New York Homeschooling
Among the most stringent states in terms of record-keeping and reporting that parents must submit to.
Reporting: Attendance records must be maintained and if necessary, shown to the local superintendent of education. Quarterly reports must be filed with the superintendent, demonstrating the hours of instruction in that quarter, a description of what has been covered in each subject and a letter grade or evaluation in each subject.
Compulsory Attendance: From ages 6 to 16 or high school graduation
Required Subjects: K-12: Math, spelling, reading, writing, English, U.S. History, geography, health, science, fire safety, substance abuse, patriotism, citizenship, traffic safety. In Gr. 7-8, physical education and library skills are added. In Gr. 9-12, social studies, government and economics are added.
Testing: Parents must file an annual assessment by June 30 with the local superintendent of education. This comes from standardized test results every other year between Gr. 4 to 8 and every year for Gr. 9-12. The student must score above the 33rd percentile or risk having the homeschool be placed on probation. In the alternate years of the testing, the assessment can be prepared by a third party approved of by the superintendent.
State Organization(s):
(1) APPLE Family & Homeschool Group
POB 2036, No. Babylon, NY 11703
http://www.applenetwork.us/ny/apple.html – E-mail: info@APPLEnetwork.US
(2) New York State Loving Education At Home (LEAH) (Christian)
http://www.nysleah.org
(3) Parents Instructing Challenged Children (PICC)
Barb Mulvey, 700 W. Liberty St, Rome, NY 13440-3942
Tel: 315-339-5524 after 2:00 p.m. on weekdays
http://www.piccnys.com/ – E-mail: picc@twcny.rr.com
Convention(s): #2 sponsors two annual conventions. Check website for updates.
When Colleges Come to Town
by Andrea van Niekerk, College Goals Consultant
Admission officers know that summer is over when they have to start planning their Fall recruitment travel. As my office’s travel coordinator, I used to spend part of every summer assigning particular areas to specific admission officers in anticipation of that moment. In many colleges admission officers will evaluate applications from the same areas to which they travel; in others, there may be little connection between their travel and their reading responsibilities.
Admission officers travel incredibly broadly – I knew where to find good barbeque in Kansas City and a Starbucks in Cairo! When admission officers do travel all over the map like this, they will mostly participate in a combination of four activities: meeting local alumni groups, visiting a handful of high schools, doing public presentations to which kids from all over that city are invited (often with a group of similar schools), and attending local college fairs.
Given this travel schedule, there are a few things that students and parents may want to keep in mind:
- Once you are interested in a particular college, sign up on its mailing list. Doing so will indicate your interest in the institution (and many schools track such interest because it has an impact on their yield). It will also allow you to receive mailed information about that school’s travel plans – otherwise you should also look for this on their websites.
- When a college of interest visits your school, try and attend. You can get your questions answered, but you will also be astonished by how often admission officers do recall students who introduced themselves and asked questions. Make sure, of course, that they recall you for good reasons – like your informed questions and impeccable manners and not your poor behaviour or smart-aleck attitude!
- If colleges don’t visit your high school, do not read anything into that fact. There are more than 35,000 high schools in the US alone, and the majority will never see an admissions visitor. That does not mean that you are at a disadvantage once you apply – on the contrary, a college may be very happy to receive its first application ever from your high school! – but do take initiative and reach out to the college instead.
- When encountering an admission officer, you need to introduce yourself politely – yes, stick out your hand, say your name, and ask “how do you do”! And you definitely want to get the representative’s name and email address. Later, if you happen to have a question or simply want to let that school know of your burning desire to attend, you can email directly. At many schools such correspondence will be added to an application folder, so make sure it is done well – check your spelling, don’t be silly, and suppress the need to lie, beg, or exaggerate.
- Finally, college fairs can be very useful or quite horrible, depending on how well you use them. By all means learn more about places in which you are already interested, but take time to discover colleges you had never before considered. The representative may be an admission officer or a local alumnus and their knowledge of the application process may differ as result, but they will be equally enthusiastic about answering questions about their college. Do introduce yourself and get a name or a business card for future reference. Some schools will still use contact cards to fill in, so make sure you take some address labels to stick on rather than waste time filling in information. Do not line up in a row in front of the representative – many people will have exactly the same question, and it is exhausting when one has to repeat the same answer over and over again. It also wastes time, so rather stand closer to the desk and listen to other people’s questions and answers. One can learn as much from questions that you have not thought to ask yourself, as from the answers. At the end of the event, you do not really want to be the very last person keeping that exhausted admission officer from his or her dinner, sleep or more hours of work. But when the crowds thin, you can often find a few minutes to have your most substantive conversation of the event. Make good use of the moment!
Copyright, 2010 by College Goals. Used by permission. (www.collegegoals.com)