Grading and Standards of Educational Quality
This one literally has 50 different answers because the laws that govern homeschooling vary from state to state. Some states are very much committed to accountability for homeschooling families, requiring regular evaluations by accredited teachers. Other states are far less involved, practically giving homeschoolers free reign over every aspect of their education and never requiring any sort of accountability. There are far more states in former category than the latter, but a lot of the poorly-educated homeschoolers who severely lack in social skills come from that latter pool of states. I personally was homeschooled in Pennsylvania, which falls somewhat in the middle. While homeschoolers in PA are free to choose their curriculum and methods of teaching, they must be evaluated by an accredited teacher every year to ensure the children are receiving a genuine and coherent education, and are not falling behind their peers in public and private school. I feel this is an ideal arrangement because it provides families a great deal of freedom (which is one of the primary reasons people choose homeschooling), but requires that parents prove they are educating their kids and providing them with a social life. If a homeschooled child is deemed undereducated or poorly socialized, the school district can legally require the child to begin attending a regular school. This has happened, but it is a relatively rare occurrence.
In some states, just about everything a family does in their homeschool is dictated by the local school district, right down to the books they use and the subjects they teach. I find this is a little too restrictive because it limits homeschooling families' opportunities to customize the educational experience to best serve their children. For instance, when comets Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake made their back-to-back passes, I became extremely interested in astronomy. Because I was homeschooled, my family was able to adjust my science curricula schedule to focus on astronomy. To this day, I will never forget my astronomy studies and watching the comets every night with my family. To this day, my fascination with astronomy is strong. Another excellent example of how that freedom serves a student well is when I started getting very interested in the science of meteorology. We dove into this subject head first despite the fact it wasn't planned ahead of time for that particular school year. Flash forward to today, and I am an active member of NOAA's SkyWarn community and a fairly experienced storm chaser. The point is, we were able to adjust my schooling on-the-fly to take advantage of my sudden fascination with new subjects, and because of that, they weren't flash-in-the-pan interests that faded away because we hadn't gotten to that subject yet. I doubt my continued interest in astronomy and meteorology would exist, at least not to the same level, if it wasn't for the opportunity to educationally "seize the day" so to speak.
I have a lot of stuff left to do this evening, so I am going to have to leave it here for the time being. However, tomorrow I will continue my posts, covering things like "who teaches a homeschooled student" and "homeschoolers' access to higher education". Also, if anyone has any burning questions about homeschooling, post them and I will be sure to touch on them.
I hope I'm providing the answers you've been looking for so far!
