Virginia
Standards of Learning Headaches
Home schoolers who elect to operate under “Option Four” (Virginia Code § 22.1-254.1.A, option iv) must include Standards of Learning objectives in their curriculum. This has historically been achieved by providing a copy of the table of contents of books to be used, and problems are relatively infrequent.
Fairfax County, however, recently began rejecting statements of intent that included only tables of contents. Instead, the county demanded that families provide other “indication” of how the Standard of Learning objectives for language arts and math were included.
HSLDA met with Fairfax officials to address this matter. Demonstrating that a particular program includes the standards of learning can be an enormous undertaking. HSLDA pointed out that school districts spend hundreds of man-hours determining if a single book meets such standards. We also pointed out that Fairfax County has already accepted many textbooks as including the Standards of Learning. It makes little sense for home schoolers to demonstrate over and over how the same book meets the same Standards of Learning.
In the end, Fairfax officials agreed to stop their practice of rejecting statements of intent so long as the family included a simple statement to the effect that the math and language arts Standards of Learning were included in the program. — Scott A. Woodruff
