We have 62 days of required time to complete for the 2021-2022 school year to fulfill the law requirement. It amazes me every year how fast the time seems to go. Home educating teenagers has been quite different than when we started out in 5th and 7th grades. What do I mean by that? For one, they are virtually self teaching with little need for me, though I do still stay quite involved in what they are learning, as well as support for them and of course I grade their assignments. Their interests are really formed now to what they prefer to focus on. For example, my 16 year old’s focus is computer programming and my 14 year old’s focus is interior design. The 16 year old has been holding a job since last spring and passed his drivers permit and road test and is now a licensed driver. All this to say, they are growing up. The beauty of home education is that you can foster their interests and you know their skill level and can be flexible with when they get their assignments done so that they can hold a job or pursue other things. I encourage my kids to choose something they are interested in, not necessarily just something that’s going to earn the highest amount of money or require the highest level of education for a fancy degree. Anyone who’s followed my blog for any length of time knows that we are a born-again Christian family. As such, I have never taught my kids that career and money or degrees or education are important or something they need to obsess over. What is important is their relationship with Christ. Everything else is temporary. We need to live on the planet for whatever time God has us to be here, and in doing so, obviously, we need to earn an income to feed ourselves, our families and to use what God gives us for God’s glory, for His purpose. The Bible gives us quite a lot of insight on that actually. I want my teens to lay their treasures above, not on Earth. That does not mean they should have no interest in anything. They do need to realize, however, that often our plans for our lives are not God’s plans for our lives and that will eventually be revealed to us if we are willing to listen and heed the will of God. The plan I had for my life when I was their age certainly did not come to completion, but God’s plans are the best plans and the sooner you submit to them, the better.

I know I have not posted anything in a long time and I have been trying to figure out what I wanted to talk about now. These days I spend little time on social media and therefore I don’t know what’s been going on in the homeschool groups I am in. I do know that people continually ask the same question, “where do I begin?” The answer is simple. Begin at reading the PA Home Education law. You MUST know the law. Don’t rely on anyone else to tell you what’s in it. I have many posts on how to follow the law and help break it down if you have questions. You can check my Resources page to go to the law text and read it and print it. Keep a copy of it in print form. Put it in your files somewhere. Refer to it and read it every year. The other thing I know is being discussed in some groups is this idea of the government giving out tax breaks to homeschool families. I really pray that does not happen. You’re thinking, why? It’s simple. If the government gives you something they want something in return. I don’t want them inside my home education program. What will they want? That’s anyone’s guess, but for one thing it will probably be something along the lines of requiring you to teach or do something in your home that you don’t agree with. No, I don’t want the government in my home. I don’t co-parent with the government nor do I co-educate with them. If I wanted them to educate my kids they would be in public school. I don’t even like all the hoopla they make us (PA residents) go through just to have our kids learn at home. It may not be hard to do, but it’s pointless and just a way for them to feel like they have some sort of power or control over your home education plan.

Back to the topic at hand, teenagers learning at home. Both of my children are now considered to be in highschool. That intimidates many parents, the idea of homeschooling highschool. It doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, I have not found it at all challenging. I’ve written about transcripts before and provided links to other articles and I have posted samples of documents in my printables section. Transcripts are not that difficult in reality to put together. You don’t need a special school, you don’t need a special service to pay for, you can easily make them yourself. Once you know what area of interest your teenager has, you can focus courses on those and add them to his transcript. On top of that, you can look at prospective technical schools or colleges and learn what kinds of things they ask for in order to be accepted or admitted to their school. For example, my computer programmer is in the 11th grade by public school age standards. He has all but one English credit completed to earn his diploma and meet the PA Home Education requirements for graduation. If he had been motivated he could have taken 2 credits this year and graduated early (more on that in a bit). However, after looking into many possible school choices to further his computer programming education, we learned that some schools require pre-calculus and some even suggest physics. Therefore, we now know what areas he needs to focus on for his final year of highschool. Many of the schools do not require SAT or ACT test scores, which we have had no intention on taking, but do have their own assessment tests just to determine level of understanding and in some cases require additional courses be taken before more advanced ones. We are still not sure on what he will be doing post graduation, as in, college, tech-school or just earn certificates online and attempt to get internships/jobs based on his accomplishments. I am still putting together his transcript though and have followed suggestions from different school options as to what should be on it. Your 12th grade evaluator does not, by law, need to sign the transcript or the diploma but you may consider having them sign copies just in case a prospective school isn’t satisfied with just yours.

Below is what the diploma from the PA Department of Education looks like, that they feel is the only acceptable one for home educated graduates. I won’t get much in to it, but let’s just point out one obvious problem. This seems to indicate that the PA Dept. of Ed had something to do with the home education program of your child. They did not. They actually know nothing other than maybe you complied with the law and sent in your documentation which was given to your local district, however. You as the parent supervisor know exactly what your children did, what they studied, what they learned, what they excelled at, etc and none of that was evaluated by the Dept. of Ed. So, my suggestion is to have this copy signed, but issue your own diploma, if you wish to even bother, to your graduate and use this one if it should be so required. Don’t get hung up on this piece of paper.

