Does anyone know the laws about home schooling in Tennessee?

Question

I have not started homeschooling my children (they are 5 months and the other will be 2 on Thursday) but I am thinking really hard about it and have gathered lots of information and free homeschooling ideas off the interent. But the one thing I cannot find is how to get started in Tennessee. It's still a long way off, but I want to get an idea of what I need to do once I get ready to homeshool my kids.

Answer 1

In TN, your best bet is to go with Option 3. Most of the counties dept. of ed will not even tell you about Option 3 as it is technically private schooling, even though you are educating your child at home, in the manner you choose. Check out HomeLife Academy for an example of a great umbrella school. http.homelifeacademy.org . Tnhomed.com has a lot of useful info too. Option 3 keeps the public schools 100% out of your life.

Answer 2

Here is the HSLDA link for TN:

http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp?St...

You only need to contact your school district if you do option 1 or 2.  Personally I would have no more contact with them than that.  Some districts try to bend the state rules and regs on HS'ing.

Answer 3

It's easy to do, go online to the state website and follow the departments till you get state education department. They almost always have a link for homeschooling. It's easy to get started. I have home schooled my kids from Kindergarten on, they are now sophmore and junior in high school, still home schooled.

Answer 4

Your County School District will know exactly what to tell you. Call the Superintendent's office or hit their site online and the information should be present.

I believe this info varies by state, so since I've never been to Tennessee but once I am not familiar with their laws. I am up on California, Nevada, Washington and Puerto Rico out of necessity.

Answer 5

I will second the opinion of "BoyschoolTN".  We have used Home Life Academy for years and it has been great.  We also have a co op with other local homeschoolers, all of whom except for one, use HLA.  Option 3 is indeed the one that will give you the most flexibility in choices of curriculum,etc.  If you check out the website Boyschool gave you, the director has some very informative articles about homeschooling in general and was also very responsive to my inquiries when I was making the move from homeschooling in OH to homeschooling in TN.  

Way to go to make the decision to become informed this far in advance.  This way you will be very prepared!