School attendance is mandatory for children between the ages of six and 17. If a child is younger than 6 and was enrolled in the first grade, he must attend school too. However, if your child is 17 and has obtained a general equivalency diploma (GED), he is exempt from this law.
Public schools are required to teach students for 180 days per academic year, but if you are homeschooling your children, no specified number of days or hours are required. There are no teacher certification requirements, and homeschooled children are not required to undergo assessments or submit to standardized testing.
The first Compulsory Attendance law in Texas was in 1915, and from that time, it was understood that home-educated children who were being properly taught by parents were in a private school. Yet, in 1991, there was a Texas Court of Appeals Case, Texas Board of Education et al. vs. Leeper et al. that challenged a homeschooling family's right to teach their children at home. This case was settled in 1994, and it was decided that Texas home schools could operate as private schools.
This is why you as a homeschooling parent do not have to initiate contact with the school district, have school officials visit your home, get curriculum approved or meet certification requirements.
Your homeschooled child cannot be discriminated against by Texas colleges per Texas Education Code 51.9241. His education is considered to be equivalent to that received in a public or accredited private school. Admissions committees must apply the same standards to homeschool graduates as they would to any other high school graduate applying for college admissions.
It is illegal for anyone to ask your child to present a GED certificate or to take any type of assessment testing other than the one that all applicants, including traditionally schooled graduates, must take.
Join a homeschool support group in Texas if you want to be encouraged by other homeschoolers and if you want your child to participate in activities with other homeschooled children. There are regional and local groups to choose from, and as of June 2010, there are over 30 groups listed on the Homeschool World website.
Some groups are in large cities and others are in small towns; both Christian and secular groups are included. There are groups that focus on a particular activity while others have co-op classes where your child can participate in a classroom setting with other children.
Although the state only requires that you teach your child reading, grammar, spelling, math and good citizenship, you may want to look at the Texas Education Agency's Essential Knowledge and Skills standards. This will let you know what your child's public school counterparts are learning and when they are learning it.
When you buy or create your own curriculum, you may decide to base it on these standards. If you later place your child in public school, you will know that she has the same knowledge base as others at her grade level.