Also, and this is just gossip but these questions do come up. �When I was a child a neighbor, a single mother of four, did "homeschool" her kids for religious reasons and because the local public school kids honestly weren't the best influence on each other. �She didn't really do a good job homeschooling but it was her kids to raise. �Back then most of the church people who couldn't afford private school home-schooled. �I bring her up because I'm sure her kids were behind grade level in a few subjects. �(I forgot what, I vaguely remember the gossip.). She was allowed to keep her kids home anyway, back then. �

Now, almost 20 years later a friend of mine who recently home-schooled was gossiping with me about her local homeschoolers group, specifically the unschoolers in the group since she was unschooling. �She said that many of the unschoolers backpedaled at the last minute and crammed for the state end-of year test. �We were trying to guess why they would do that? �Do you have to pass the test to be allowed to keep homeschooling? �What about the same kids who fail the standard tests year after year in public school, are they allowed to keep going to public school?

Youth lives by personality, age lives by calculation. -- Aristotle on a calendar