AND EVEN ON THE LEFT COAST
Here’s a bookend for the Boston Globe article. The article refers to the kids as homeschoolers but I’m not sure they are. CA law is confusing but it sounds like these kids are in public school ISPs.
Home-schooled students are also tested and held accountable for the same academic standards as other students, Kalisek said.
Along with district mandates, the federal No Child Left Behind law requires schools to test 95 percent of students in different groups, including special-education students, which includes home-schooled kids.
Under NCLB, homeschoolers are exempt from the testing requirements. So, they’re really not legally homeschooling. Also, what’s with lumping “homeschoolers” with SpecEd? Like I said- very confusing.
One Response to “AND EVEN ON THE LEFT COAST”
 Comment by Davida December 28th, 2003 at 10:41 pm |
It sounds like either a public school charter or ISP program. We have them both here in California. I don’t know how ISP’s work- I never looked into those- but there are quite a few homeschool charters where I live in San Diego County. They’re required to meet with a teacher once a month to go over the child’s progress and submit work samples. They’re also required to undergo standardized tests. The programs are quite attractive to new homeschoolers, however, and those on a budget. Most will give a certain amount of money to cover texts (as long as they are free of religious material) if none of the available texts seem suitable. Many will also give stipends to cover extra-curricular activities such as music and sports classes, and the children are allowed to take classes in other district schools. I looked into them when I first started investigating homeschooling, since we’re tight on money, and almost went with a new one that was starting, but the constraints on what texts are used and such were too much- some of the best, most thorough programs have religious material. The money is still tempting, but the control that goes along with it would frustrate me to no end! And you’re right-it’s not really “home-schooling”, it’s public school at home. |