Ok how do I document this

[nrbeckking]

So DS15 is coming out of PS. He has completed two years but he will do three more years at home. The grade skip before middle school ended up not being in his best interest and he needs another year to catch up in math and writing and be prepared maturity wise to be on his own. Our goal this year is to really fill in the gaps in his math and writing (using Lial's and IEW for that)and then going to move forward with 11th and 12th grade. How do I create a transcript? Honestly his core grades are decent the past two years (all As and Bs) and his only poor grades from PS are his electives (he failed an art class). I mean do we need to put his PS stuff on the transcript? Pulling his lab sciences in would make my life a bit easier BUT will it look weird that he is doing high school for 5 years? Can someone please talk me through this? If he and I are confident in his math and writing he will take the entrance exam to our local community college and take some DE classes in 18 or so months so I have to figure this out for him.

[Farrar]

Hmm... That's tough and I've done a number of ps to homeschool transcripts at this point for folks. I think you could ditch the 9th grade courses and keep the 10th grade ones... that's one option. So when he transferred into your homeschool, you declassified him as a matter of school policy. Alternately, your homeschool has certain requirements and he can't graduate until he meets them, which takes three more years. He has five years of credits. That's just... what he has. That's not totally unheard of - kids in school who lose credits because of medical or mental health issues or because of transfer issues. I'd definitely do a subject transcript either way. If he applies to a traditional 4 year college, you will definitely need to explain all this in your counselor letter.

Regardless of how you end up deciding to shake it out, I do find that in these situations, it helps to think of your homeschool as a school, with policies, and with rules for students. Just like any other school, you have to transfer in the outside credits, set policies for what is required for graduation, etc. So think through what those "policies" are. And why they're leading to him having to repeat/take longer.

[UmmIbrahim]

10 hours ago, nrbeckking said:

So DS15 is coming out of PS. He has completed two years but he will do three more years at home. The grade skip before middle school ended up not being in his best interest and he needs another year to catch up in math and writing and be prepared maturity wise to be on his own. Our goal this year is to really fill in the gaps in his math and writing (using Lial's and IEW for that)and then going to move forward with 11th and 12th grade. How do I create a transcript? Honestly his core grades are decent the past two years (all As and Bs) and his only poor grades from PS are his electives (he failed an art class). I mean do we need to put his PS stuff on the transcript? Pulling his lab sciences in would make my life a bit easier BUT will it look weird that he is doing high school for 5 years? Can someone please talk me through this? If he and I are confident in his math and writing he will take the entrance exam to our local community college and take some DE classes in 18 or so months so I have to figure this out for him.

We just made a similar decision with my middle son to have him "repeat" 9th grade to have some more space for maturing and working on weak areas (writing/LA stuff). I'm so excited to have another year with him, and he's excited to have more time to learn things before going off to college. He's not the kind of kid who is itching to fly the coop, so more time at home will be good (actually, my oldest son who just graduated is doing a gap year, so maybe none of my kids are itching to leave, lol! I'll take it as a compliment to our homeschool).

One thing that I think a lot of people do is carry up certain kinds of classes from 8th grade. I've seen people put foreign language study (i.e. a Spanish I course taken in 8th grade), a science (doing high school biology in 8th grade is popular in some circles), and any math classes including and beyond Algebra I (i.e. Algebra I and Geometry if those occurred in 7th and 8th grade) to a high school transcript.

For my older son, we only had math to "carry up" and I made a superscript that indicated his Algebra I and Geometry were taken prior to 9th grade. A subject-based transcript worked really well for us, because his studies were a little lopsided in some semesters because of dual enrollment coursework. One semester, he took the entire university chemistry sequence as accelerated classes at the community college. This meant that the rest of that semester was a little bit lighter with other subjects. Then, in the following semester, things were a little bit skewed in the other direction. Having a subject-based transcript was awesome, because all of those quirks were "evened out" on paper, and he really liked being able to have all of his science, math, and technology class sections at the top of his transcript to emphasize his focus.

For my son that we are "holding back," I'm planning on carrying up his Biology (which will now be considered his 8th grade year) and a ton of math (because he's very mathy and will now have Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, and Precalculus as classes taken prior to his new 9th grade year). Other than that, I'm going to just consider 4 years of high school. Since you have an outside public school transcript, things may be harder for you on paper, but hopefully you can even things out with a subject-based transcript. Good luck!

[almondbutterandjelly]

So you will call this his Sophomore year.  You will do a transcript by subject rather than by years.  For instance, you will have headings like Mathematics, and under that heading you will list his math classes, with their grades and their credits (like 1.0 for Geometry).  You will not indicate which year he completed that.  You won't even have a column for that.  You will have a heading called English, and list his English classes under that (I just did English I, English II, English III and English IV because that is typical in my state).  Etc.

[EKS]

We undid two skips (5th and 7th) to have my son enter  ps 9th with his age peers.  He had a high school geometry credit from the b&m school he attended in 8th.  We ended up homeschooling high school after the second semester of 10th grade.  On his transcript, I called the time between 8th and 9th the "gap period" and listed the courses he took in our homeschool (the were all high school level) on his transcript.  This, along with the reasons he "dropped out" of 10th grade was documented in our school profile.  

Your situation is somewhat more complicated because you decided to undo the skip after he started high school, but I would think that you could simply say in your school profile what happened and leave it at that.  

