The Homeschooling Handbook_ From Preschool to High School - Mary Griffith [22]
As a result of the Leeper case, complying with Texas legal requirements is quite easy. A homeschool program must be run in a “bona fide” manner, from a written curriculum from any source, and must cover the basics of reading, spelling, grammar, math, and citizenship. Parents must reasonably cooperate with any reasonable request from an attendance officer, but there are no registration or testing requirements.
Learning about Your State Law
One of the first steps new homeschoolers should take is to learn exactly what the legal rules are for homeschooling in their states. The first impulse will probably be to call the local school district for information. This is usually a mistake. Although school administrators are normally quite familiar with the laws affecting public schools, they are often uninformed, or even misinformed, about those regarding private schools and homeschooling. A few will not hesitate to tell you what the applicable rules are, even when they actually know nothing about them. School officials today, like the public in general, are far better informed about homeschooling than they were a decade ago, but many still take homeschooling inquiries as a personal and professional affront and will not go out of their way to be helpful. (There are, of course, many exceptions, but there is no guarantee that you will get your response from an administrator friendly to homeschoolers.)
Where, then, should you look for accurate and complete information about homeschooling? Unfortunately, there is probably no good single source. Your best bet for reliable information is a combination of sources:
Read the law for yourself. Check with your local public or college library for a copy of the state education code. This will usually consist of several volumes, with subject indexes, annotations of court decisions affecting their interpretation and implementation, and pocket parts to keep everything current. You may have to hunt a bit to find the applicable sections, and the legal language will not necessarily be clear and easy to understand, although it will occasionally bear a vague, distant resemblance to normal English.
Talk to any friends or acquaintances who are homeschoolers. Ask about them what they know of the legal requirements for homeschooling and where they got their information.
Contact state and local homeschooling groups for legal information. Most groups produce some sort of “beginner packet” that outlines the basic rules for your state and gives suggestions for getting along with the law. Most will say they do not give legal advice and recommend that you contact a lawyer if you have doubts or questions, but support group information tends to be fairly reliable, because it is based on members’ personal experiences. In general, because they are directly affected by regulations, homeschoolers are far more motivated to become knowledgeable about applicable regulations than are school officials. Homeschoolers have a vested interest in getting it right, and even in making sure other homeschoolers get it right, because when families have legal trouble it can adversely affect the local climate for homeschooling. If there are several homeschooling organizations in your state, it might even be worthwhile to get information from all of them, to see how closely they agree about the legal situation. Some groups may promote a particular method as the only means of complying with the law, even when there are several options to choose from, or may suggest a particularly fear-based approach, even recommending that you avoid letting your children outside during school hours or refrain from telling people you are homeschooling.
Ask your local or state education agency what the rules for homeschooling are. Even though this is not usually the best first choice for homeschooling information, it’s worth knowing the official public educators’ perspective. The kind of response you get will depend on the laws of your state and the views of the officials charged with answering such inquiries. States friendlier