- Pew Research shows that only 9 percent of Witnesses get undergraduate degrees. That's well below the national average of 30.4 percent and the lowest of any faith group. The likely reason for this trend is the religion's official warnings against college.
I was homeschooled in Missouri for my entire life (I guess not counting preschool). As ThurberMingus said, it's a states' rights issue here; Missouri I believe required homeschoolers to be in school for at least 1000 hours a year, of which 600 had to be spent on core (reading/writing/math/history/science) topics and the other 400 could be on electives, such as art or music (or Bible study). My mom religiously logged those hours and kept records of all our assignments in case the state audited us, but that was probably overkill. I recall taking some standardized tests but I think pretty early on the law changed and we no longer were required to take them? My parents were pretty heavily involved in the local homeschooler group, which organized events for socializing between both kiddos and their parents. Curricula choice was up to the parents; there is a pretty big market here for Christian homeschooling textbooks. For the most part I haven't got a problem with that, but it severely stunted my understanding of biology (my family are all young-earth creationists, so that's what I learned). Another big problem with curricula is that a lot of the popular math textbooks pretty much teach rote memorization of approaches (see Saxon math). Fortunately for me, my dad is an engineer (and a pretty smart one at that) and so he was able to pick out textbooks that explained the why of math, not just the what. I did take some history and rhetoric classes at a private school during high school, which gave me experience with things like taking exams (never really had to do that at home) and public speaking. (Also with socializing with other people, which I never really figured out that well...oh well.) I also dual-enrolled and took some college classes, including chemistry and spanish. The socialization aspect varies from family to family; some homeschooled students I know get on just fine with others, while others (myself included) end up being a little 'weird'. I don't really mind it now but it took me a while to become comfortable with that. Some folks got a lot out of homeschooling--done right, you learn how to teach yourself stuff from books and other resources. I read a lot of library books on various topics growing up (this was before we got high-speed internet). I'm also the eldest child, so my mom was quite often busy with the rearing of my younger siblings and thus left me to learn on my own. Other homeschoolers got less out of it because they lacked the discipline to teach themselves. What questions do you have? I've got plenty of opinions on the topic =]
I was homeschooled in Texas. I'll try to answer your questions. Federal law says children must be educated. The details are up to the States. There are requirements stated must meet to get federal funding for schools, but homeschooling isn't funded and therefore the federal requirements don't apply. State requirements vary. Here is a Wikipedia article that lists some of them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_in_the_United_States Some states require notification, many don't. As far as I know, only Massachusetts and Rhode Island have an approval process to determine whether a child can be homeschooled, everywhere else just has notification paperwork, if anything. Texas, where I grew up, has no notification requirement. Again, this varies. Several of the strict states require homeschooled kids to meet the same requirements and take the same yearly evaluations as public school students. This prevents parents from pretending to homeschool their kid, but of course ha the same problems as standardized testing does everywhere in the US. Other states have much more lax requirements. For example, Texas requirements that "every student receive education in reading, mathematics, literature[etc, etc,], whether public or private." But they have a different rule which prevents the state from evaluating any private school that doesn't voluntarily join their accreditation process, and homeschools are unaccredited, and therefore not evaluated. My parents did have us take some assessments near the end of elementary school times just to check on our progress, but it wasn't required, and they didn't have to submit the results to the state. As far as college admissions: in the US, it largely depends on class rank, SAT/ACT test scores, and essays. All of the homeschools students I know that applied to colleges got in based on SAT or ACT scores and writing skills, and lack of class rank or grades from an accredited school went an issue.How exactly does homeschooling work? […] What does the federal law says about education?
Do you have to apply somewhere?
Are there literally no requirements to teach your kids?
In my state home schooled students get periodically tested and if they fall below the 15th percentile the state can order the student to attend school or make other arrangements to improve the quality of their instruction. Some states have no testing at all. There are many online home schooling programs around now a days, which has probably helped the most academically neglected home scholars. Most but not all home schooled children's parents are conservative. I know a very progressive family that home schools and seems to be doing a damn good job at it. They are well educated people who think public schools are soul crushing compliance factories.
I have 2 good friends who were home-schooled together and are some of the most intellectually well-rounded people I know. One of their moms trained for a few years to be a teacher, fell into some money, and decided she would much sooner home-school her and her friends' kids than teach at one of the local schools. Basically ended up being a kind of home-brew Montessori situation, and both of them are at pretty good colleges now. I think the majority of home-schooled folks grow up in very conservative families, but I would wager that there are a pretty large number of progressive parents who would rather try and teach their kids than A). send them to the probably underfunded local public school or B). send them to an expensive private school more in line with their idea of what "teaching" should entail.
In the U.S., at least, this is a state thing (rather than federal). The only person I knew who was home-schooled was a close friend of mine, who was legit too smart for public schools. He got home-schooled from 6th grade through 10th (so call it age 12-16) before coming back to public schools to finish it out.Do you have to apply somewhere? Are there literally no requirements to teach your kids?