It’s the end of September already. My home education program for my remaining child has been in full swing for a month. That’s not to say she didn’t have learning happening prior to beginning her curriculum work, because going to the gym 3 days a week, working 4 days a week, and church/youth group 2 days a week all counts. That doesn’t even take in account the work she does at home. Segway into the topic I see come up frequently about how much time needs to be spent on school; what counts, is it enough?

There is a misconception that once they reach high school you have to change your approach, or you have to complete so many hours of work for it to “count”. I always direct people to the law text. There is absolutely no mention of that information that people are passing around in homeschooling groups.

You’ll find the law text below:

“(c)  A child who is enrolled in a home education program and whose education is therefore under the direct supervision of his parent, guardian or other person having legal custody shall be deemed to have met the requirements of section 1327 if that home education program provides a minimum of one hundred eighty (180) days of instruction or nine hundred (900) hours of instruction per year at the elementary level, or nine hundred ninety (990) hours per year at the secondary level:

(1)  At the elementary school level, the following courses shall be taught: English, to include spelling, reading and writing; arithmetic; science; geography; history of the United States and Pennsylvania; civics; safety education, including regular and continuous instruction in the dangers and prevention of fires; health and physiology; physical education; music; and art.

(2)  At the secondary school level, the following courses shall be taught: English, to include language, literature, speech and composition; science; geography; social studies, to include civics, world history, history of the United States and Pennsylvania; mathematics, to include general mathematics, algebra and geometry; art; music; physical education; health; and safety education, including regular and continuous instruction in the dangers and prevention of fires. Such courses of study may include, at the discretion of the supervisor of the home education program, economics; biology; chemistry; foreign languages; trigonometry; or other age-appropriate courses as contained in Chapter 5 (Curriculum Requirements) of the State Board of Education.

(d)  The following minimum courses in grades nine through twelve are established as a requirement for graduation in a home education program:

(1)  Four years of English.

(2)  Three years of mathematics.

(3)  Three years of science.

(4)  Three years of social studies.

(5)  Two years of arts and humanities.”

1949 Act 14 Section 1327.1 Home Education Program

Note that there is no instruction on how long a course needs to be or how much time needs to be spent on it. You should also be aware of the law text where it describes the graduation requirements as years, not credits. People really get hung up on credits when discussing home education for 9th-12th grade; how do we assign credits, how do they graduate, what counts? From the law text you can see there is zero mention of credit hours. The fact remains that the law is poorly written. More on that at the end of this post. As such, this means that you, the supervisor may interpret what the graduation requirements mean. Do years coincide with credits? This is the consensus.

Some organizations will tell you how many hours a credit course needs to be in order to count, but, the fact remains that this is not in the law text. You, the supervisor of your home education program decides what goes onto your child’s transcript and how to assign credits as well as grades. Now, I would suggest honesty and standards. If your child intends to go on to college or trade school or anyplace that would require a transcript (and just assume that will happen even if it’s later in life, this way, you have proper records) you will want to be truthful about what you put on their transcript. My suggestion is a credit course is one that they completed during the required 180 days (or 990 hours). If the course took half that time, half credit is assigned.

This does not mean you have to have used a curriculum. I often develop elective courses on my own without textbooks because there is no textbook. But if my teen worked on said subject all year long, it’s one credit. For example, there was never any school textbook for my son learning computer programming over his high school years. Much of what he used was online instruction and hands on, but he worked on self-teaching for the entire 180 days of school, so he was assigned one credit. By the way, I encourage you to allow your high school teens to work independently on their course work which forces them to learn how to study and take notes to retain information. This is a skill that is needed if they go on to further their education and I can attest to this now that my son is in college.

Grades

Grading is a whole other issue when it comes to transcripts. You may wish to review my posts on the topic of creating a transcript, graduation and applying to college. It’s not difficult to make one on your own. I promise. You don’t need to spend a dime on making one as long as you have a device with some type of office program where you can make documents, and this can even be done in Google Docs. Having access to a printer would be helpful but in the days of the internet many colleges it seems are asking for digital copies of the transcripts. You can use a form found online; I provide one for you for free in my Free Forms page. I have used it myself to send to my son’s college.

