united-states, legal, softwareI am interested in developing an education software application for homeschooling. The software is designed to serve students with a complete educational experience in the form of “online-classes”. I live in Toledo, OH so I want to develop software that works in Ohio before deciding to support other states. I have tried to research the various legal requirements that need to be satisfied for students being homeschooled, but they make it impossible to figure it out.
My question is: What legal requirements do I need to satisfy in order for students to be able to use the software and have the “online-classes” recognized by public schools (K-12)?
Bonus Question: How difficult is it to get educational software approved by schools? Should I be targeting teachers and relying on their “word-of-mouth” or should I be targeting principals & superintendents?
I’ve homeschooled my kids in 3 different states.
The spectrum ranges from very lenient states (FL – do whatever you want, there is even an online (public) virtual school here – http://www.flvs.net) to states actively trying to discourage homeschooling without outright banning it (glad I don’t live in CA).
Many states require you (the homeschool parent) to show ‘adequate academic progress’ every year. The easiest way to do this in a way that school administrators consider to be ‘legit’ is to have your student take one of the accepted standardized tests at the end of every school year (ITBS, etc). You could consider providing or coordinating with a third party to provide proctoring services for these and other tests.
Also, some states will want a planned curriculum to be submitted as well as attendance records. Handling those requirements should be fairly simple. When I lived in Colorado, I just generated a word doc with a planned curriculum (it was very simple - a table listing subjects and what texts I planned to use) and mailed it to the district homeschool coordinator, then an excel spreadsheet at the end of the year for attendance.
There are plenty of software tools to automate record keeping (and you should integrate record keeping into your product) – I even created one, but it didn’t sell particularly well (but my wife still uses it) :)
Homeschool laws vary by state. IL and ID are about the best. Check out Home School Legal Defense to find out about OH.
Homeschool and traditional schools are very different markets. If you want both markets, go for traditional first. If you get associated with homeschooling, traditional schools may not be interested.
Also be aware that there is a lot of well established LMS software and online courses available. You'll need to differentiate yourself significantly.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.