In Tennessee, most people who choose to educate their children at home do so through an "umbrella school". An umbrella school is an organization that oversees homeschooled children to varying degrees, and will also typically keep a record of your child's grades. When your child transfers to a public or private school or to college, the transcript will be sent from your umbrella school and your child is typically not considered a "homeschooler" despite being educated largely at home in a non-formal classroom setting.
In our area there are several options for umbrella schools, with a wide range of oversight and involvement. We chose to go with the option that required the most involvement from us as parents and the most oversight from the school. Faith Heritage Christian Academy is the school we chose to partner with because we liked their requirements of yearly standardized testing, quarterly grade submission, and family meetings. They also are great about answering questions and providing general support to the families they serve. As he gets older he will be eligible to participate in some of their on-campus programs with their traditional brick and mortar students, such as soccer, choir, field trips etc.
While this does remove a little of the freedom that some homeschoolers crave, for us it provides reassurance that he will not be treated differently in case we should have to put Coleman into traditional school at a later date.
No comments:
Post a Comment