Once considered a fringe choice for millions of American families, homeschooling is now their preferred choice for educating their children. Homeschooling gives families the flexibility to set their child's education and tailor it to each child's strengths and interests.
Through homeschooling, parents and guardians can design the curriculum, minimize downtime caused by overcrowded classrooms, and, if desired, adopt an “outside-the-classroom” outlook that encourages field trips and getting out into the world.
The reasons that families choose homeschooling are myriad but are often similar to why parents and guardians may pick public schools, private schools, or charter schools: They want what's best for their children and to provide their children with the education they believe will best lay the groundwork for lifelong success.
Yet misconceptions and a few bad eggs have given homeschooling a bad and unfair reputation. Calls for increased regulation seem designed to hamper homeschooling the same way tests and regulations burden public schools. Critics of homeschooling label parents as controlling or claim homeschooling will make children antisocial or fail to provide them with an education.
School districts and departments of education may create unnecessary red tape, often at the expense of children's education. The Education Law Team at the Lento Law Firm can help. Call us at 888-535-3686 or fill out an online form.
Homeschooling in New York
Between 2017 and 2023, the number of students who were homeschooled doubled in New York. While a Washington Post study attributes some of this increase to the pandemic, the rise of homeschooling is due to a myriad of factors. Concerns about school safety, overreliance on testing, overcrowded classrooms, and ideological issues are a few of the reasons families may choose to educate their children at home.
Research about homeschooling shows that, just like any educational option, what families and students put into their education affects the outcome. Children whose families create opportunities for them to be social tend to be more social. Families that encourage academic performance tend to support academic achievement.
Criticisms of Homeschooling
One of the challenges when you choose to homeschool your children is the organized opposition to the practice. Adults who had bad experiences homeschooling often become advocates against this education choice, and they often partner with experts who are critical of homeschooling.
Some of the common criticisms against homeschooling:
- Insufficient regulation
- Lack of mandated reporters (e.g., homeschooling makes children more susceptible to abuse or neglect)
- Damages children's social development
Many of these concerns are based on a few publicized bad experiences. These criticisms seem to assume all homeschooling families are the same as a few bad actors.
This viewpoint undermines families who have legitimate reasons to homeschool. One reason why homeschooling is increasing in popularity, for example, is the over-regulation of K-12 public education. Excessive regulation of homeschooling risks undercutting the very reason families choose to homeschool in the first place.
New York Homeschooling Requirements
New York State recognizes that parents and guardians have the right to choose what school their children attend, including being educated at home. The state does have several homeschooling requirements.
Parents and guardians need to follow these laws to avoid running afoul of local educational agencies and other child protection agencies. These requirements, at first glance, may appear overwhelming or a significant hurdle to homeschooling your children.
New York requires that families who want to homeschool must:
- Submit a letter of intent
- Develop an individualized home instruction plan (IHIP)
- Meet attendance requirements
- Submit quarterly reports
- Participate in annual assessments
Parents and guardians aren't required to meet with school officials to discuss their child's education. While either party may request such a meeting, parents and guardians can decline a school's request for a meeting.
New York's homeschooling requirements are intended to ensure children receive a quality education. They're not intended to interfere with a family's right to homeschool their children.
If and when disagreements arise between homeschooling families and school districts, the Education Law Team at the Lento Law Firm can help. Whether a district has incorrectly put a homeschooling family on probation, failed to respond in a timely manner, or otherwise disrupted or attempted to interfere with a family's right to homeschool, families can and should protect their right to homeschool.
Letter of Intent
New York requires all parents to submit a letter of intent to their local school district by July 1 each year. This letter is to inform a school of your plan to homeschool your children. Families who move into a district or decide during the school year to switch to homeschooling have 14 days to submit a letter of intent.
Districts must reply to all letters of intent within 10 business days of receiving the letter.
Individualized Home Instruction Plan (IHIP)
All parents and guardians who plan to homeschool their children must complete an IHIP. This document must include, among other information, a child's name, age, and grade, who will be providing instruction, and the planned syllabi and course materials.
New York has subject requirements for each grade and as part of the overall curriculum. For example, during the K-8 years, students must be taught, at least once, the following subjects:
- United States history
- New York State history
- The Constitutions of the United States and New York State
Both local school districts and the New York State Education Department should have resources and guides available about these curriculum mandates.
Attendance Requirements
Homeschooling families don't have to follow the same traditional school day schedule. While the number of hours children and teenagers spend on their education should be comparable to a traditional school day, New York allows families the flexibility to design their own schedules, including having instruction on nights, weekends, and other nontraditional school hours.
What families must do regarding attendance is meet an hours requirement. For grades 1-6, that equates to 180 teaching days or the equivalent of 900 hours. Parents must maintain attendance records and be prepared to show them to school districts at a school district's request.
