How Do I Start Home Schooling My Child in Ohio?
Once you have made the decision to home school your child or children, you should check with the laws of your state to see that you are doing everything by the book. This is important as you wouldn't want to miss out on a formality and have your child suffer later on.
Home schooling is legal in all 50 states; however each state has its own board of education and its own rules and regulations. Some states like Illinois require no paperwork by home schooling parents; other states like Texas require quite a bit of legwork if you do decide to home school.
Home schooling in Ohio falls somewhere in between as it has some rules and regulations but none that are too cumbersome. Home schooling in Ohio is regulated by the Ohio Administrative Code (OAC), Chapter 3301-34 and its requirements include:
Notifying the School
If you decide to home school your child in Ohio, you need to give a written notification to the school which he used to attend or if he was going to start kindergarten, the school he was going to attend as per your local address. The notification for home schooling in Ohio need not be long; just a formality to state that your child is not skipping school; but is rather being taught at home.
Teaching Hours
For home schooled children in Ohio, there is a minimum number of 900 hours per year that they should be schooled. The way you keep the log and whether it will ever be checked is dependent on how strict your local area education office is. However, it is always safer to err on the side of caution by keeping a check on the number of hours your child does get some form of instruction.
Ohio home schooling laws also dictate that the parent who is teaching has at least a high school diploma. They need it to ensure the quality of education being imparted to children the parent can have a higher degree of education, of course, but the bare minimum is a high school diploma to meet the standard.
If the child who is being home schooled in Ohio comes back to school, he will need to have some sort of assessment to see which grade he will enter. Just because he is eight years old does not mean he will automatically be sent to 2nd grade. The authorities want to check if he is up to the mark in reading, writing, math, science and the like. There are two ways to go about his; he or she can either sit for a standard test like he Iowa Test of Basic Skills or the Metropolitan Achievement Test or he could have his portfolio be assessed by a certified teacher.
