How To Homeschool In North Carolina

Policy matters and engaging in weekly radio show and podcast produced by the family policy hi this is John Ralston presidency family and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program is our prayer that you will be informed and encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that you will fold better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state and nation. Now here's our host family policy matters. Tracy, David, thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters. While we know that the vast majority of North Carolina.

Students are educated in our public schools. Many of us may be surprised to learn that the next largest school system, so to speak, here in North Carolina is actually the homeschool community for more than 20% of North Carolina students who do not attend a traditional public school more than 142,000 of them.

That's 8% of all North Carolina students receive their education in one of over 90,000 homeschools will that's more than either public charter schools or private schools will despite being the fastest growing education option in North Carolina. A lot of misconceptions remain about homeschooling, so we have invited in.

Dr. Matthew McDill homeschooling dad, who was for years a pastor and professor at Appalachian State University and now serves as Executive Director of North Carolinians for home education.

Dr. Matthew McDill welcome to family policy matters by keeping 70 start off with the legalities of homeschooling.

They do very widely state-by-state. So start us off by telling us about the legal and regulatory aspects of homeschooling your North Carolina well I'm really honored to be a part of North Carolinians for home education because this is the foundational homeschool group in North Carolina that helped work to legalize home education North Carolina to begin with and then also work diligently to make more and more freedom, more and more friendliness to to homeschooling from a legal perspective. At this point. North Carolina is one of the friendliest states for for homeschool families.

As far as the laws are concerned, there are just a few basic requirements you have to notify the division of nonpublic education that you intend operate, homeschool, and the person who will be a guiding instruction has to have a high school diploma or equivalent currency to maintain attendance and immunization records and operate on a regular schedule during at least nine month concrete or admin. Finally need to administer each year and nationally standardized tests or other equivalent of a test of some kind and keep that record for up to a year. So those are the basic requirements North Carolina, which again are pretty low compared to other states. So give of demographic perspective on this. Who is choosing to homeschool in North Carolina and why do you suppose that is the most recent study done is from 2011. We asked Brian Ray from the national home education research Institute to do a study in North Carolina and so even though that's not super recent. The results of that were that the median income of homeschool families with 70 to 75,000 which is a little bit lower than the national average around 60% of parents had at least a batch with those are, of course, parents of homeschooling. In general, homeschool families are larger so about 60% more than 6% have three or more children. Over 90% of homeschool families are white and observation were guessing and hoping that over the last years that has been changing with more diversity, but that's how it has been recently and another interesting finding was that about 80% of moms do not work outside of the home in a homeschooling family. Those are the main kind of demographic conclusions or observations they made in 2011, Dr. McDill, I think our listeners and I was surprised to learn that homeschooling is the fastest growing educational sector in North Carolina and why you think that is because our board North Carolina from case should have been wondering that we hope and think probably because like I said before, we have such great uncle Bob is very appealing to do. It is easy to do we know why people are choosing to homeschool under/worldwide it's exploding, you know, in North Carolina, in particular the safeguards to help ensure that homeschool children are being well served academically and that there being properly prepared for either higher levels of education or professional success. I think that just like all families and in students the best thing we can do is to provide the. The information on the resources to prepare students for college to prepare students for for the workforce. Whatever area they want to go into and so you know that's what North Carolinians for home education as well as a lot of other organizations are doing. That's our mission and our mission is to help parents homeschool confidence and joy and we do that by protecting their rights to homeschool North Carolina by equipping them with information and resources that they need and connecting them to other homeschooling families and so this gives back to the equipping party.

No, there are so many amazing resources for homeschooling and high school transcripts for preparing for college and if people want to know how to do it well. They can because the information is there and the resources are there, it's really up to the parents to make sure that's happening and that's why we're here. That's our mission is to help make sure that they have everything they need you now to accomplish that and prepare them for those areas of life.

