Читать книгу Homeschooling For Dummies - Jennifer Kaufeld - Страница 51

Make sure that anything the state requires is current. If your state requires an intent-to-homeschool letter or form, then you need to file it by the deadline. That way, if anybody asks, it’s in. (And keep a photocopy for your own records so you know what’s on it and the date that you filed it.)

A “Gee, we’d really like to see this from you” is not a requirement, and you are only required to do what the law says that you’re required to do. If your state law says that homeschoolers need to register on request from the state education office, and nobody calls your house to ask you to register, then you don’t need to do it. If your state law says that only children removed from a public school need to file form such-and-so, and you began teaching your children from the very start and they’ve never seen the inside of a public school, much less attended one, then that part of the law doesn’t apply to you.

Only do what you have to do. This isn’t a talent contest or a friendship contest. It’s more like a small business filing the required no-I-do-not-sell-tobacco-products-in-my-store form that arrives each year. The government doesn’t really care whether the small business sells tobacco products; it simply wants to know whether your shop carries cigarettes.

In much the same way, filing the required intent-to-homeschool letter or form each year enters your family into a database, and this is all your state may want from you. Sending test scores, worksheets, and art projects with the intent-to-homeschool letter tends to upset people. First of all, if your state doesn’t ask for this information, it doesn’t want it. Providing extra pieces of paper that the state officials have no means of tracking does not help. It only confuses people: They want to know why you sent the stuff, they have no place to put it, and it languishes on somebody’s desk for weeks because nobody wanted it to begin with and now they can’t remember whom to return it to.

Don’t bother creating the portfolio to end all portfolios each year. Your goal is to meet your state requirements that prove you actually teach the kids. Adding more than you need to may raise a red flag — either you’re trying to hide something or you need more to do during the day. And basically, when you give the state complete access to everything you do, you allow an invasion of privacy. Why hand over more information than anyone asks of you?