Homeschooling in Virginia

Question:
Just curious - Do all homeschoolers in VA have to meet with school system officials, or is this just for families who have a child with special needs? In NC, we have to file an intent to homeschool, but it's done through the mail. And they never ask whether or not any of the students has special needs.

Answer:
-I homeschooled my oldest girls for awhile last year. I thought about homeschooling Emily, but just felt I couldn't do it. However, what I was told by the President of VHEA is that the regs for kids in spec ed (that is, kids enrolled in public school receiving sped services, who are being pulled out by parents to homeschool) require nothing beyond what is required for any other child: an "intent to homeschool" filed; proof of competancy to teach or approved curriculum; and a standardized test once a year. I also checked with one of the local homeschool groups, and found there were several parents who had simply "opted out" of sped altogether. All they filed was the regular homeschool paperwork.

Now, if you wanted to homeschool and still receive some type of related service (like Speech, OT, etc) you would have to go through the whole IEP thing.

But you have a right to homeschool any of your children in Virginia. It's not necessary to meet with any local officials. It's all done by paperwork.

I don't know why anyone would have to meet with anyone, but it could have been overzealousness on the part of the school. Maybe they thought they had to do it or something. But it is not necessary, according to local and state homeschool associations. -Yes, the meeting with the school board in our particular case was to answer questions pursuant to the state statute regarding exemption from compulsatory attendance on religious grounds alone. There are other statutes that also relate to compulsatory attendance that are not related to religious exemption. From what I understand these also require a meeting with the school board. Technically speaking, I suppose that the county cannot force a family to attend the meeting. In our case, we took it as a good opportunity to discuss our views with the professionals. We were also represented at the meeting by an attorney from HSLDA, however, I did most of the talking ;-).

When we first made our intent known to the county with regard to pulling Cristen from the sped. program, the county first made noise about what we were allowed to do and what we weren't allowed to do. We contacted the state Dept. of Ed. and they told us that all we had to do was to write a letter to the county, which we did.

I am not sure what the intent of the state is with regard to homeschooling special needs children, however, I do know that HSLDA recommends that parents be involved with a program that specializes in the education of children with special needs. NACD is one of the programs that HSLDA recommends. From what I understand, however, Virginia is considered to be a "homeschool friendly" state. My opinion is that we haven't deviated as far from the original intent of the constitution as other states may have. Virginia has always had a pretty healthy suspicion of government as evidenced by the views of our founders. This continues somewhat even today.

With regard to the difference in scores between the standardized tests that NACD administers versus those administered by CAT, I would be interested to know which test the CAT administers. Of course, I also am suspicious of any government testing because I believe that they have ulterior motives. I do also believe that it is important to have the children tested from time to time by an independant party to ensure that the tests applied by NACD are giving a good picture. In many cases children will test higher when they are familiar the person applying the tests.

Have you mentioned the CAT findings to NACD? I would be interested in hearing any thoughts that they may have with regard to the "HUGE" discrepency between test scores.