Better to graduate public school or home school?

[Janeway]

Son home schooled until high school. He went to a charter magnet school that was classical education. He was at the top of his class. He did not find the school to be a challenge, but did enjoy it. This year, senior year, he left and wanted to return to home school.  After a few weeks of him sitting around wanting to play Minecraft, I took his transcript to the local public school and see about him taking classes there. He literally needed one class to graduate. They told me he needed two. So I convinced him to at least try the school and if after the 9 week term, he did not like it, he did not have to continue and he could finish as a homeschooler. They are on a block system so 9 weeks is a semester. Well, he left after the 9 weeks. And in the 9 weeks, he took US History and AP economics. The school also made a mess of his transcript changing all his honors/preAP history classes in to "general social studies topics" classes listed at regular level. Same thing for Padeia and Philosophy.  This dropped his class ranking, but fortunately, this was after college applications were done. He left and I redid his transcript to match up with the original one from the charter school. BUT, then the public school contacted me and informed me when he left, they found that he actually did have enough credits to graduate so they were giving him his diploma. Umm..well..this diploma/transcript omits all those honors and preAP courses he took as well as Latin 4 as he tested out of Latin 4 and was placed in Latin 5 for this year. He also earned the gold award for the National Latin Exam the last two years running. 

I feel like I should tell the school not to make a diploma for him and he will graduate home school. It feels like it harms and undoes his accomplishments if the public school is allowed to issue him a diploma/transcript. On the other hand, I wonder if it hurts to let them issue him a diploma, which I am hoping we can just ignore and still make our own diploma and final transcript. But I am worried there might be some sort of...well..consequence of the public school declaring him graduated and having their diploma, as if that legally makes ours invalid and it is possible for colleges and anyone else to find out he actually had one from the local public school (where he literally attended 9 weeks and that is it).

What should I do? Regardless, I intend to use our own home school diploma and transcript. Should I go to battle with the public school and tell them not to award him a diploma? Or should I just ignore them and get on with our lives?

Edited to clarify: the public school said he needed two classes to graduate. He only took one during those 9 weeks. We ended up frustrated and unable to resolve the errors on the transcript when they converted it for their system as well as found the education, even in their AP classes, to be watered down, goof-offish, and froofy. He left with the intent to just finish as a home schooler. But the public school then contacted us and said he actually only needed the one class to graduate so they were going to issue him a diploma. I want his transcript to be corrected and returned to how it was with the charter school he had been at for most of high school so I had intended to issue a home school diploma, which he is happy with. Should I object to the public school or ignore them?

Edited April 5, 2020 by Janeway

[almondbutterandjelly]

I think you should tell them no thank you.  I doubt it will be a huge battle since he only took one class there.  But I definitely don't think they should award a diploma.  I agree that it seems to undo his accomplishments.  I would not allow them to award a diploma.

[EKS]

Why can't the transcript from the charter school act in concert with the one from the public school?  In other words, why don't you just send both to the college he ends up attending?

Frankly, it sounds like he never really homeschooled, so a homeschool diploma seems wrong to me.  

Edited April 5, 2020 by EKS

[Janeway]

1 hour ago, EKS said:

Why can't the transcript from the charter school act in concert with the one from the public school?  In other words, why don't you just send both to the college he ends up attending?

Frankly, it sounds like he never really homeschooled, so a homeschool diploma seems wrong to me.  

He home schooled 9th grade. But in reality, he did 9th and 10th at home and then wanted to go to this charter school. So he went two years. He did only two years of Latin there but did the rest of Latin at home and tested out. The charter school put his test out courses on while the public school did not. Plus, he continued his study of philosophy at home as well as calculus. He would have had a senior thesis at the charter school which he completed at home as well as read all the literature that the charter school required. At the public school, they have that he only did PE, 1 semester of US history, and 1 semester of AP economics. That is it. So there is no senior English, they took off the Latin 4 as it was a test out credit (because he studied it on his own and then tested out at the charter school), nothing. Also, all the preAP and honors courses have been converted to regular level courses. Because the charter school is considered a public school, they tell us that if he is graduating from the local public high school. the transcripts have to come from them.