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We also love for you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and spent some time talking about that because people who aren't familiar with the homeschooling of today may not realize the number of resources that are available. Could you walk us through some of those sure well the homeschool legal defense Association. Of course, is I think you know the most prevalent national group that helps to the rights of parents homeschool all across the nation and in fact across the world. They have amazing resources, North Carolina. There really isn't another group that has the presence or the resources with the leverage that North Carolinians education does and we also have so many local groups and there are no groups all across the nation have group clubs are present in North Carolina and so on our website. For example, is to private include the place where they people can find and find those resources. We have lots of pages on our website without for schooling or for getting started or for what the laws are and how how to comply with those laws. We also have an event coming up for parents who are who are homeschooling children with learning needs or special needs. That's another reason people are homeschooling is because they have children with special needs. They want to give them certain kind of attention until the conference especially for for parents like that through it what you might consider a typical day, but someone else might not consider so typical as far as how the students might co-op with other families or do online classes or that kind of thing went. Tell us what and what a day might be for some of these homeschoolers probably easier to look at a week if were talking about students who are definitely involved in like a co-op. For example, a co-op is where parents and students will need maybe twice, and is once a week and sometimes twice a week. Different parents will teach different subjects.

The students can take part in certain classes and so for the most part no. 3 to 4 days a week.

If you're in a co-op you're still at home doing her school work with your parents or on their own. There are so many online classes or computer-based curriculum that people use for for nuclear subjects is probably you know have a heavy workday in the morning. Most most that I know a lot of school work in the morning and try to knock it out for lunch and then, especially for high school, though the have several more hours in the afternoon but one or two days a week if there a co-op will go to that location. Church community center and have those classes interesting homeschool dad so tell us a little bit about what that was like on a personal basis while you're using the past but I'm right in the middle of it. I've I've graduated a couple of children but I also have a six-year-old and will have had nine kids and so I have almost all the great door. The middle of it and it's it really is on when the big commitment. A lot of hard work, but I wouldn't trade it for anything because of the time that were able to spend with her children developing relationships with them and being able to talk about what it means Christ to develop worldview and were also able to give them amazing work opportunities and educational opportunities is difficult to get when you're in the middle of normal public school system.

For example, my highschooler works two full days a week and then really spend a lot of time on the other four days school because he really wants to work as well just an example of the flexibility of work, but also being able to get all your readers 12 schedule.

So yes, it's amazing and I would recommend it to anybody. I was didn't say who thinks they can. But most people don't feel like I can work out with community parents can definitely write so give us some encouragement, get the parents out there some encouragement about why you think they they could do this. Thereto are three important points here. Number one is there are so many groups and resources. You don't have to do it on your own so that's that's a big point is that we do this in community and we have others who can help.

We also have so many amazing curriculum resources. Today is a huge, huge market and you don't have to make it. You don't have to make up all the subjects you know you are able to to find maybe a curriculum that has a great template.

I'm of course you want to modify that for your kids and personalize it for their needs but you have to make it up another thing is that there are areas, especially in high school where I may not have expertise in math or science or or certain things but there's so many opportunities whether that's to do dual enrollment in our great community colleges across North Carolina. A lot of homeschoolers take advantage of that other so many online courses or like I said, computer-based programs, so you don't have to be an expert in all the subjects all you have to do is facilitate those subjects and encourage your children to be learners and help facilitate their discipline and doing those things were just about out of time for this week. So before we go Guinness information one more time about where people can go to learn more about homeschooling here in North Carolina.

Well of course I think the best place is with North Carolinians from education that in CAG.com and all sorts of helps and resources. The division of nonpublic education is the North Carolina location also for getting information for the legal requirements and things like that. Those are probably the two best places to start in North Carolina. Great. So that was in CAG.com right yes thank you Dr. Matthew McDill for being with us on family policy matters and for your work to help all family serve the educational needs of their children.

We hope you enjoyed the program and plaintiff to do it again next week to listen to the show online into one more about into families work to encourage and inspire families across Carolina our website and see family.that's in see family.org. Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your friend