review panel or another person, with the consent of the local superintendent. Just as with the standardized test, you can obtain implied consent by notifying the superintendent in your third quarterly report that you will be submitting a written narrative evaluation and by whom it will be prepared. So it looks like. Since my son is in grade one. It says an annual assessment is required every year. That doesn't mean a test, it just means an annual assessment.
Speaker 1:In grades one through three you can have your student take a standardized test or you can choose to submit a written narrative evaluation for your student. So I can do a written narrative evaluation for my child in grades one, two and three. Then in grade four through eight, standardized testing is required at least every other year, with the written narrative evaluation available as an option in the years that you do not do a standardized test. So I could do a written evaluation in grades one, two, three and four, and then grades five and seven I would need to have him test. But grades four, six and eight I can do the written evaluation. And then in high school it sounds like they need to have a required standardized test every year. So you could actually just get by with doing the four for high school and two in those grade four through eight, if, um, if you don't want your child to have to take a test. That cleared that up for me. Actually, I was a little bit, uh, confused with that.
Speaker 1:So now let me tell you what subjects I am required to teach my child in grades K through 12. So we have to teach patriotism and citizenship. That's kind of funny, are they doing that in school, like pro-patriotism and pro-citizenship? Okay, we have to teach them about substance abuse, which is kind of funny, because I don't really remember learning about substance abuse. Maybe DARE we had DARE Traffic safety and fire safety. Well, for fire safety, you can use my book.
Speaker 1:Let's Talk Emergencies. I will link that in the show's description, because we do talk about fire safety and a lot of other safety and how to call 911 from a locked cell phone and all that jazz that your kid needs to know to keep them safe in an emergency situation, like calling 911, even if all they have at their disposal is somebody else's locked cell phone. Okay, so let's get into the rest. At least once. Before grade nine, you have to teach New York and US history and constitutions. Okay, then the other stuff that you have to teach every year in grades one through six is arithmetic, reading, spelling, writing, english, geography, us history, science, health, music, visual arts and physical education. So what I did was I listed all of these down, from patriotism all the way to physical education, in my IHIP and in my quarterly report. So those are all the subjects. I just listed all of them down.
Speaker 1:The next column is description of materials covered in each subject. So, for instance, patriotism and citizenship, I wrote reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and learning the National Anthem. And then you have a third column that says narrative evaluation or grade in each subject. I wrote a narrative evaluation. My son is learning the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem and can recite specific parts of both independently and understands their significance as a symbol of patriotism. Areas for improvement we will continue to discuss the history and significance of the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem to deepen his understanding. Okay, so you pretty much just want to write how well they're doing and what kind of level they're at and then any areas that they could improve upon. You don't need to write a whole lot In fact less is more but you do want to give an idea that you know what you're talking about, all right down to the areas like the arithmetic or the description of materials covered in each subject I wrote.
Speaker 1:We are using MathUC for our study curriculum. This year We've also added elements like cooking, building, auto repair to aid in math skills. And then for the narrative evaluation that I wrote. I said my son has been working with math UC curriculum for two months. He has made significant progress in understanding fundamental math concepts and applying them in various activities. He has shown proficiency in recognizing and writing numbers up to 100 addition and subtraction. So that's going to be my key area of focus that I'm writing about.
Speaker 1:My son can perform basic addition and subtraction problems with confidence. He demonstrates a solid understanding of combining and separating quantities. And another key area of focus problem solving skills. My son enjoys solving word problems and can often explain their thought process behind them. Areas for improvement speed and accuracy. While my son understands the concepts well, he sometimes takes longer to complete problems. Regular timed practice could help us with his confidence and speed. So that's what I put for math.
Speaker 1:I still think that's maybe too much, but I kind of just wanted to make sure, for something like math, that everything was covered and they had no questions. The HSLDA form is two pages long just to give you an idea. It's nothing crazy and in most states you do not need to cover all of these subjects anyways. So your state might be completely open to you just kind of report that you're still alive every three months, or you might not have to report anything at all, or you're in a state like New York, massachusetts or Pennsylvania that requires all of these written narratives. So this is just a brief overview.
Speaker 1:I hope I didn't scare you, but that looks to me like the worst it gets. I hope this was helpful and if you have any questions, please reach out. I'm learning right along with you and that's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please consider sharing this podcast or my main podcast, the Homeschool how To with friends, family, on Instagram or in your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. The more this podcast is shared, the longer we can keep it going and the more hope we have for the future. Thank you for your love of the next generation.