Quarterly Reports
Homeschooling families must submit quarterly reports to their local school district. These reports are mandatory and must contain information such as attendance hours and material covered during the period. When less than 80 percent of the course materials in a student's IHIP were covered during the semester, parents or guardians must provide a written explanation for why they didn't hit those benchmarks.
School districts may provide more detailed information on the timeline for submitting quarterly reports. New York City Public Schools, for example, include all homeschooling deadlines on its website.
Annual Assessments
Once a year and as part of the fourth quarterly report, homeschooling families must provide a school district with the results of a standardized test approved by the New York State Education Department. Parents cannot oversee this exam. A certified teacher or school staff member must administer the test.
In some situations, parents or guardians may choose an alternative evaluation method. For example, in Grades 1-3, parents may opt for a written narrative composed by a New York-certified teacher.
If and when parents or guardians disagree with a school superintendent over the annual assessments, families may appeal to the board of education. If a student's assessment fails below the thirty-third percentile, a homeschooling program will be placed on probation.
Probation
Families may be put on probation when a child fails an annual assessment. Probation may last up to two years, and as part of the probation process, parents must submit a plan to address a child's academic deficiencies.
The local public school will become more involved once a child is on probation. Some potential outcomes of probation:
- If a student meets the requirements of a remediation plan at the end of a semester, the homeschooling program will no longer be on probation.
- A board of education may consider whether a homeschooling program isn't in compliance if a student doesn't reach at least 75 percent of a remediation plan's requirements or if all of the remediation plan's objectives are not met within two years.
At any point during the probation period, if a superintendent has reasonable grounds to believe a homeschooling program is in “substantial noncompliance,” a superintendent may require at least one home visit. Families must receive at least three days' notice ahead of any home visit.
Technology and Homeschooling
Public school districts don't have any obligation to provide homeschooled students with access to technology. New York City Public School's FAQ on homeschooling, for example, explicitly states that students are only eligible for a loan of a tablet, laptop, or other technology when they're enrolled in the district.
Special Education
Under federal law, public schools must provide special education services to all children, even if that child isn't enrolled in the school district. Public schools must provide these services to children at no cost to their families.
To qualify for special education services, homeschooled students must meet the same requirements as students attending public school. These requirements include:
- A student must be under 21 years of age and hasn't graduated from high school
- A student must be found to have an eligible disability under either Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
- That disability must affect a student's ability to receive an education
If a student is found eligible under IDEA, schools must provide students with an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Students don't have to be enrolled in their local public school to qualify for an IEP.
Special education laws cover babies and toddlers too young to attend school. All children believed to have an eligible disability must go through an assessment. Families cannot simply request special education services.
Vaccinations and Homeschooling
In 2019, in response to a measles outbreak, New York State tightened its vaccination requirements for public, private, and religious schools. This revision essentially ended the state's religious exemption.
The state's sole exception to vaccine requirements is a valid medical exemption. The state does not, however, have any immunization requirements for children who are homeschooled.
Special Education
One question the state's laws don't directly address is vaccine requirements for homeschooling students who have disabilities. In materials about the vaccine requirements, however, the New York Department of Health stated that the vaccination requirements do apply to any child who receives special education services.
For homeschooling families, this means that students who receive special education services must meet New York's vaccination requirements even though they aren't enrolled in a school.
Extracurricular Activities
Whether homeschooled students can participate in extracurricular activities depends on the type of activity and the local school district's policy. New York requires that students who want to participate in sports teams must be enrolled at that school.
New York lets each school district determine their policy for allowing homeschooled students to participate in other extracurricular activities. Buffalo Public Schools, for example, require that children and teenagers be enrolled in the district to participate in extracurricular activities.
The question isn't if a school district has the power to limit participation. The question is if such policies are consistently and fairly enforced.
If and when a school does allow students to participate in extracurricular activities, students may have to follow other school policies, such as vaccinations.
Non-Parent Instructors
Families don't need to rely solely on parents or guardians to provide all instruction. Depending on the situation, families may hire a tutor or pool resources with other homeschooling families.
Families may choose to hire a private tutor. A private tutor or tutors may be used for all or some of a child's education when a tutor is only instructing children in a single family.
The rules involving families pooling resources to teach children together are more complicated. Parents may pool resources for group lessons as long as these lessons aren't the majority of a homeschooling program. Regardless of whether the group instructor is a parent, guardian, tutor, or other hired professional, these group lessons must be a limited part of the homeschooling curriculum.
When the majority of a child's school program is group instruction, New York no longer recognizes this educational option as homeschooling. The state instead classifies it as operating a religious or independent school.
Protect Your Child's Educational Choice
Parents have a right to decide how to educate their children. In New York, this includes the right to homeschool. If and when school districts are interfering with that right, the Education Law Team at the Lento Law Firm can help. Call us at 888-535-3686 or fill out an online form.
