Greetings all,
 
  The following information was presented in a local newspaper article 
entitled _Home schooling becomes more and more popular_ (this is an 
excerpt from the article).  This was published in the Fargo Forum, 
Fargo ND and was written by Ellen Crawford of the Forum staff.  I 
thought some of the particulars about home-schooling requirements may 
be of interest to others to compare with what they have experienced in 
their own states.  I have not verified any of this information with 
school district officials.
 

 
  North Dakota has two types of home-schooling programs:  monitored and 
nonmonitored.  Parents with a teaching certificate or baccalaureate 
degree or who have passed the National Teachers Exam may teach their 
children without school district officials watching their classes.
 
  School district officials are required to monitor home schools where 
the parents don't have more than a high school diploma or general 
equivalency diploma.
 
  Minnesota parents must do one of the following:  be licensed to teach 
in the state, be supervised by someone who is licensed, pass a teacher 
competency exam, have a baccaluareate degree or be an instructor in an 
accredited school.
 
  Parents must also provide the school district where they live with 
details such as the names and ages of the children they're teaching, 
the name of their school, the number of staff they have, the number of 
days school is in session, what they're teaching and what books and 
other resources they're using.
 
  Home schooling must include at least these courses:  basic 
communication skills, including reading, writing, literature and fine 
arts; math; science; social studies, including history, geography and 
government; health and physical education.
 
  Children in both states must take standardized achievement tests to 
check their progress.  Local public school officials say children pass 
these tests in most cases.
 

 
As I mentioned above, this is not the entire article, the rest provided 
comments from local officials on the successes/drawbacks/concerns about 
home-schooling as well as some statistics supporting the growth of 
home-schooling in both ND and MN.
 
How does this brief sketch match up to programs in other states?  I 
would like to contact the home-schooling folks here locally and 
actually see what would be involved, if it is as straight forward as it 
appears to be.
 
Oh, by way of introduction and background--We have four children and 
all are enrolled in the Fargo Public School system, probably one of the 
best public school systems we've encountered since the kids have been 
in school.  They've been to schools in Portugal (Department of Defense 
Schools) IL, NC, Guam (run by Guam DOE -- overall yuk, isolated 
instances of some really wonderful teachers, bogged down by an 
incredibly amazing bureacractic organization) and most recently ND.  We 
don't homeschool but have always supplemented the kids education with 
family activities and by taking an active interest in what their doing. 
I'm currently an assistant professor at North Dakota State University 
and an active duty Air Force Officer (teach Leadership, Management, 
Communication, Quality, Counseling and Ethics to Jr level college 
students in the Air Force ROTC program)
 
Regards,
 
   Dale
--- TriDog 10.0
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