Quarterly Reports: New York State

You've submitted your LOI and received your packet from your school district.  You've penned your IHIP and sent it in.  Now what?

After they receive your IHIP, your school district must send you notice within 10 days that your IHIP either meets the State's requirements or is deficient.  (Don't worry!  If you follow the example I've given, you don't have to worry about being deficient.)  They'll probably send you a packet of forms they want you to use for your Quarterly Reports and Annual Report, but you can toss those.  You are not obligated to use them.

Once you receive the school's notice, CONGRATULATIONS!  Home school away!

But don't forget about your Quarterly Reports!  On each of the dates you indicated in your IHIP, you must submit to your school district a written summary of that quarter.  This is another area where I err on the side of caution and provide much more information than the State regulations require.  To me, the extra work is worth not having a run-in with the school district down the road.  Plus, it helps me realize just how much we've done in such a short amount of time.

All that New York State requires in your Quarterly Report is the number of hours of instruction completed in the quarter, a listing of the material covered in each subject, either a grade (number or letter) or a written narrative evaluating your child's progress that quarter, and, if you covered less than 80% of the material you expected to cover during that quarter, an explanation of why must be included.  But, since you are the decider of what constitutes 80%, that shouldn't be an issue.

If you think you'd prefer a shorter version of the Quarterly Report to base your own on, take a look at the sample shown on Cityschooling, a blog by a New York City seasoned home schooling mom.  However, if you're like me and want to cover all your bases to satisfy your paranoia, you can follow my example, shown below:

QUARTERLY REPORT

Date:  November 15, 2012

Student’s name:  Jonnie A. Doe

Quarter beginning and ending dates:  8/15/12 – 11/15/12

Hours of instruction this quarter:  300+

Description of materials covered in each subject area:  (See attached form for grades assessed).

ARITHMETIC:  Place value to the 100 billions; number forms; comparing and ordering whole numbers; decimals; place value through thousandths; comparing and ordering decimals; rounding whole numbers and decimals; properties; multiplying whole numbers; multiplying decimals; variables and expressions; rules and patterns; solving equations.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE (including reading, writing, and spelling):  Jonnie has read several fiction books, and he has completed several reading assignments in various other subjects.  He has written several stories and short essay assignments.  He has studied capitalization and punctuation, grammar skills, dictionary skills, sentence types (imperative, declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory), subjects and predicates, and independent and dependent clauses.  Jonnie’s spelling and vocabulary words are taken from each subject we study, and he is tested weekly on those words.  He practices cursive penmanship weekly.

SOCIAL STUDIES (including U.S. history, and geography):  Jonnie has studied early explorers, early settlements, colonies, Ben Franklin, War of Independence, Revolutionary War, democracy, and the Pledge of Allegiance.  He participated in a field trip to the Genesee Country Village & Museum in Mumford, NY to supplement his study of colonial life.

SCIENCE:  Jonnie has studied cells, unicellular organisms, cell growth and reproduction, classifying living things and plants, seed-bearing plants, flowering plants, cone-bearing plants, spore-bearing plants, invertebrates, protists, egg-laying invertebrates, vertebrates, and egg-laying vertebrates.  He also took part in field trip to the NASA Glenn Space Center and Science Museum in Cleveland, Ohio and the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY.

HEALTH/SAFETY:   The habit of wellness – health and the whole person, health basics, building fitness.  Jonnie also studied dental hygiene and the reasons for tooth decay in preparation for having a tooth pulled.

MUSIC:  Jonnie began weekly piano lessons this quarter.  He is learning finger placement, keys, notes, chords, and beginning simple melodies.  He practices his lessons daily.

VISUAL ARTS:  Focus on pen and pencil sketching, specifically, contour line drawing.  Completed several art projects, including a still life continuous line contour drawing.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION:  Daily outdoor play, seasonal activities (swimming, biking, hiking, etc.), instruction in aerobic activity and the importance of health and fitness.  Jonnie participated in a week-long basketball camp this quarter.

BIBLE:  Believers in God, life of Abraham, life of David, servants of God, life of Paul.

SPANISH:  Jonnie has been learning beginning Spanish, with a focus on vocabulary and word recognition.

As mentioned at the beginning of this sample report, I also attach a "report card".  I use Homeschool Tracker Plus, which is record-keeping software where I input grades the boys earn in each subject and can generate a report of their grade averages quarterly.  I simply print off that report for each boy and attach it to the Quarterly Report. 

Really, you can make your Quarterly Reports as long or as short as you'd like, and if you don't hear a peep from your school district after submitting them, then you know you're doing it right.  They'll only contact you if they feel you are deficient in some area.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

Coming up... Annual Assessments

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