A fellow blogger honored me by asking how hard it is to homeschool in Massachusetts. She might be moving here soon.
The short answer is: it depends. The law is a set of court precedents from cases against un-schoolers. The unschoolers won. So the possibility that a homeschool will look nothing like a school in structure, methods or schedule is acknowledged in print. Since Massachusetts has had the town system clear back to colonial days, the court left the local town (or was it the school board or superintendent? I forget) the authority to make sure the children were progressing. So, if you have a town with a superintendent with a good attitude, the paperwork is annual, but not too bothersome. If you get a new superintendent (especially one from NY where they are used to massive paperwork) then you have to do some gracious educating. This link was prepared by the two Massachusetts mega homeschool support groups (Massachusetts Home Learning Association our inclusive group, with a lively yahoo!group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/masshomelearningassoc/
and MassHOPE best know for the excellent MassHOPE conference every Spring), for educating superintendents. AHEM has suggested Letter of Intent to Homeschool guidelines. Lots of folks join HSLDA for calm feelings, although the "what does Washington know about me?" attitude is common as well.
From what I hear from folks from other states, they are used to the big support groups doing it all: state lobbying, mother culture, used book fairs, field trips and co-ops. Around here (Southeastern Mass, practically RI) it is much, much more localized. We often have local groups that focus on field trips, or co-ops. In my area, they seem to stay small (25 -50 families), and be Evangelical, Catholic, or Inclusive. I think it varies depending on where in the state you are.
Of course, I’ve never homeschooled anywhere else. It doesn’t seem all that bad to me. Although I do get cranky in June when I either put the portfolio together, or see if the test scores will do. This August, I had the nagging feeling that I’d forgotten something really important, and it was my Letter of Intent to Homeschool. Fortunately, I keep my son’s LOI on my hard disk and just edit it each year with what curricula I’m going to use. If anyone wants to look at it, contact me, and I’ll e-mail out an old version with any embarrassing info