How to Give Homeschool Grades

Does your homeschool student make careless errors when doing their math work? Does this drive you crazy as a parent? Learn some effective strategies for dealing with this common homeschool issue in this article by The HomeScholar.

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At a minimum, keeping track of grades and credits can start in 9th grade. Grades 9-12 are considered high school, and those are the only grades and credits that colleges want to see.

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Are you thinking about homeschooling high school? Perhaps you have already started and have a few questions. Lee Binz, The HomeScholar, has created a resource just for you! The HomeScholar Gold Care Club is your one stop shop for all your homeschool high school questions. You can get expert advice on transcripts, grades, credits, record keeping, college preparation and more. This site is filled with parent training tools (videos and audios), templates, planning guides and good solid advice for all parents who are considering homeschooling high school with an eye toward college.

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Home school parents tend to look for mastery of subjects before moving forward. This is demonstrated when parents insist on "more than normal work" in difficult subjects like math and science. Whereas public and private schools may not complete a math textbook during a school year, some home school parents will consider a year unsuccessful unless the book is finished. This can lead to an excessive number of hours spent on one subject. One mom reported to me that her son did all 344 lessons in Pre-calculus and easily spent more than 10 hours per week on his math lessons. Her question was whether she ought to give her son more than one high school credit for his effort.

Unfortunately, one complete high school course like Pre-calculus is one whole credit. One textbook is also one credit - even if it takes forever. Even if you count more than 120 hours, it's still just one credit. When we did swim team, for example, it was hundreds of hours but still just one credit a year for PE. Math is just one of those subjects like organized sports that can take a lot of hours to complete each year, but should still just be one high school credit. It's a big, beefy, manly credit because it's Pre-calculus, and you can be proud of that!

Now is a good time to mention that you don't have to count hours AND count textbooks. You can measure credit value by counting hours OR by completing a textbook, but don't measure both ways. If you use a textbook, measure credits that way, and don't bother counting hours.

Regardless of what you decide, remember the parent always knows best. You may decide that your son deserves something more than just one credit on his transcript. If so, you might consider giving him honors credit to account for all the additional work he did for his class. You are in control of your child's education. I'm just here to give my opinion based on my years of experience and gray hairs.

Calculating credit value can be difficult for homeschool parents. My e-book, "The Easy Truth About Homeschool Transcripts" will take the mystery away and make homeschool transcripts of breeze.

If you are paying attention to credit hours you are well on your way to planning a rigorous high school curriculum. Failing to plan high school courses is one of "The 5 Biggest Mistakes Parents Make When Homeschooling High School." Learn how to avoid all 5 mistakes in my free e-mail mini-course.

From Lee Binz, The HomeScholar - Helping Parents Homeschool High School

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Binz

Parents are often nervous about high school subjects, and English is one of the more intimidating courses - at least it was for me. When I'm consulting, people really like to see samples of our graded English papers. They are often surprised when they see how it is "really done" because it's not a magical process at all! Recently I received a letter from Ann, who wanted to know more about English. We used a process that worked for our family, and fit our learning and teaching style. Let me share my answer to Ann, and you can see if these ideas will fit your family as well.

Learn more about homeschool grades:

My son Kevin thought my homeschool grades were stupid. "Who's going to believe the grades my Mom gives me?" he would say. Then he took classes at community college! The professors gave credit for class attendance, participation, discussion, and homework. If the students scored poorly on a test, they were allowed to "drop" one test. A teacher declared that the highest grade on each test was the "100%" grade, and all the other students were graded on a sliding scale. I had won Kevin over! "You were right, Mom! Your grades were a lot tougher than college!"

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Karen asks:

"How do you make the decision as to whether to give my son a grade of C with an honors credit, versus giving a grade of B without the honors?"

Karen,
I think your goal is to teach your son at his level. That means teach him so that he has success. It doesn't matter what the course is, or what the book is. An honors program is the depth and extent of how far they take that course. Any course could be an honors course with a student who goes above and beyond. There is no shame in having a regular course. So I suppose, if it means a class without honors for him to be successful, then that's what he should be doing in order to learn at his level.