If you drop the 9th grade grades, is the GPA better or worse?  If it is better, I'd keep them.

Another idea:  My older son left a b&m school's IB Diploma Program in the middle of 11th grade to homeschool (dual enrolled at CC).  Initially, since he was young for his grade--spring birthday and a boy; the next oldest boy in his class was almost a year older--we wanted him to do an extra year.  But by the time he had finished the first year and a half at the CC, it was obvious that he needed to be done with high school.  So we graduated him, and he did a gap year.  I was relieved because I was, as you are, struggling with how to document the extra year of high school.  The gap year ended up being a great thing for him.  My point here is that you could wait and see what happens, and if he doesn't seem to need an extra year of high school by the time you get to the end, he could do a gap year instead.  

My impression, which isn't really based on much, is that colleges are more impervious to these sorts of oddities in a student's record that we think they are.  I really think that if you just tell it like it is, and if he gets good grades (backed up by test scores or dual enrollment grades) from here on out, it will be fine unless he's trying for admission to tippy top schools.

[Roadrunner]

It is my understanding that if a child has gone to public school, you need to supply their PS transcript in addition to your home transcript. It is just what it is. It's your school, your requirements. 

 

 

 

 

[katilac]

1 hour ago, Roadrunner said:

It is my understanding that if a child has gone to public school, you need to supply their PS transcript in addition to your home transcript. It is just what it is. It's your school, your requirements.

Yes, the college will want that public school transcript and it will include both years. 

5 years in high school is not a big deal. I doubt anyone asks about it, but, if they do, give the exact explanation you gave here: we reversed a grade skip that wasn't in his best interest. 

[nrbeckking]

8 hours ago, katilac said:

Yes, the college will want that public school transcript and it will include both years. 

5 years in high school is not a big deal. I doubt anyone asks about it, but, if they do, give the exact explanation you gave here: we reversed a grade skip that wasn't in his best interest. 

Every school he is looking at is just asking for his homeschool transcript. I attended three different high schools and none asked for more than my final high school transcript. Why would they ask for his PS transcript on top of his homeschool transcript? I am just curious especially since he won't test or do DE under a PS header so it won't be like those scores are reporting with a PS tag for anyone to know he went to one in the first place.

[katilac]

27 minutes ago, nrbeckking said:

Every school he is looking at is just asking for his homeschool transcript. I attended three different high schools and none asked for more than my final high school transcript. Why would they ask for his PS transcript on top of his homeschool transcript? I am just curious especially since he won't test or do DE under a PS header so it won't be like those scores are reporting with a PS tag for anyone to know he went to one in the first place.

I don't know their full reasoning, but I guess they will want his PS transcript as well because you are not the person who oversaw those courses or issued those grades. 

Details like this aren't usually in the How to Apply section on the college website; you won't see the request for all high schools attended until you fill out an application.Every college I have dealt with in the actual application process has made it very clear that every high school you have attended needs to be listed. Most of them word it similarly to the Common App: List your current or most recent high school. If you have attended any other secondary/high schools, please tell us how many. And then it has you select a name for each high school. 

Most colleges use an electronic system to request the transcripts directly from the high schools you listed, so you are not generally sending it yourself. For dual enrollment at CC or university, you generally have to request it yourself (usually still electronically) and pay a small fee. 

You said: I am just curious especially since he won't test or do DE under a PS header so it won't be like those scores are reporting with a PS tag for anyone to know he went to one in the first place. If you mean they won't know he went to PS, that's not  generally correct. You can't list  public school courses as though they were home school courses. You can include them on your h/s transcript, you just have to indicate where they were taken. 

[nrbeckking]

Most Texas public universities don't use the Common App (at least not as of 2018 when I transferred) I guess that is the difference. They don't ask for all the high schools you went to they only ask what high school you went to. They do ask for all your colleges. (I just went through this as I began college in 2017 and graduated in May) I have no experience with the Common App as I only applied to public colleges in Texas.

Edited August 16, 2020 by nrbeckking

[nrbeckking]

I meant he wouldn't take a Dual Enrollment course through a Public School nor would he sign up for the SAT through a public school etc. Sorry I was typing my question while also trying to get children off to do chores and what not and it wasn't worded well. 

[katilac]

13 hours ago, nrbeckking said:

Most Texas public universities don't use the Common App (at least not as of 2018 when I transferred) I guess that is the difference. They don't ask for all the high schools you went to they only ask what high school you went to. They do ask for all your colleges. (I just went through this as I began college in 2017 and graduated in May) I have no experience with the Common App as I only applied to public colleges in Texas.

Ah, Texas, a whole other country 😄

Many of them will still know he went to public school, they just ask in a different way. UT Austin, for example, has a requirement that home schooled applicants describe each course and give the format (in a classroom, online, correspondence). If he applies to any honors programs, they will often ask for these descriptions even if the school doesn't. 

More basically, it sounds like you plan on including at least one year of courses from the public school on his transcript, so I don't see how it's possible for them to not know he went to public school. 

[nrbeckking]

Yea a whole other country whether it is to our detriment or not......I guess we will cross the bridge of needing that transcript when we come to it. At this point I don't know how many if any of those courses we will pull up. It just depends on what we end up covering here at home. Especially as I discover more and more of what he doesn't know that he should have covered in school