As promised, this article is about the process of making a transcript and sending one off to college for your home educated teen. Making the transcript isn’t hard, I promise you, it is not. You don’t need to pay for a transcript service. You can make a professional looking transcript all on your own. I have provided you with an example in my FREE FORMS page. I put that printable form into a word document format to be easily edited by you, but you will want to export and save your final document into a PDF when you’re ready to send it to a college. I will explain the steps in more detail. The image to your right is exactly what I use for my children and what I sent to college for my graduated teenager. To be honest with you, I wasn’t worried about what was on the transcript or how it was presented, it was only nerve racking because it was a homeschooled transcript, and I wasn’t sure how it would be received. I need to point out that my graduated teen applied to community college which is generally an easier process to begin with. He went this route to save money on his general education classes as opposed to starting out in a 4 year university. He had other choices in his list of colleges. Whatever college your teen is interested in you should look at their admission’s process. If they don’t have it on their website (most do), call and ask.
Before I begin, I need to say, I’m not a lawyer. I’m a mom who has been home educating her children since 2017. I’m a mom who has spent a lot of time researching, many things, but today is about the home education law and the PA school code. This needs to be said because many are providing bad advice or incorrect information. It’s your job to inform yourself. I want to help point you in the right direction so I’m going to share, piece by piece, everything I found, and then you get to make an informed decision. I will have some very strong opinions on this topic, remember, I am not a lawyer and not offering any legal advice. I know for a fact that school districts across the state of Pennsylvania have been using bully tactics to scare un-informed parents into submission to supply them with things they are not entitled to have. Up to now, my school district, generally, was not one of them. This year, it changed. I want you to inform yourself of all the law that will be used against you so that you can take a stand knowing you have all the information and knowledge forcing them to show you what they think you don’t know. Do not rely on the Home School Legal Defense organization to come to your aid. They likely will not. They have been disappointing many parents for several years, myself included. It’s not difficult to understand the law texts if you read them like this, it says what it means and means what it says. But, like reading the Bible, people attempt to make their own interpretations to suit their agenda. What’s difficult is finding the ones that matter to your issue. I’m talking all of them and looking at them in conjunction with each other when they cross-reference one another. I’ve done the work and I want to show you and provide you with information to help you be informed and un-afraid. I can’t say anything I will point out to you will help you in your argument. I’m going to face it this year myself. But I’m informed, and I have a plan and I’m not going to be bullied or made afraid. I will take it a step at time, as informed and calmly as possible. I don’t recommend communicating with your school district unless/until they have sent you a certified letter. The law affords you that right. I’ll get to that. That being said, I could not let this go any longer. I will quote the laws, provide links and provide my commentary on what they say. Then you will read the laws, in full context and form your own opinion to make an informed decision on how to proceed now or in the future. Remember this only pertains to Pennsylvania.
Today I’m going to share about graduating my first homeschool teen. My oldest is now 18 and he will officially be done with his coursework on May 23rd and his evaluation is set for May 25th where our evaluator will sign off on his final evaluation and sign his PA Department of Education diploma along with myself. This is a recognized state diploma for homeschool students, although you can certainly (as I have one) issue your own that is signed just by you. Both are parent-issued diplomas but the state has said their diploma is more acceptable. You can decide. I will soon be finalizing his transcript as well. Your evaluator does not need to sign that document and unless you print it, have them sign it, scan it and save it, it’s probably just going to be a hassle if you need an “original” document that is not photo-copied. Your signature is sufficient anyway as you are the administrator of your homeschool. You can see my example in my Free Forms with the certification and place to sign it. It does not need to be notarized. You will most likely want to save your document as a PDF before you submit it to prospective colleges. That brings me to my next point.
Applying for college, should your teen choose to go to college, can be daunting. You need to keep good records of your high school student’s grades in order to make their official transcript. How you grade is up to you but you should be consistent. Most people use a grade scale and that itself varies. For example my grade scale looks like this, 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, 70-79 = C, and so on. In my homeschool they must pass with a C or better so grade scales for D and F don’t factor in. If they would get a grade lower than a 70 they are required to take an alternate quiz/test or redo their assignment. I do have other posts on transcripts that can be worth your while to read. Once you establish a grading system you would convert those into points that also depend on how many credits the course earned. For example, an A = 4.0 points if the course was a 1 credit course. To be a 1 credit course it must have been a yearlong course (2 semesters). If the course was only half credit due to being only a 1 semester (half year) course, an A would earn 2.0 points. Example below:
Course
Final Grade
Credit
Grade Points
English
A
1
4.0
Math
B
1
3.0
History
B
1
3.0
Science
A
1
4.0
Art
A
.50
2.0
Music
A
.50
2.0
Total number of Credits: 5
Grade points are calculated by Grade x Credit. EXAMPLE: 4.0×1=4.0 GPA, 4.0x.50=2.0 GPA. Calculate the yearly total GPA like this; 4.0+3.0+4.0+3.0+2.0+2.0 = 18. Divide 18 by the number of credits, 18/5 = 3.6, which is the GPA for that year. Calculate the cumulative GPA (that’s the GPA from each school year) like this: (9th) 3.6, (10th) 3.8, (11th) 3.5, (12th) 3.9 – add the numbers together and divide by 4 and it gives you the cumulative GPA of 3.7
It’s the 2022-2023 school year! Most people have begun their homeschool program or will be soon if they have not chosen a method of year round schooling. Learning does happen most days of the week all year long, but since we do formal curriculum for most subjects, I set a start date as to when they begin working on those courses. Things have been slightly different this year for my teenagers because the oldest, who will be 18 come March, will be graduating from homeschool this year, around the middle of May. He is continuing to work at his job he’s held since June 2021, although with slightly less hours due to school work. He was working mostly full time over the summer and will be trying to keep up with as many hours as possible during the school year. Another perk about homeschooling is how flexible you can be and there is no homework he needs to worry about. Is there homework in homeschooling? I’ve actually heard of that happening, which to me is very odd. But, moving on to curriculum this year.
I wanted to make a quick post today to let everyone know to check out my Forms page as I overhauled some of the documents I made and some I provided PDF and DOC files for easy downloading. If you are new to home education in Pennsylvania, there you will find the documents you need to legally file and begin. Remember, your child must be enrolled into an education program, (home, public, cyber, private) if they are 6 years of age before September 1st. The compulsory age for children in PA was recently changed from 8-17 to 6-18. If your child will be 6 before or on September 1st you must enroll them, whether it’s homeschool or public school. Please let me know if you have any trouble with the links or the documents themselves that I have provided for you. Any document I created, I make available to you for free. I have also supplied other documents that other sites have provided for free.
You can also check out my Resources page as I have updated that as well and will continue to do so. Please share my blog with anyone who might benefit from the information I have provided. With the Printables and the Resource links, one of the most important posts to help any homeschool family in PA is to read THIS ONE HERE and they might want to check out THIS ONE also.
Hard to believe that my oldest is closing out his 11th grade year and will be entering his final year of high school in the next academic year. If the Lord wills, I will share all the details as we move ahead.
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