We have a family motto: "never compare, someone always gets hurt." I don't think I would compare your children academically, even though they are in the same courses. Similar to you, I taught my children together for everything except math (and spelling when they were younger.) But I expected different results. My younger son always read more, my older son didn't have to write as many pages on the assignments. Even though your children are working together in the same subjects, you can still vary what you expect of them.

One thing that I've noticed that IS often missing in homeschooling is the sense of where your child is academically among peers. Sometimes we know their faults so well (WAY too well!) that it's difficult to see how they measure up in terms of grades. Grading can be as simple as "If they meet my high expectations, then it's an A" to a much more complicated formula. Whatever you choose to do, I encourage you to not give a grade based on a test alone. Instead, try to think about everything your son does (papers, reading, discussion, speeches, whatever) and ask yourself if he met your expectations in those things. Give him credit for everything he does WELL, and not just things he doesn't do well.

Blessings,

Lee

They are a LOT of good! Just because you don't give tests doesn't mean you don't evaluate your children! Give an accurate and full representation of what your "mommy grade" contains, and those grades can really count. In our homeschool, we did about 1/2 our subjects the traditional textbookish way. In fact, we only used tests for math, science and foreign language - and we only did tests in those subjects because the curriculum CAME with tests. The other part of our school was not graded with tests. I gave grades based on what they did, what they knew, and what they produced, instead. I put those "mommy grades" proudly on my transcript! Do you know what happened with those mommy grades? My children were accepted to all four colleges they applied to. My children were given good scholarships even to selective schools. My children were given full tuition scholarships to their first choice university - that's what happened!

The colleges could see that the mommy grades were most likely accurate, because we had good SAT scores. We also had CLEP exam scores to document some of the other subjects. You don't have to change how you school your children or spend a lot of money to get grades made by someone else. You can display your mommy grades proudly!

Resources for Homeschool Records

>>>>Can you recommend a certain book or website that helped you with high school credits?<<<<

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1) Can he have certain subjects that count for high school credit without the whole year being considered high school?

Yes! If he is doing just one high school subject, count that one subject on his high school transcript. I labeled those classes as "Early High School Credits."

2) Honestly, I remember how college worked as I loved it and most of my college classes were 3 credit classes. Now I am realizing that high school is by credit hour. How does this work?

Usually 120-180 hours is one high school credit, and 75 to 90 hours is 1/2 credit, if you are determining credit by the hours of work.

3) If I do a class like math - we are using Saxon and in 7th grade he will be doing Saxon Algebra 1. Is this considered 1 credit hour. (Again what I remember is college - this would be 3 credits in college.)

If you are using a high school level book, then it counts as a high school credit even without counting hours, and Saxon Algebra is a 1 credit class. Curriculum catalogs and Cathy Duffy's Curriculum Manual will tell you determine if other classes are 1 credit or 1/2 credit.

This question comes from Jurene in Spokane, who purchased a transcript last year, and now is planning to create a music appreciation course with the Symphony:

"Dear Lee,
This is where I need your insight. I know we talked much about how much time Ellen spent on different subjects to justify awarding a credit. If you could simply give me a yardstick of sorts. How much time would warrant a credit or a partial credit."

Dear Jurene,

To determine a high school credit by counting hours, most books recommend:

75-90 hours is 1/2 credit

120-180 hours is 1 credit

The hours are how many hours the student spends in total, including time spent reading and doing assignments. When I estimate high school credits, I usually just guess and estimate how much time the student spends. Add up all the experiences you are planning, and see if you have 75 hours or more. If you do, then call it 1/2 credit. If you don't, then say it's a supplement - they can add it to other music and art experiences to make up their own credit. If it is 120 hours or more, then you can call it a full credit. By the way, we LOVED the "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music" course, by the Teaching Company, www.teach12.com. I know they have one on the Symphony as well, by the same teacher.

I hope that helps!

Blessings,

Lee

Liz has complex questions about counting hours for credit value. She wants to know exactly how you track hours - wouldn't the hours in an institutional school setting be considered just the "instruction" hours, not the homework? So, how do you separate that for homeschooling, when the instruction is mostly self-directed & blends into the "homework" part of the schooling? Do you generally count ALL of the work?