He has had way more credits from home school of high school that the semester of PE, semester of US History, and semester of AP Econ that he got from the public school.  That would make the diploma from the local high school far more bogus than the one from the public school. he earned 14 credits from the charter school, at least 14 credits from home school, and 1.5 credits from the public school.

Edited April 5, 2020 by Janeway

[EKS]

7 minutes ago, Janeway said:

He has had way more credits from home school of high school that the semester of PE, semester of US History, and semester of AP Econ that he got from the public school.

The reason I got the impression that he hadn't homeschooled at all in high school is that in your OP you said this:

3 hours ago, Janeway said:

Son home schooled until high school.

If he has a bunch of homeschool credits, then I would definitely issue a homeschool diploma, especially if he applied to colleges as a homeschooler.

Edited April 5, 2020 by EKS

[Janeway]

26 minutes ago, EKS said:

The reason I got the impression that he hadn't homeschooled at all in high school is that in your OP you said this:

If he has a bunch of homeschool credits, then I would definitely issue a homeschool diploma, especially if he applied to colleges as a homeschooler.

Sorry..when I said "home schooled until high school" I only meant he went to the charter school once in high school, but not before. BUT, he home schooled 9th and 10th grade. Then, when he went to the charter school, he has a September birthday, so even though he had already done 9th and 10th at home (as in, I had outsourced English and World History and he had done biology, astronomy, and math through algebra 2 at home, as well as Latin) he wanted to start the charter school as a 10th grader so he could do their Western Civ class and Padeia and Logic that he could take in 10th grade.  So I left the second world history class and the second English class as well as the Latin and astronomy off the transcript when I sent him to the charter school so that they could classify him as a sophomore. 

 

Would you just tell the colleges and such he was a home schooler..or would you also go back to the public high school and tell them they cannot give him a diploma? So regardless, I plan to issue him a home school diploma with a home school transcript. And colleges will receive that as his final transcript. The question is, would you tell the public school that they cannot issue him a diploma or just ignore them?

Edited April 5, 2020 by Janeway

[Farrar]

This is really tricky. Do I understand this correctly...

* 9th and 10th - homeschooled
* 11th - charter
* 12th - homeschooled first term but got very little done, then tried public school for one quarter, then the world shut down

Charter school honored the homeschool credits appropriately. Public school not only didn't honor the homeschool credits appropriately, but also didn't honor the charter credits with appropriate equivalents.

Do I have that right?

I do feel like the trade off in going to a school is that you may not get your credits the way you want them and that's something people should accept and not play the system by going in and out. But I get that wasn't your intention and obviously the whole world went nuts and any chances he would have had to remedy it by working with the school have been thwarted. Plus, it is what it is. I think you're fine to graduate him as a homeschooler. However, if he has not yet applied to college, I think you should definitely submit all transcripts, including the public school one and put in your counselor letter a simplified explanation of the issues. "Due to unforeseen circumstances, X attended a variety of schools for high school. He was homeschooled for two years, followed by a year at X Charter. For senior year, due to (insert explanation because schools are going to want to know) he began with homeschooling then started public school, only to be disrupted by the global coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, X finished his high school education at home. While this was not ideal, X adapted to the changes as you can see from the transcript blah blah blah..."

If he has already applied and chosen a college or plans to attend community college, I feel compelled to point out that a lot of this doesn't matter that much. The diploma is all that matters for CC and once he becomes a transfer student, the high school transcript matters a lot less. If he's already been accepted, then you should contact the admissions office and explain the situation before submitting final documents.

Edited April 5, 2020 by Farrar

[EKS]

1 hour ago, Janeway said:

Would you just tell the colleges and such he was a home schooler..or would you also go back to the public high school and tell them they cannot give him a diploma? So regardless, I plan to issue him a home school diploma with a home school transcript. And colleges will receive that as his final transcript. The question is, would you tell the public school that they cannot issue him a diploma or just ignore them?

