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Talking About
Florida Homeschooling... Evaluations and More |
A good evaluator works for the parents, assisting them in meeting legal requirements and in supporting them when districts overstep their bounds." |
Q: I just got a message from my school district saying I missed my evaluation deadline and they are taking my kids off their homeschool roster. Can they do that? They never sent a reminder this year, so I thought they were skipping evaluations because of social distancing and such. --- A: Florida law requires an evaluation once a year
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Sending in a letter of intent, evaluation, or other paperwork?
From Cheryl Bottini, the Palm Beach County Home Education Liaison—the one who handles home education paperwork for the Palm Beach County School District: “We are several weeks behind in responding to emails. This is a first for us. We have always been proud to have at Q: My son is not done with his curriculum and won't be done by his deadline. Can I get an extension? Change his deadline somehow? Should I turn the evaluation in late? I'm panicking. Can you help?
--- Quick answer:
No appointment needed. Take photos or scans of a few parts of the portfolio (a bit of the beginning and a bit of the end for each subject covered) and email them to us. (Or send screen shots or share documents or however it works better for you.) Send a bit of the log of educational activities, a few titles of reading materials (at least two), and some samples of work. Finish with a brief phone call; one of us will chat very briefly with the student. Then we'll send documents via email. ======== A Homeschool Evaluator's Brief Bio
Decades ago, I was a small child being homeschooled on a homemade yacht as my family sailed the world. My parents used a combination of prepared curriculum and no curriculum at all. The curriculum was, in a way, akin to today’s virtual school lessons as it was made by a government school as part of their system of teaching those who couldn’t attend classes (though in my case, the government in question was the state of Q: What is a portfolio review? ---- A: Florida home education law gives parents 5 options for their child’s annual evaluation. While many people think of a test... Now is a time of year when many parents are choosing materials to use for next school year.
There is no perfect curriculum. Looking for the perfect textbook or workbook is an impossible task. Instead, look for one that will work well enough. Feel free to tweak it--skip some parts, do some orally instead of on paper, add outside resources sometimes to help, etc. (In fact, feel free to not use any published curriculum. Make up your own math problems or words to trace as a child learns to read. Use projects or activities or websites or books that weren't designed as curriculum. As long as the child's learning is increasing, the type of materials used doesn't matter under Florida home education laws.) Below is a link to an online quiz that many have found helpful in choosing materials for math. The quiz asks many questions about what is wanted in math curriculum and then give scores to various materials to show how well those various curricula match up to what is wanted. This helps many choose math materials that work for them. Cheryl chavivah@yahoo.com Q: I've heard a lot about working with a child's interests, but I'm not sure that I agree. It sounds good, but my 10-year-old isn't interested in learning multiplication or division or higher level math. This sounds like I should quit pushing him to learn it. Or am I missing something?
--- A: Working with a child's interests can mean spending time learning whatever the child is interested in. So, if he wants to know about sharks, spend time learning about Ever been to a meeting that didn't interest you at all? It can be hard to get anything out of such a meeting, but if it is on a topic of interest, it's easy to gain a lot of new insight from such a meeting.
The same applies to kids. Whether a parent focuses on letting the child study what the child is interested in right this minute or work instead on first getting the child interested in the things that the parent wants the child to learn, studying what a child is interested in will result in faster, more efficient learning. As Q: Who decides when a homeschooled child moves on to the next grade? Is it after the evaluation?
--- A: You, the parent, decide what level of materials the child uses. Honestly, you'll find lots of jokes on the internet about homeschooled kids who don't know their grade level. Why? Because grade levels aren't really important when homeschooling--not like they are for schooled kids. In fact, Q: I'm moving out of the state. I know I have to send in a letter of termination, but if my child's evaluation isn't due yet, do I have to have one done? --------- A: UPDATED: Florida law changed on this in 2018. Effective July 1, 2018, an evaluation is required within 30 days of sending in a Letter of Termination telling the county that you are done home educating your child in their county. Q: My evaluation deadline is Jan. 4, but the school district says I have until Jan. 31. When is the evaluation really due?
---- A: The Florida Dept. of Education's Office of Choice (the FL government office that oversees education outside of standard public schools) states that the evaluation is due each year on the anniversary of the letter of intent. Evaluation Tale 002:
Two extremes cases of missed evaluation deadlines 1. Missed it by a lot A mom contacted me because she needed an evaluation done. Well, several actually. Her many children had not had evaluations the past year. Nor the year before that. Nor the one before that. Nor even the one before that. And she needed to fix this. She hinted that she might be facing legal problems if she didn’t get it taken care of, though she didn't go into details. A mother’s worst nightmare: A child who was reading and writing and doing fairly well academically was suddenly struck by a medical condition that left her no longer able to read and write or even talk. The mother spent months taking her daughter to all sorts of specialists. Therapists worked to help the girl communicate once again. The mother researched her condition and
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