We just completed our second semester in the 2020-2021 school year. Frankly, with all the craziness in today’s world, that in itself is an accomplishment. Last Friday I completed grading papers and putting together a report card for my teenagers. Report cards for homeschool are not required to be issued in Pennsylvania but my children like to see their progress. Back when I first began this journey I was issuing progress reports as well as quarterly report cards. Live and learn! I no longer get that extreme. As time went on I have given up progress reports and quarterly report cards. Semester report cards is all I am doing now as it’s far easier for me to tally with the excel spreadsheet I am using. That’s another thing from my previous craziness of trying to record grades. I wasn’t using an excel spreadsheet but recording on paper and I would have to manually add all the grades to find the average. That was a lot of work as you might imagine. Computers have their usefulness, though I am not a fan of relying on them. Last school year I kept a digital and paper copy of grades. I had intended on keeping a paper grade record this year as well but I abandoned that idea and now only keep an excel document. To make myself feel better and because my previous laptop was slowly dying, I have been backing up to a cloud server and also onto an external hard drive. Always back up your work!

So today I was tidying up my teenagers cumulative records. I keep folders of their grade progress over the years in a filing cabinet. Inside these folders are report cards and documents to keep us on track for graduation as well as medical documentation. I also have copies of all my handed in affidavit’s that I keep in a “teacher” file. I’m not sure how long to keep portfolio work but I also have that stored in a plastic box in the basement. Technically speaking you should not need this after you have handed in you evaluation and the school district has accepted it. I suggest keeping the current and previous year at the least. Space is an issue in our small home, so we just don’t and can’t keep every piece of paper or project they have completed. Some think they make nice mementos for when your children are adults, but I have to honest here, I have very few of these items from my childhood and it does not matter to me, it would just be more stuff taking up space I don’t have. Anyway, back to my tidying up. I decided to add to and clean up my 10th graders transcript that I began last school year. Below you can see screen shots of what it currently looks like, minus the page about extra-curricular work and volunteer work. The first image is the transcript itself while the second shows a portion of the course descriptions. I’m not sure why or if ever the course descriptions are needed but many people recommend having those and it’s far easier to record them the year you are doing the course than later. This transcript has a place for you the supervisor to sign as well as your highschool evaluator which can be whoever you used for your secondary (7-12) evaluations (meaning nothing special or additional). This is not required but consider adding it. The 3rd image is of the transcript (altered by me slightly) that is part of the excel spreadsheet by TheHomeschoolMom.

If you haven’t started a transcript for your highschooler, it’s a good time to do it and they really are not difficult. You can spend money and use a transcript service but I really feel that is not needed. Many people are intimidated at the thought of homeschooling highschool but I have not found it to be any different. Credits are fairly easy to apply. Have a grade scale that works for you and that will help determine your child’s GPA. Are you wondering about credits for your highschool courses? The rule of thumb is 120-150 hours of course work is 1 credit, or a course book that took a school year to complete (in this state a school year is 180 days or 990 hours for highschool). Half that number for half credit courses and so on. We don’t typically do PE and Art, for example, 5 days a week so they come out to be half credits, although I do not grade PE so there is no GPA for that course. How this will actually all play out once my 1st child graduates and either goes to college or trade school is yet to be seen. In this topsy turvy world I am not going to get ahead of myself in that regard but some minor pre-planning can’t hurt.

Speaking of, what happens after graduation? I can’t speak from experience yet but I have been paying attention to other homeschooling families. Colleges and technical schools will ask for a transcript so you absolutely need one. What they want in addition, like course descriptions, I can’t answer. It will likely depend on the school. Many schools require an essay to be written. That will be an enormous undertaking for my son because he hates writing. Luckily for him, he is likely to go to either community college or a technical schools, or at least those are the top choices currently. It’s a good a idea to have some type of plan at least by 9th grade so that you know what elective courses may benefit them. There are strict requirements in Pennsylvania on what is needed to graduate however. You need four years of English ; which includes literature and composition as well as grammar. You need three years of Math, Science and History (which is also known as social studies) and you need two years of Arts and Humanities (those are your elective course). These are the bare minimum requirements. When you follow this minimum requirement that means that just 15 total credits are needed to graduate. That is very low and I highly suggest striving for over 20. It is very difficult to compare this with Pennsylvania public schools because graduation requirements means passing the state Keystone exams. This is not something homeschoolers are required to take (and mine will not be). Here’s an example, if my 10th grader, who will have 14 credits after completing this year, stays on this course plan, he will graduate with at least 28 credits.