Liz,
I don't think that there is an absolute right or wrong answer to that, because I've heard many different answers from many great and reliable sources. Even the "certified teachers" can't agree on that one! In many of the homeschool books I've read (Form+U+LA comes to mind) they suggest that ever hour of instruction is actually just 20 minutes in homeschool instruction, because of all the time wasted in class in public schools. These books actually demonstrate how much public school time is spent doing actual "instruction." On the other side of the issue is the North Atlantic Regional High School (NARS.) It recommends that an hour of instruction is a full hour AND the accompanying homework. I think each of us needs to make up our own mind. As homeschoolers, we are accountable to educate our kids to the best of our ability. If you think they are being educated "one credits' worth" then I wouldn't worry too much about hours. The hours give you a general ballpark - tell you if it's closer to 1/2 credit or 1 credit. Hours help you estimate classes that don't have a textbook. Barb Shelton's Form+U+LA book has a wonderful form for counting hours. She has forms for everything in that book, and it can get very overwhelming!

A whole high school credit can be granted to anyone who finishes a year's size textbook, no matter how long it takes them. For gifted kids, whether in homeschool or public school, they can test out of most or all of a credit. For example, since my son had already had formal geometry, he tested out of most of the advanced math book in Saxon. He still got the credit for taking pre-calculus (which is what Advance Math is.) I can demonstrate that he deserved a pre-calc credit, because he did so well in calculus the following year. So if they finish a full year high school level book, they get a credit, regardless of the time they spent. Most curriculum catalogs will tell you if a textbook is a 1 year curriculum, or 1/2 credit curriculum, so there's not a lot of guessing. In math, it often takes kids 2 hour a day (possibly more) to get through a book in a year, so perhaps in that sense the NARS theory on homework is correct. And I've NEVER seen a class count as more than one full credit, not matter HOW much time you spend on it.

I don't really see HOW you can separate self-directed and other blended learning into 'regular instruction" and "homework." With our
self-directed course, my kids just did tons and tons of activities and read tons and tons of books on areas they were interested in. (Economics, economics, economics! But also Russian History, Critical Thinking, Public Speaking, American Government.....) I just wrote down all the resources they used after the fact, and if it was a long list or they spent TONS of time on it then I gave it a credit. I didn't count hours, I just went by how many times I said "Stop doing that economics stuff and get your schoolwork done!" I didn't get it all right all the time. I'd given Alex 1/2 credit for each year he studied economics on his own. Then he passed the microeconomics AND macroeconomics CLEP exams, and I went back and corrected his transcript to show 1 full credit for each course, since he'd actually done college level work each year. But who knew that at the time? Not me!

I did use the "counting hours" method for PE and for public speaking. I counted ALL hours they spent on those things. I found that with PE, when they did swim team and soccer team they ended up with millions and millions of hours, and they were WAYYY over the 180 hours for a credit. So I gave them their credit, then stopped counting for the following years. I did find out that public speaking was a 1/2 credit course based on how much they worked.

Liz, you're the teacher, and you can do what you want in your homeschool. (I assume you're following your state law!) Do it your way! Whatever you want to do will be fine. Colleges will be thrilled that you even document classes in any way. I did count all my kids work, but I know that for many courses (literature, writing and math in particular) they did WAY more than 180 hours. I didn't always count hours, just when I needed help deciding how much credit to give.

Does that help?

Blessings,
Lee

The Washington Post
Giving Proper Credit To Home-Schooled

"Home-school networks also have proliferated, offering group classes, organized sports, debate clubs and social activities. All of that is helpful to college recruiters, who want to see extracurricular activities and high marks from online courses or community colleges to validate parent-designated 4.0 GPAs."

University of Washington
Homeschooled Applicants Requirements

The UW is sometimes considered to be a "Public Ivy" because of it's strict application requirements. Their applications states: "Homeschooled applicants to the University of Washington must present a homeschool transcript that includes course titles of each subject studied, duration of study, a short description of content, and grade or assessment of performance."

What does this kind of record keeping look like? If you want to see a sample of this kind of high school record, you can go to my website. If you want a larger sample, I also offer a complete "Sample Comprehensive Record" for purchase, so you can see every bit of information I gave colleges. You can see for yourself what successful college records look like! If you want more help, call me! I would be glad to help you! Call The HomeScholar at 206-409-3767.

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