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understanding the homeschool law in PA

The portfolio and evaluation

/ Holly Stoner / 3 Comments

EDITED on 5/16/2022 to add additional information

Today I wanted to make a quick (we’ll see about that!) post about complying with the Pennsylvania Home Education Law in way of the portfolio and the evaluation. I hope this helps answer questions that many, many, parents have. I have seen these questions asked numerous times and I have seen well-meaning parents give inaccurate information, sometimes even illegal information. As I say often in my posts, if you want to homeschool in the state of Pennsylvania (or in your home state) the very first thing you need to do is read the law and than, read it again. The law tells you exactly the process and what is expected by you and by your evaluator and by your school district. Nothing needs to be added and should not be and nothing for sure should be subtracted because that is breaking the law. When you add or take away from what the law says, you are only hurting the homeschool community. When governing authorities see the law not being followed they will adjust accordingly and most likely it will not be in favor of homeschool families. So your first act, go here and read the law and make yourself a copy. Review the law often. Don’t take just the word of me, or other parents, no matter how long they have been homeschooling. Always, always, check what the law says and compare that to what you’re being told. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not up to your evaluator or your school district what you should or should not include. If you are part of a diploma program they will un-doubtably ask for more than the law requires, but that is your choice to follow their additional rules. I’m not going to mention any of those programs because I don’t use them and see no need for them for my family.

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Transcripts…

/ Holly Stoner / 4 Comments

We just completed our second semester in the 2020-2021 school year. Frankly, with all the craziness in today’s world, that in itself is an accomplishment. Last Friday I completed grading papers and putting together a report card for my teenagers. Report cards for homeschool are not required to be issued in Pennsylvania but my children like to see their progress. Back when I first began this journey I was issuing progress reports as well as quarterly report cards. Live and learn! I no longer get that extreme. As time went on I have given up progress reports and quarterly report cards. Semester report cards is all I am doing now as it’s far easier for me to tally with the excel spreadsheet I am using. That’s another thing from my previous craziness of trying to record grades. I wasn’t using an excel spreadsheet but recording on paper and I would have to manually add all the grades to find the average. That was a lot of work as you might imagine. Computers have their usefulness, though I am not a fan of relying on them. Last school year I kept a digital and paper copy of grades. I had intended on keeping a paper grade record this year as well but I abandoned that idea and now only keep an excel document. To make myself feel better and because my previous laptop was slowly dying, I have been backing up to a cloud server and also onto an external hard drive. Always back up your work!

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A different end this year…

/ Holly Stoner / Leave a comment

I pray all my visitor’s / returning readers are doing well. It’s been a very long four months. I hope you are all holding up well through this interesting time of events, we possibly never thought we’d see in our lifetime. My last post was in January before any of this pandemic stuff began. Back then my biggest issue was changing math programs for my 9th grader. I wanted to post today with an update to my homeschool situation and add, I hope, some encouragement to all the new families partaking on this adventure.

As a reminder, I decided to homeschool when my children were starting 5th and 7th grades. You can find my journey throughout this blog and I encourage you to read through my posts as they may help you. I currently homeschool in the state of Pennsylvania in the United States. I’ve lived in this beautiful state my entire life. I am a private Christian school graduate. My children just completed, in May, 7th and 9th grades in our 3rd year of homeschool. We are now entering our 4th year, so long as this continues to be with the Lord’s blessing.

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End of year evaluations

/ Holly Stoner / Leave a comment

NOTE: This post was edited on June 9, 2023 to reflect changes made to the home education law.

Here we are in June and our school year has been done for a month. We ended with 200 days (in Pennsylvania 180 are required, or you can count hours) on May 17th. We promptly had our required by state teacher evaluation the following week. Then last week I had our new affidavit notarized and handed everything into the school district. We are officially closed on the 2018-2019 school year. We can now officially begin our new year on July 1st. We typically won’t do a lot of academics, but we will count educational field trips, social outings and volunteer work as well as time spent finishing any work, we didn’t complete but want/need to and I again assigned summer reading to both children.

I’m ahead of the game this year as I’ve already purchased all of our curriculum for the next school year. I will talk about my choices in an upcoming post. But for today let me briefly, for anyone not familiar and maybe doesn’t want to, or has no time to look over my other posts, explain how to homeschool in Pennsylvania. First, read the homeschool law. Find it here. If you don’t understand something in the law, find other homeschoolers and ask questions. You may already know of local homeschoolers. I am going to stress homeschool, not cyber school. They are very different. PA approved cyber schools are public education at home and not subject to the same laws. Private, out-of-state, online schools are subject to the same home education laws as traditional homeschoolers are. If you ask your school district to clarify the law you may well be met with information that is NOT in the law and that you should not comply with, the same with asking the PA Department of Education. They are not the final authority on the homeschool law. The PDE interprets the law very differently than how it’s actually worded. Use caution. If you’re not a member of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, consider it, though use caution there too. I’ve been met with less than ideal advice from those who say they are in support of homeschoolers as they do tell you to comply with the requests by school district officials that are NOT written in the law. I’ve dealt with the HSLDA last year. My advice, only supply what the law requires and nothing more.

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and so it goes…

/ Holly Stoner / Leave a comment

If you have finished your homeschool year, CONGRATULATIONS! If you’re still working, here in Pennsylvania you have until June 30th to get your required by law evaluations in to your school district. This was the first year I had to turn in evaluations but I have a handle on the law. I had our evaluations done in late May when we were finished with our school year. We logged 189 days and well over 1000 hours. The requirement is 180 days OR 990 hours for 7-12th, or 900 hours for K-6th. Prior to having our evaluation done, our school district took it upon themselves to remind me to do it, as if I would forget. They also sent me forms, “for my convenience”.  Let me say this plainly, if your school district, here in Pennsylvania, sends you forms and indicates you have too, should, or make you believe these are what is required – DO NOT USE THEM! Use your own forms. Below is a copy of my districts evaluation letter they I guess thought I was going to have my evaluator sign. Not in a million years! The red check marks are ALL the PA Homeschool law requires.

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