How to Home School: Home Schooling Requirements and Information

Image Gallery Learn how to home school and prepare for home schooling.  ILLUSTRATION: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF

More and more parents have decided, for many reasons, that they would rather educate their children at home than send them to established schools. They're then faced with a tough question: "What do I have to do to be able to teach my children at home?"

Since I've helped a lot of people work out successful answers to the home schooling question, I will briefly share what I've learned with you.

How to Home School

Find out what your state laws say about school attendance, the legal alternatives to it, the possibilities of home instruction or tutoring, and the requirements for setting up a private school. There are several ways to get this information, all of them good.

One method is to look up the laws yourself. It's easier than you think. Most good-sized public libraries, or law libraries, or lawyers will have a set of all the laws of your state. Look under "Education" in the index of one such collection . . . most or all of what you want will be in this section. Read carefully and copy, if possible, everything dealing with attendance, home schooling, private schools, etc. Also, read and copy everything in your state constitution concerning education and the rights of parents and families.

Looking up the law yourself is a good exercise. It will help cure you of thinking that the law is a mystery known only to lawyers. Also, since you'll know the regulations yourself, you can speak to school officials with the authority of an expert and can correct them if (as often happens) their incorrect or incomplete version of the law fails to mention some of your important rights.

Don't try to find out what the law is by asking your local schools. They may know the statutes on school attendance, but neither they nor their lawyers are likely to know what the courts have said about the rights of parents to teach their own children.

In addition, write your elected representatives, both state and federal, saying that you want to teach your children at home, and ask them to send you all the pertinent laws. It will be useful to have them know that you are interested in home schooling. Even if the representatives do no more than pass your request on to state education officials, those people will be very impressed that federal and state legislators are taking an interest in your case, and they'll probably answer your request for information more quickly and fully than if you wrote them directly.

If at all possible, see your state legislators in person, preferably with your children. The representatives will be reassured to find that home schoolers are real, sensible, and serious people (not the careless incompetents that educators have led them to expect), and they may be willing to exert a little influence or pressure on school officials on your behalf, or even to help introduce and pass legislation more favorable to home schooling.