So here, again, with grades, you the supervisor assign grades. You come up with a system to do that. This could be based on worksheets, quizzes, tests, oral presentations, essays, rubrics for projects or labs, you decide. I like to use rubrics for things like the created elective courses because no textbook was involved and it’s usually a course that is strictly reading a book, or an online website coupled with a hands-on project or lab to show me what they learned. I create my own rubrics also. This can be used, for example, for cooking or baking if your child, like mine, has chosen culinary (this after having already gone through a textbook in another grade for home-economics). Rubrics also work great for essay assignments or oral presentations. I began using this method around the 7th grade level, but you should have come up with your own system of grading and recording grades at least by the time they start the 9th grade level.

No, there are no grades in home education, but you have a baseline of where they are, and you’ll want to “assign” a grade level in order to create a transcript which is for 9th-12th grades. This does not mean your child can’t be using textbooks above their designated grade level, which is typically based on their age and public-school equivalent. Can your child graduate early? The majority says yes, as long as they have completed the requirements in the law text. That includes not only the graduation requirements, but those subject areas set forth in the block of secondary years.

Again, most of this is based on the honor system as there is no way for your evaluator to assess that other than what you provide to them. It’s my opinion that lying about completion of these things only does a disservice to your child and it also makes you a law breaker. So, does every subject area in the law text have to be done every year? Absolutely not. This is not what the text says or even implies. I have seen this misunderstanding as well. The only thing that is implied that is required every year is “regular and continuous instruction in the dangers and prevention of fires”. This does not mean once a year in my opinion. It says, regular and continuous. So once a year fire prevention events, although good, are not meeting the requirement. I know for a fact that this is not covered continuously in brick-and-mortar schools, however, we must follow the home education law. This, however, is another area of the poorly defined law text.

In Closing

The poorly written home education law text. Although the text contains what we indeed are required to do, it also is poorly defined in many areas which causes a great deal of confusion among school districts, the PA Dept. of Ed., parents and even organizations like the HSLDA, whose lawyers agree that the law in some aspects can be interpreted differently because of how it’s poorly written.

If you’ve been to my blog before you no doubt have seen and maybe read my posts on the law text and shenanigans by school districts. You may know that for the first time since I began my journey with a then 5th and 7th grader, my school district has become hostile towards home educating parents in the district and demanding information that many of us do not agree the law says we are required to provide. I’ve seen this over-reaching demand for information countless times over the years from many districts throughout the state, that parents have posted about, but up to this year, my district wasn’t one of them.

Everything is changing. I believe the hostility towards home educating families will only get worse, especially in the state of PA. I believe the school district is being manipulated by the state health department, the department of education, and frankly, the state government. That does not excuse their treatment of law-abiding citizens. They have yet to provide one single proof to back up their claims aside from quoting information from the PA Department of Education. Please do not follow what the PDE says of home education. They did not write the law, they cannot change the law, and they always interpret it differently than how you read the text. Read it for yourself and you decide.

If you are pressured by your school district to provide more than the law requires, re-read the law, be sure you are in compliance, than you decide what to do. I’d caution over-compliance because that is the biggest factor on why, say for example, my district, is doing this now, because as it was said at the school board meeting last month by the district’s solicitor, “most parents have already complied, obviously not all”. That means complied with things outside the requirements.

The bottom line then, when they continue to harass and press the issue and imply they intend to take this to court, meaning taking you to court, you need to do what is in the best interest of your family and your children, even if that means they win. Because the reality very well could be, in today’s climate, you will lose, as it would be up to a judge. So, the question is, do you trust the system? Do you have support from legal counsel? Are you willing to be the one to fight for all home educating families? You would be. Do not think the HSLDA will automatically side with your view on the law text. They have not in the past and may not now.

Please refer to my posts, Lies Districts Tell , What do I Submit?, and School Codes and the Law.

“The evidence of sin’s grip on this world is everywhere. Much of the suffering on earth is because of godless leadership ([Read] Proverbs 28:12[-18]).” GotQuestions

This post is for information purposes only and not meant to be legal advice.

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