Answers: FCAT is Required for FLVS Students ?

NO, it is NOT. If you are a FLVS ( Florida Virtual School ) student you are NOT required to take the FCAT if you are registered as a homeschooling student with your county in the state of Florida. Homeschooling students are NOT required to take the FCAT, or any standardized test. If a Letter of Intent has been sent to the county school board in which the student lives, stating the student’s name, date of birth, address, the date in which homeschooling is beginning with the intent to homeschool, the student is then registered with the state, and that county of Florida, as a homeschooling student. (FL – county contact information click>>https://www.homeschoolingflorida.com/ )

Students that are “home bound” from their school and just signed on with, and working through, FLVS, these students are still considered to be a school child in the county school system, and are then required to take the FCAT becausethey are not actually homeschooling ( registered – Letter of Intent).

Yes, registerd homeschool students may sign up for FLVS or any other on line school curriculum that they want to. NO homeschool student ( registerd ) is required to take any standardized test, not even the FCAT, for the annual educational evaluation, or to graduate highschool and get transcripts and/or a Graduation Equivalency Deploma ( GED ).

Now many Universities and Colleges, more and more, prefer homeschooled graduates over public schooled graduates, and are accepting homeschool graduates’ applications more happily and frequently.

Apparently, some information being mailed to on line students and homeschooling students, looks and sounds like the on line / homeschooling student is required to take the FCAT, or another standardized test. That is NOT TRUE According to the homeschool Florida state law § 1002.01. As home educators, we may choose to arrange for our children to take a standardized test, or even the FCAT at a school in our county, but it NOT required. We also have the option of having a Florida state certified teacher do a porfolio review for the annual educational evaluation required by law.
click>>>http://www.homeschool-evaluations.com/

There are 5 options to complete the annual educational evaluation required by Florida law:

1) Have educational progress evaluated by a teacher holding a valid regular Florida teaching certificate and selected by the parent. The evaluation must include review of a portfolio and discussion with the student;

2) Take any nationally normed student achievement test administered by a certified teacher;

3) Take “a state student assessment test used by the school district and administered by a certified teacher, at a location and under testing condition approved by the school district”;

4) Be evaluated by a Florida licensed psychologist or school psychologist; or

5) Be “evaluated with any other valid measurement tool as mutually agreed upon,” between you and the school superintendent in your county.