How Truancy Laws in Virginia Affect Parents and Families

Sometimes things change, and your child volition become from homeschooling to public school. What should you expect when you lot start the process? Here are a few first thoughts:

The school is in charge of the school.

This is going to be unlike. While y'all were homeschooling independently, you fabricated all decisions regarding your child'south education. The starting time thing to realize is that your child'southward schoolhouse has policies and procedures that you may not be able to affect. Meeting with administrators may result in some flexibility, and you should abet for your child, but yous are navigating a system that is balancing the needs of many children.

The school may ask for grades and records from homeschooling.

Regardless of the approach you took to homeschooling, the school may enquire for your child'due south grades and documentation of studies or learning. If you have homeschooled using traditional curriculum, tests, and grades, this may not exist hard to provide.

However, some homeschoolers are flummoxed by this since homeschool laws in their state may not have required such records, and their homeschooling philosophy may have been to utilise a different approach, which was nonetheless effective. Schoolhouse officials are frequently unfamiliar with homeschool laws and may exist more accustomed to dealing with students transferring from other schools.

Some options:

• Explain that you lot don't take these kinds of records and weren't required to keep them.
• Create a document to reflect what your child learned during the homeschool years.
• Show scores from whatever standardized tests your kid may have taken.

It helps to recollect that the school generally wants this information in order to decide grade placement. Once more, this may non e'er be in agreement with where you think your child should be placed, simply it is often at least a good faith effort at getting your kid in the right grade in schoolhouse.

The school is in accuse of class placement and may apply their own assessments.

Sometimes parents are able to easily enroll a child in the course they request, especially if information technology is the course that is typical for the child's historic period, and particularly during the elementary years. At other times, schools may use testing or their assessment of your child's dwelling house learning, and they will make up one's mind which grade a child should be in.

Going from homeschooling to public schoolhouse in high school might be a bigger deal.

State requirements will vary. Many states crave specific courses and stop-of-course tests to exist passed by each child who will receive a public high schoolhouse diploma in that land. Public schoolhouse students do not receive credits for these courses without the tests, and a child who enrolls in public school during the loftier school years may not receive credits without the tests either.

Administrators may be flexible. In some states, work done at dwelling may not be "counted," even if a discipline was studied in a traditional textbook way. It is worth speaking with administrators to see if they volition let your child take terminate-of-course tests without re-taking the entire courses. I know quite a few teens in different states who were able to get credit in this way, which allowed them to enroll in high schoolhouse in the grade they expected.

Credit may non be given for work done at domicile. Nonetheless, in that location are also stories of disappointment, where students who would typically have been in 10th class or later were required to retake lower grade courses at public schoolhouse later having learned the textile at domicile. In Virginia, for instance, many homeschool advocates suggest if at all possible, if y'all believe your child volition nourish high school, to try to enroll by 9th grade. That'south because not all high schools award credit for work done at home, and they may not allow your child to "test out" of courses. State law in Virginia requires schools to consider work done at home, merely because of the accent on learning standards, terminate-of-grade tests, and accreditation, public schools are non required to accept credit transferred from homeschooling.

Homeschool organizations are adept sources of information. Bank check with your land-wide homeschooling organization to find out well-nigh the laws for homeschoolers enrolling in public schools, talk to homeschoolers in your area, and talk to the guidance counselor or administrator at the schoolhouse your child volition attend.

Diplomas reflect the schoolhouse's requirements. Non application high school credit for work done at home may seem unfair at starting time glance, but recollect about it from an institutional betoken of view. If a diploma means the educatee has taken these specific tests and followed the standardized curriculum, and then it might seem that the simply fair way to administrate this is to make it apply to all high school students for each year of their work -- fifty-fifty if a year or 2 of that was done at dwelling. The child is no longer getting a homeschool diploma (though by the way, homeschool diplomas work just fine) -- simply will be getting a public schoolhouse diploma, which indicates completion of public high schoolhouse requirements.

Your child might be "ahead" or "behind."

Your homeschool has been marching to a different drummer. Your child'southward skill level or cognition might be out of sync with expectations for kids the same age at public school.

Information technology's of import to remember that this is likewise true for students who attend public schoolhouse who have never been homeschooled. There are kids who are ahead, kids who are behind, and kids who have special needs and challenges.

In some cases, teachers and administrators have an accurate large picture show view of this, and they sympathize that children's academic levels vary a lot, regardless of how they accept been educated earlier coming to this specific school. In other cases, especially if a child is behind, homeschooling may be blamed as an ineffective approach to education, fifty-fifty though there volition be children at the same school who never homeschooled but who are also "behind."

One of the problems that crops up is that some homeschooling approaches are highly supportive of belatedly bloomers, and the payoff comes in later on years when a child'south love for reading and learning has remained in tact because of less coercion to practice developmentally inappropriate tasks quite early. For example, a child who learns to read at home at 8 or 9 may not exist at a disadvantage at all because of the way homeschooling tin can compensate during skills lags -- but that same child may immediately exist seen equally backside if she has to enter school as a non-reader.

Homeschoolers differ as to whether the possibility -- however slight -- of a child needing to attend public school at some indicate in the time to come, should mean trying to keep a child on grade level. Read my articles on Homeschooling and Course Level and When Grade Level Matters for more thoughts on this topic.

If you lot take a child who has special needs, you lot should familiarize yourself with Wrights Law and be prepared to advocate for your child to get the best possible education.

You are going to accept feelings nigh all this.

You may have good reasons to quit homeschooling. However, that doesn't mean you won't have mixed feelings and second thoughts. Y'all may feel relief that public schoolhouse is there for your kid, only you may experience some grief that your moving-picture show of homeschooling did not play out as you hoped.

You may also struggle with adjustment to spending less time with your kid and having less potency over your child's daily life, as the school acts in loco parentis.

If your child is backside, you may feel guilt that he volition struggle, and you may even feel guilt that he will be seen as a poor representative of homeschooling. Some parents encounter this thought from administrators: a positive adjustment to school is "in spite of" homeschooling, while a negative aligning to school is "because of" homeschooling. This mental attitude has changed over the years, since so many teachers now homeschool their own children and other educators take become more than familiar with homeschooling. Nonetheless, you may nevertheless feel that you lot are seen as having done your child a disservice.

You will demand to bargain with the bureaucracy.

You're playing their game now, and just equally you made the rules when y'all were homeschooling, the schools make the rules for their game.

Schools accept a lot of rules and ruby tape. You and/or your child volition demand to keep rail of deadlines, rules, handbooks, homework, schedules, calendars, and more. Start inquiring about enrollment as early every bit possible once yous know your child volition attend schoolhouse.

Many schools are welcoming to new students and want each child to take a positive experience; try to get a handle on the rules and policies to help your child have the all-time adjustment possible. You're playing their game at present, and but as you made the rules when you were homeschooling, the schools brand the rules for their game.

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Source: https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/going-homeschooling-public-school/