Colleges are not going to look at their credit score so much as their GPA score. A GPA, or grade point average, is acquired by the grades received in each course taken. For example, using my 10th grader again; in 9th grade he got all A’s except for one B. Based on my grading scale that means each A he got receives a GPA score of 4.0 and his B, a 3.0. Therefore, for 9th grade I calculate his GPA this way : 4.0 x 6 + 3.0 = 27 and I divide that by the number of courses : 27 / 7 = 3.857 which I rounded to 3.86. That’s his GPA for 9th grade. Now to calculate their cumulative GPA after 4 years of highschool, you would do the following. 9th grade 7 (graded) subjects , 10th grade 7 subjects 11th grade 7 subjects, 12th grade 7 subjects. Add together the number of courses, that’s 28. Add together the all the GPA number scores (4.0, 3.0, etc) from all courses from all 4 years. Divide the 2 sums together to get the cumulative GPA. Want more detailed information? This blog explains it well. I’m not even going to get into weighted versus unweighted grades. I do not not weight grades. I do weight their courses based on assignments, such as, tests are 40% of the grade or something to that affect. I do give them grades for daily work assignments. Most of their daily work this year consists of some kind of worksheet to grade, but not all subjects have this. Last year for our very detailed (in information) history course the daily work was basically the reading assignment and defining terms and note-taking. The course only had graded tests. I feel they need a grade for the extensive amount of work they do each day but it doesn’t need to be even half of the overall grade. The other option is just to average all grades together instead of breaking them down in this sort of way, daily work 30%, tests 40%, projects 30%. Whatever method you choose is fine. I’ve done it both ways.

I began tracking grades the 1st year of homeschool so that I could find the best method by the time I really needed to think about it come highschool years. I didn’t start the journey until my children were in 5th and 7th grades. Some families don’t grade anything and for certain in elementary, it does not matter. Nothing they do in k-8th grade counts when you are looking at transcripts and colleges. The only time you’d possibly put anything from say grade 7 or 8 is if it was an honors or advanced type of class but many more qualified persons have warned about padding your transcript. My daughter has already completed highschool level work, but she’s currently in 8th grade. Nothing that she’s accomplished before 9th grade will end up on her transcript, even though she did complete credit courses and in fact, last year completed a 10th grade level history course.

I hope this helps anyone wondering how in the world they are going to homeschool their highschoolers. There are many options I didn’t discuss here, like AP courses or dual enrollment. These are things you can look into. Worth mentioning here is that your highschooler is not required to take PSAT, SAT, or ACT tests but if your child is planning on college you will need to know what sorts of things they will require as these tests could be part of that. Keep in mind that all of those tests are based on common core standards. This really shouldn’t be an issue with most homeschooled children who utilize published curriculum, even Christian based, as most meet or exceed those standards (the latter being mostly the case) without having adopted any kind of re-working of how things are done, like math. If you are looking for another college entry level test that would be likely more conducive to homeschoolers, check out the CLT test options. I am considering my son take the CLT 10 this year. This would be similar to the PSAT. If you want to take the PSAT, SAT, or ACT tests, you can contact your school district to see when they are administering them, as these tests require a testing site that is proctored. This year things may go online but I have no information on that. You can start with the CollegeBoard website. If your child is going to technical school or community college these tests may not be needed. Community college often requires placement testing. Finally, more school after graduation does not have to be in your child’s future and there is nothing wrong with that. A degree in something doesn’t make you better or smarter or more capable than someone else. This will all be dependent on what area your child plans to go into. Don’t knock entrepreneurship and a chance for them to start their own company and be their own boss. That is certainly a viable choice, with, in many cases, excellent results. There are many options and opportunities for your children. Academics isn’t what makes them successful. Money isn’t what makes them successful and neither is a degree or career. God evaluates them on a completely different level. I’m raising children to put their focus on their eternity, on their redeemer, more than I am their life here on this broken world.