As of now, my eldest teen is going to complete his required 4th credit of English next school year along with a few additional credits and end up graduating with a possible 26 credits. The PA home education law only requires 15 to legally graduate. If your child plans to attend a university, more credits will look better on their transcript. This brings me to the last issue today, deciding what goes onto your child’s transcripts and what about early graduation? First of all, the rule of thumb is only courses taken in grades 9th-12th goes on your transcript. Most colleges do not care about what they took in years prior. Your transcript doesn’t need to be one single page like mine. Actually, I have additional pages with course descriptions for each course taken, in case any school requires that information. Even though this is the rule of thumb, you are still the supervisor and you still get to decide what to put on your child’s transcript. My suggestion, based on getting this information from many veteran homeschool moms, is if you decide to put a course on the transcript taken before 9th grade, it should be an advanced course or perhaps a language course but not the core subjects, math, history, science, and english. Unless, again, it was an AP course or something. In the case of dual enrollment courses in highschool, add those and make a notation that it was taken via the college. Ideally if they are taking dual enrollment courses for highschool and college credit you want that college of interest to accept it as such. If your child isn’t on a college track than dual enrollment is probably just not needed. These courses are not free and may not be needed anyway. They are basically to give your college bound student a jump. Here in lies the issue for me in college courses. Unless it’s a Christian college offering dual enrollment, the courses would not share our values and my children could be learning things we don’t agree with from the secular world. I have no desire for my children to enter into a secular college so we are opting for alternatives.

This is something all born again believing families have to consider. Look at all your options. Is Harvard your only choice? Is there a Christian college that meets the same need? Remember one thing, Christ does not care what degree you earned or if it was from some well known school. He cares about your eternity. What are you learning about the gospel, how are you sharing it? Are you succumbing to the secular world and their lies or are you standing for truth found in God’s word? Are you focused on him or on the career path you’ve chosen? Are you being wise or foolish with your time, your money, and the skills God gave you? Are you will to give up your dreams for Jesus’ sake? The rich man (Matt 19:16-22) wanted to know how to have eternal life and when Jesus told him to sell all his possessions and give everything he had to the poor and follow him, he walked away sad because he was unwilling to do so. Jesus said it’s hard for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Why? It’s about willingness to submit and leave behind your pride and possessions instead of the notion you can earn your way there.

Finally, what about early graduation? There is nothing in the law that states you must complete all 4 years of highschool. It states your child must earn 15 credits to graduate and breaks them down this way, 4 English, 3 Math, 3 Science, 3 History and 2 Arts and humanites (these are your electives). There are no requirements for language credits, PE credits, or any specific type of science, etc. This is why you MUST read the law. Certain topics may need to be covered by law in the secondary grades, but does not specify what grade. Secondary grades are grades 7-12. Bible is a core subject in our home but this is considered to be under “arts and humanities”. Right off the bat my children will have 4 credits earned. As I stated earlier, my 16 year old has already earned enough credits minus 1 required English credit to graduate. If he was to take another English credit course this year he would not need to take 12th grade and I would have his graduation evaluation this year. That’s not happening and wasn’t ever pushed for. How would that go on a transcript? Perhaps rather than listing by year completed as my example shows, you could just list the courses taken and how many credits of each but I can not make any other suggestions as this is not something I have experience with. It is possible to graduate early. Here and here is some helpful information on possible ways how to do that.

Pennsylvania did recently change compulsory age from 8-17 to 6-18. That means your child is now required to enter school at age 6 and no it does not mean they are required to be in school to age 18. It does mean they can not drop out, legally, before that, to my understanding. But if they completed the required credits before they turn 18 than they are legally allowed to graduate. My youngest will reach 12th grade level at age 17 and would graduate at that time, projections are that she will have 25 credits. She would not be required to take an additional year of school because she’s not 18. My oldest will graduate a couple months after turning 18 with projected 26 credits. My youngest has completed many credit courses prior to 9th grade because she and her brother do work together, but nothing before 9th grade with the exception of perhaps her German language course, will be entered onto her transcript in favor of showing what she completed during the 4 years of highschool.

I hope this was not only encouraging but helped clear up any questions. Perhaps I also gave you some things to think about and pray about. Involve the Lord in your home education and trust him and watch things fall into place. Don’t trust the lying world to tell you what your children need to do to be successful. Talk to your kids. Be honest with them. Give them the foundation and the tools. Don’t throw them to the wolves with eyes shut hoping for the best. Don’t stress about the world’s idea of success. Obsess over Christ, not school, jobs, money, etc. The measure of success for a Christian teen is not what career they enter, it’s if they will be entering the Kingdom of Heaven and believing in the Redeemer with the assurance they will spend eternity with him. God gave me these humans to raise for him not for fleshly desires. In turn, I want my kids to have wisdom and be unafraid to tell others of the hope we have in Christ.