If you went back to school, you might learn basic grammar and how to spell simple words like "crap."
@praxagora: It is impossible to make blanket statements about homeschooling laws in America, because those laws are left to the individual states. So what sort of regulations there might be depend entirely on what state you are in. In my state (somewhere in the upper left-hand corner of the map), anyone can homeschool their child. You are requred to file paperwork with the school district before the beginning of the school year stating that you intend to homeschool. You have to use an accredited tutor, or be supervised by one, unless you have completed a certain number of college credits (I think it is 45--about 1 year), in which case you are considered competent to instruct your child on your own. Number of days/hours of instruction required are outlined in law (I don't remember them right off hand), as are the subjects required to be taught. Yearly progess tests are also required. Specific curriculums are not required. In some school districts, the schools will loan you textbooks or make other supplies or activities available to homeschoolers but they are under no obligation to do so. Our school district also had a sort of halfway homeschooling program, where they provided all books & materials but instruction was provided at home by the parents.
That's the theory. In practice, as I discovered, while the requirements are presented in the law, there is no provision for enforcement! Noone is going to check up on you to make sure you are teaching all the subjects, that you are teaching the required amount of time, that you are qualified to teach or are employing a qualified person to do so. If you fail to get your child tested, nobody is going to come after you. Nobody is empowered to do so. Once you have filed the paperwork with the school district, they are no longer responsible for what you do (although they may decide they don't want you to leave--because they lose state money if you do--and hassle you via the court system, but even so their recourse is limited). You are supposed to keep records of what you teach and for how long, etc, but there is no designated office or agency with which that paperwork must be shared, or who will come and ask to see it.
Although I don't know the details in other states, I do know that many of them have more stringent regulations and requirements (and probably actual oversight as well), but I believe every state has some sort of provision for home instruction.
I actually get pissed when I read stuff on here calling every uneducated idiot "homeschooled" because there is actually no reason at all to assume that is the case. A great many (probably most) homeschooled students are actually very well educated. They get good grades on the SAT exams (which are sort of like college entrance exams for the out-of-USA members). National spelling bee winners are frequently homeschool students. Frankly, a lot of public school systems are more deficient than the average homeschooler. I know my public high school graduated kids who could barely read and couldn't calculate their way out of a paper bag. (That is slowly changing; in our state now they actually have tests that you have to pass to be able to graduate--and that was a controversial move.) The only problem with many (by no means all) homeschoolers is that the reason they are homeschooling is to make sure they can control what their children are taught, and that means especially to make sure they are taught creationism and not evolution, and that their education in general will be Bible based rather than reality based. But there is no reason that someone taught "goddidit" about scientific subjects shouldn't be able to write a properly spelled and punctuated, grammatically correct sentence, so I suspect that there is something else going on here than just "homeschooling." Bad public schools or native stupidity or not paying attention in English classes are just as likely.
I know, that was way more than two cents worth. Taking my soapbox and going away now.
