A new state law is designed to ease the paperwork requirements for parents who home-school their children. Governor Jim Douglas signed the law earlier this month.
It allows parents who have a couple of years of experience teaching their own children to skip some of the paperwork that’s required at the beginning of each school year.
Current law requires home-schooling parents to win approval from the Department of Education each fall of an outline of the curriculum they’ll be teaching during the coming year.
Their children then must pass a standardized test or they must submit a portfolio of their work to assure the curriculum is successful.
The new law allows home-school teachers to skip the curriculum report at the start of school if their students have performed well in the annual assessments for two consecutive years.