In California, homeschooling students may register in one of four ways: by themselves (as schools) with R-4’s, through a credentialed teacher who serves as their tutor, through a government or charter school ISP, or through a private Independent Study Program like that offered by The School of Choice. R-4’s are the cheapest and most flexible method of registration, but some parents would benefit greatly from contact with an established school while they discover homeschooling. Without help in the form of tutoring or occasional classes, few parents will match the quality of our classical curriculum and AP courses in the long run. We can help students gain entry to the best colleges, so that they may take on positions of leadership and creativity.
Government financed ISP's rarely offer a classical curricula tailored for homeschooling parents; for thousands of dollars of revenue for each student registered, they generally give the same old bureaucrats, credentialed teachers and trade unions the power to ask parents to teach the same old fixed curricula and censored textbooks. Both R4 registration and private ISP’s will prevent government from paying homeschoolers money to gain ISP enrollment while increasing their dependence on government programs, stifling homeschooling ingenuity, subverting educational entrepreneurship and weakening homeschooling organizations (See Chris Cardiff’s excellent article on the "Seduction of Homeschooling Families.")
Though The School of Choice has an attorney on its staff, this article is not official legal advice. Parents should check facts independently with their counsel whenever they wish. After registration, The School of Choice will request information about your child’s past educational and disciplinary experience and his or her health and immunization records. On a yearly basis, we will outline their curriculum and this outline will be signed and recorded in the records. We will keep required records of the education that actually occurred (over at least 175 days of instruction) and save evidence of each students’ work, grades and test scores in each of the following subjects:
The School of Choice will request records from your child’s former educators. If your program does not involve attending our school fulltime, we will provide you with the means to keep and submit proper records of your child’s attendance and performance in case we must submit them to state officials. In the unlikely event that authorities question an ISP student or parent, they should indicate that they are School of Choice students and that the authority should speak to their school’s Headmaster or Headmistress to verify enrollment.
Special Education students may qualify to take the public school’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) testing. The school or school district must provide this within fifty days of a parental request. Students may then be able to receive certain governmental services, depending upon their condition.