Did you apply to the colleges as a homeschooler?  As in--were you his guidance counselor and did you send your homeschool transcript during the admissions process?  Or did you tell them that he was a student at the public school?

If you told them he was a homeschooler, I'd issue your own diploma.  If you told them he was a student at the public school and that he would be graduating from there, I'd have the public school issue the diploma.

In other words, I'd go with what you told the colleges for admissions purposes.  

If you're worried about the change in course names, have both the charter school and the public school send their final transcripts.

If you issue the diploma, you should tell the public school not to.

Edited April 5, 2020 by EKS

[Janeway]

2 hours ago, Farrar said:

This is really tricky. Do I understand this correctly...

* 9th and 10th - homeschooled
* 11th - charter
* 12th - homeschooled first term but got very little done, then tried public school for one quarter, then the world shut down

Charter school honored the homeschool credits appropriately. Public school not only didn't honor the homeschool credits appropriately, but also didn't honor the charter credits with appropriate equivalents.

Do I have that right?

 

Close to having it right. He homeschooled 9th and 10th. The outsourced classes were World History and English. The place he went was a Christian program that used things like Notgrass and a bunch of other stuff. Then, he went to charter, but I dropped some of the 10th grade courses off so he could enroll as a 10th grader. So then he did 10th and 11th at a charter school. The charter school actually used a lot of SWB stuff and other things that are popular on this board. Their Latin was Henle where as we used Memoria Press at home. So he had two years at the charter school. Then he came home. He still finished his thesis (something I made him do because he was home schooling) and still read his huge pile of books and I gave him credit for the astronomy as that was something I dropped off his transcript but he actually did in his home schooled 10th grade year. Then he did 9 weeks at the local public school. When he left the charter school, despite the fact that I left those classes off his transcript going in, he had 25 credits. 

[Janeway]

1 hour ago, EKS said:

Did you apply to the colleges as a homeschooler?  As in--were you his guidance counselor and did you send your homeschool transcript during the admissions process?  Or did you tell them that he was a student at the public school?

If you told them he was a homeschooler, I'd issue your own diploma.  If you told them he was a student at the public school and that he would be graduating from there, I'd have the public school issue the diploma.

In other words, I'd go with what you told the colleges for admissions purposes.  

If you're worried about the change in course names, have both the charter school and the public school send their final transcripts.

If you issue the diploma, you should tell the public school not to.

He did the applications in August before he withdrew from the charter school. I contacted them after the fact and told them he was homeschooling. 

[EKS]

2 hours ago, Janeway said:

He did the applications in August before he withdrew from the charter school. I contacted them after the fact and told them he was homeschooling. 

Then this is the story I'd go with.  The bigger problem might be if you said somewhere in the application that he would be completing certain homeschool work that he did not end up completing.

 

Edited April 5, 2020 by EKS

[BusyMom5]

Does he want or will he ever need an actual diploma?  If he wants one, then accept it.  I dont think it will have anything to do with the college stuff since hes as already been accepted.  I also doubt there will be a ceremony.   

[Farrar]

So... he sent in applications so early that they don't even know he went to the public school briefly but you did notify them he was homeschooling? I would definitely just graduate him as a homeschooler then.

[Hilltopmom]

Can you issue a homeschool diploma in your state that works for college admissions?

My state does not recognize homeschool diplomas- we need a letter from the superintendent  of our district saying our kids completed a homeschool equivalent of public school.

[City Mouse]

I don’t know that the diploma matters that much, but since he did attend public/charter school for a portion of high school, he will need to turn in a public school transcript to colleges. So, it may be worth it to you and him to fight to have the transcript corrected even if he doesn’t  graduate from the public school.

on the other hand, the school may issue him a diploma because he has met all the graduation requirements. You may not have a say in that. I don’t think the school can choose not to graduate him when he has met the requirements.