I'm curious how a child's progress is tracked or how a child is tested when they are home-schooled.
I've known some that have home-schooled their children until high school & the kids were right on track with public school kids academically. I know of a few others who home-school & am shocked at the lack of progress made academically with their children.

I'm not interested in finding out into to home-school my children, but just want to know the procedure on how a child is tested to see if they are making adequate progress.

I'd wager that it varies greatly depending on the family and what set up they have for homeschooling (do they do it all themselves or do they have group type things with other home schooled kids?).

Most of the kids I knew who were home schooled were slightly behind most of the traditionally schooled kids I knew. They were outrageously behind socially though.

I'm not concerned with the being behind socially part but will agree that is often the case. I'm just interested in knowing how kids who are home-schooled are tested or if they are even tested to see if they are where they should be academically.

I imagine there are many parents and homeschooling groups that do test. However I don't really know if they do or what tests/methods they use to test. Sadly I'm sure there are also cases where children aren't being taught properly nor are they being tested to better suit their lessons to their progress.

My wife's friend homeschools and her daughter is pretty smart. She would be an 8th grader. However, she is very shy and awkward when around other people. Her social skills are terrible. She has told my wife quite a few times that she wished she had some friends to hang around. She is on facebook and has like 16 friends which most are aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. My son is in 7th grade and has like 400 friends on facebook. I feel for the girl. I do not want to bash anyone for homeschooling, I just personally think that it is important for kids to spend time with other kids their age.

My experience with home schooling is that the vast majority have been misfits in school, academically challenged or discipline problems. Many of the parents used "weak" public schools as the reason for home schooling, when in reality that wasn't even close. Many of the "home schooled" kids had two parent working families that "allowed" for independent "study" . This is one of the biggest scams ever.

To my knowledge, testing is often lacking or non-existant.

I guess my question really revolves around whether the Ohio Department of Education (or some other authority) does any checking/monitoring or testing to see if home-schooled children are being taught anything.

I know of a few kids who are 10 & 11 & it doesn't appear they know how to write or read yet & they are being home-schooled. I can't figure out the parents' reasoning (one a college graduate & one @ least a HS graduate) to not educate their children. I guess I just figured that the Dept of Education monitors it in some way to make sure the children are on the bottom end of the standardized testing scale at the very least. Very sad!

I have cousins who are home schooled and they are all very bright and well ahead of the learning curve. From talking to my uncle things start getting difficult when they reach high school because his wife cannot teach calculus and some of the advanced science courses. They have paid to bring in a retired teach for things like this. I also understand that they get together with other home schooled kids when they do this.

Socially, they seem to have friends through church but I think they are in for some surprises when they go off to college. I have no idea if they are formally tested by the state but I know they have to take the SAT/ACT just like anyone else.

^^^ The other home-schooled children I know fit into this category - very bright. They transferred to the public high school without missing a beat & were valedictorians or salutorians of their respective classes. I never considered them socially backward either & they are doing great in college. There definitely is a right way to do it. I just can't imagine what the future holds for the children in my previous post.