Before setting out to educate your kids through home schooling, the state law about the activity must be reviewed. Pahomeschool.com has the complete terms of Pennsylvania’s state law on home schooling. Basic requisites of the law require that the home schooling teacher be the parent/guardian of the child/children and must be able to show proof of legal custody.
The guardian and all the adult inhabitants of the home must not have been convicted of a certain crimes within the past five years. Also, the parent/guardian must have a high school diploma (or equivalent qualification). If you fulfill these and other criteria for becoming entitled to educate your kid at home, you can begin your home schooling program.
Starting Home Schooling in Pennsylvania
In the beginning, you have to divide the daily work to be completed by the child into separate pages, or worksheets. Dividing the total number of pages by the total number of days for the lessons, you can get the per-day work quota for the pupil. Free worksheets available online will help you ease the pains of this process. Keeping a daily record of the student’s performance in different subjects is important for the final evaluation of the overall learning performance. Weekly and monthly records should also be kept. Always grade your student’s work.
Testing Your Kids
As part of the law defining home schooling in Pennsylvania, you need to test your home schooling students in grades three, five, and eight by any of the ten nationally normed standardized tests approved by The Pennsylvania Department of Education. The testing can be conducted at the local public school, or privately by an evaluator, psychologist, or tutoring program.
Making a Portfolio of Records and Materials
The state law regarding home schooling in Pennsylvania requires that you prepare a portfolio sampling the work of your student. It should contain a log, made contemporaneously with the instruction, which designates by title the reading materials used, samples of any writings, worksheets, workbooks or creative materials used or developed by the student and in grades three, five and eight results of nationally normed standardized achievement tests in reading/language arts and mathematics or the results of statewide tests administered in these grade levels.’ This does not require a large sized portfolio. A medium sized one will do, provided it carries samples of the relevant work, and is properly dated and graded.
Evaluation of Student’s Performance
According to the state law regarding home schooling in Pennsylvania, evaluation of an elementary level student’s portfolio should be done by a teacher or administrator who has at least two years of grading experience in any of the following subjects: English, arithmetic, science, geography, history of America and Pennsylvania, and civics. It is important to remember that state law for home schooling in Pennsylvania does not allow the student’s supervisor (or the supervisor’s spouse) to evaluate the portfolio. Check out the evaluator’s questionnaire at pahomeschool.com to see if you have a qualified evaluator.