I am quite a few years away from having to worry about this and yet, somehow time has actually grown faster over the last several years and so I’m sure high school will be here before I know it. But someone recently asked me how to keep track and give your high schoolers credits for the courses they study. Here are a few suggestions that might help point the way.
Why do You Need High School Credits
The first step, in my opinion, to determining how to keep track of high school credits is to determine why you need to keep track of them. What is your child going to do after high school. If he is college bound, you’ll need to make sure that you document certain types of information. If he is not college bound, you’ll likely have to just keep track of what is necessary from the state.
Go to Your Local College
My suggestion to anyone who is homeschooling a high school student is to contact a college admissions officer (or a few) and find out what they would like to see from homeschoolers. You do not need to know which college your child might attend. While admissions requirements will differ, many colleges are recognizing the contributions that homeschoolers make to their campuses and consequently are looking at their admission differently. A portfolio of work, a list of books read, and course syllabi are all things that colleges could request and that you should keep track of anyways. It also helps to see what type of course work the college is expecting to see from incoming freshman and then devise your high school coursework accordingly.
Devising Credits
1 credit generally equals one full year of study, a half credit equals one semester of study, etc. So if your child took four years of English, he then can put 4 credits on his transcript. You can make up your own credit system, based on hours of study. In this way, you can also give high school credits for volunteering and working (depending on the type of job.)
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