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Washington State Requirements
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I’m a bit overwhelmed with the 4 requirements that Washington state has, as quoted from http://www.homeschooloasis.com
“Under Wash’s Homeschool Law, the instructional activities must be provided by a parent who is instructing his or her children only and qualifies in one of these 4 ways:
1 – be supervised by a certificated teacher for one contact hour per week, OR…
2 – have earned 45 college-level credit hours or 1 year of college, OR…
3 -be deemed sufficiently qualified to homeschool by the superintendent of the school district in which you reside, OR…
4 – have completed a course in home-based instruction at a post-secondary institution or vocational-technical school.”This will be my first year homeschooling my kids, ages 11 and 15. I’ve been interested in the Charlotte Mason method of teaching since my kids were toddlers, but God opened doors for our children to go to a Christian private school. Now, with my husband being laid off from his job, we won’t be able to afford sending them this next year. But I am excited to get to homeschool. Charlotte Mason education has always appealed to me and I love the gentle approach to teaching.
My question is to anyone knowledgable of the Washington state requirements for homeschooling. Am I required to go to college and get a degree to homeschool? Is there an online course I need to take? I don’t know anyone who would be certified to give my children a test at the end of the year, do I do this through the county? I’m a bit confused and need some advise.
Thank you
I don’t live in WA state, but from what I can tell, if you’ve gone to college for 1 full year, you’re OK and can teach your kids. Or, you can contact the superintendent of your school district and see if he/she will “let you off the hook,” so to speak, and thinks you’ll do a good job at teaching. Otherwise, it sounds like you would need a “real” teacher to check up with you every week. ARE there such classes as #4 implies??? I’ve never heard of such a thing. If there are, then it sounds like 1 semester of just that class is sufficient instead of the other 3 choices.
You don’t have to do all 4, just one of those 4 options, if that’s where you had been confused?
As far as testing goes, I don’t have your rules on testing in front of me, but if you go to HSLDA’s website, they have great state-by-state info.
I live in Washington (hi!!!) and you have to meet one of the requirements. For example, I have over 160 credit toward my college degree so I’m qualified to teach my children because of the college classes I took. Any classes count, they don’t have to be in education or homeschooling. This website might be very helpful to you, I’m linking you to a page that is entitled Homeschool Course ~ http://www.homeschooloasis.com/barb_sheltons_homeschool_course_intro.htm
Feel free to pm me or post other questions here if you need clarification. I’m by no means an expert, but we’ve hs’ed in Washington for two years now and so I some knowledge under my belt now. 🙂
Regarding testing, there are many places you can have your children tested or order tests from. For example the first year I used this person to test my chidren ~ http://www.homeschooloasis.com/dntesting.htm and this past school year I facilitated the tests at my home which I ordered through http://setontesting.com/, but this company also offers them and is located in Washington State ~ http://www.familylearning.org/testing.html
Hope this info helps you!
I don’t live in WA, but I did when I was in school and we were homeschooled. My dad had the required college, but our friends who didn’t just took a class to get certified. It seemed easy enough.
The way I heard the story is that some mother who pioneered homeschooling in WA designed the homeschool course so that anyone could homeschool. I think it’s like a weekend seminar and, iirc, you can homeschool other people’s children if you do the course, not just your own.
For testing, we took the standardized testing at a local Christian school.
Thank you to all who replied. I actually went to Seattle Bible College for a year. I think that would apply to having one year of college, right? As for testing, MelissaB I will look into that. Thank you for the links. You all helped me. It’s great to have support! God bless
I’m not in Washington, either, but I have to say that many of us were very nervous when beginning our homeschool journey. It helps to have someone like MelissaB who lives in your home state and has been there to tell you, “It’s not so hard, and you’ll be fine!” along with the practical advice.
When we first decided to homeschool a few years ago, I was pretty nervous because I didn’t want to screw up, but really as long as you meet the requirement then you’re set. They don’t require that you declare how you are qualified, you just have to be qualified per the requirements and submit a declaration of intent to homeschool to your local school district by the 15th of Sept each year. I mailed mine last year and wrote a note saying I wanted a copy of it date stamped and mailed back to me. They did and I just filed it away. So you really only have to fill out the DOI each year and then test your children annually. Washington is a very friendly state to homeschool in (at least I think so). I hate the annual testing, but it is required by law and I know I could not do it because you don’t have to turn it in to anyone, however I don’t think it sets a good example to my children by not following the law and also I want to make sure I’m covered if I ever had someone come to check on us for whatever reason (i.e. a neighbor wondering why kids were home in the day, etc). The cost for testing is very minimal and it’s just part of our homeschool budget each year.
Here is another site that might be helpful to you too ~ http://washhomeschool.org/homeschooling/declaration.html
Hi Womanofgrace! I live in WA state and am getting ready to start our 2nd yr of homeschooling. I did NOT have enough college credits so I needed to take a class as required per #4. This is the link to the class I took. http://www.swahninfo.net/Smoothingtheway.html This class was great because it was free (always nice!) and I met some other really nice homeschooling moms and dads. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. If you are not local to the area where this class is offered, I did bookmark a link to a page that lists the options for the homeschooling classes in WA that meet the state requirements. I’ll see if I can find that link for you.
As far as testing goes, you can order them through many different sites and administer them yourself or there may be places local to you that you can take your children to do the testing. Assesments are also an option. We went that route this year for our daughter and ordered from https://www.familylearning.org/tests_assessments.php. When our children our older, then we’ll switch to standardized testing.
Good luck to you, and let me know if you have any other questions 🙂
Jennifer
Here is the link to the list of groups that offer a class that “qualifies” you to homeschool in WA 😉 http://www.washhomeschool.org/homeschooling/whoQualify.html The 3rd one down is the one I took (and she offers it free-of-cost because she believes very strongly that everyone should be able to homeschool their children if they so desire). I don’t know how up-to-date the list is, but hopefully it will be of some help.
Jennifer
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