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Ohio CMers – Help!
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I am reading all I can about CM, hoping to use her methods in our home school. One thing I am concerned about is records, exams, state requirements, etc. What do others Ohio folks do? Can you opt out of standardized testing in some way or take tests? How do you gauge progress/readiness for college, ACT, etc.?
You don’t need to test in Ohio if you don’t want to. You can have a portfolio of work reviewed by a teacher with certification in Ohio. Several of the homeschool moms in co-ops or local online forums have teaching certificates & maintain them so they can perform evaluations. It’s not a huge thing to put together a portfolios, and all of the teachers we’ve used for this have been A) affordable, B) genuinely interested in seeing what your child has done over the past year, and C) good at putting moms who are new to portfolio evaluations at ease.
Once you have the portfolio reviews done, the teacher will give you a signed form (simple, basic) that complies with the Ohio Administrative Code that says he/she attests that your child has progressed adequately according to their abilities. You send a copy of that along with your homeschool notification form to your local school superintendent. They send back a letter acknowledging that you have been excused from compulsory attendance in your local school district for the year.
If you need any more help with this, please feel free to PM me. We’ve been doing this for 11 years now. What part of Ohio are you from? We are in Northeast Ohio.
HTH,
Sue
I reread your initial post and realized that I did not address state requirements. You can find the homeschool regulations for the state of Ohio by clicking here, and there is a notification form you can access here. You can also find a good notification form on the HSLDA website. (I say “good notification form” because sometimes your local school district has one available on their website, but it may ask for information that you are not required by law to provide, such as your child’s grade level or social security number.)
As far as making adequate progress, you know your child best and can generally tell when they are making progress. If your child is college-bound, it is best to look at the admissions requirements for colleges you think they might attend to see what they will need, especially for science and math. There are practice SAT tests and courses to prepare for the SAT that you can find in your area or perhaps online. Often, local co-ops will help with SAT prep.
I’ve always homeschooled in Ohio, oldest is in 8th grade. We did portfolios the first several years and our experience was similar to what Sue described. We switched to taking Standardized tests as more little ones came along and more students grew up to reporting age. I had a lot going on (11 pregnancies in 13 years with 8 living children, 1 with major medical needs) and still do. While I find no value in standardized tests it is an easy way to meet the law in Ohio. Each year I order tests (Usually CAT Survey or CAT) from Familylearning.org. I administer the tests and mail them back for scoring. When the result sheet for each child arrives I save it and the next fall when I turn in notification I include a simple form stating which test the child took and their overall/total score. That’s it. Simple enough.
Tristan has a good point. If you order and administer tests yourself (or through a co-op you trust), using standardized tests to report is simple.
Our public school district always offers so generously (sarcasm implied) to include our children in our local school’s testing schedule in the spring. I wouldn’t have them set foot in a school building for that because of the databases schools are setting up for the government….of course, they do already have some information on our kids because we have to notify them anyway…..okay, don’t get me started!
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