There are ABSOLUTELY no mechanisms in place here in the Land Between the Coasts, where any parent or grandparent (even one who is a pot-smoking eighth grade drop-out, as happened with three of my students from the same family) can homeschool. I can see it now: get expelled, get into college anyway, loosed upon an unsuspecting population. No records required to be kept, complete freedom to let the kids to turn into shaky wraiths found comatose with a Wii controller in their hands.

But, to be fair, that could happen with kids who have diplomas too, as schools continually lower standards to keep their drop-out rates low. To be honest, kids like that usually have very little interest in college.

In California, one could contact the Department of Education. Part of homeschooling in California is filing an affidavit stating that you are a school. It is, of course, possible for parents to plan for their kids wiping out in the traditional schooling route and to file these affidavits in parallel with traditional school enrollment. But I suspect that this requires more planning than most will do.

I suspect other states have mechanisms in place, too.

-Mark Roulo

To get into more selective schools, the homeschooler has to show much more than just SAT scores: recommendations, plus either AP scores, community college grades or something else that shows academic abilities. It wouldn’t be impossible to pretend to be homeschooled, but it would be difficult and it’s not obvious to me why it would be worthwhile.

I don’t know how much it would help the white Cupertino kid who had a low class rank but good SAT scores. It’s not obvious to me which schools would accept that kid if she was a presented as a homeschooler, but not if she was presented as a public high school student. And I’m a homeschooling parent who runs a mailing list for homeschooling parents whose kids are preparing for college, so I’m on the lookout for selective colleges which prefer homeschoolers.

As I type this, it occurs to me that a student who is a good athlete but a poor student might try to slip around NCAA regs by pretending to be homeschooled, but the NCAA makes it difficult even for legitimate homeschoolers.

I suppose if the admission’s office were particularly energetic he might find the high school local to the students mailing address. That won’t necessarily work because the local high school isn’t necessarily the one the kid’s trying to conceal.