I have seen this topic debated a lot! What must you and your student do to count something as a high school credit? Let’s take a look at the most common answers.
Hours
I often see people post that a credit in a high school course requires 180 hours of work. This math is based on the assumption that a student in a public school spends one hour a day of each 180 days of school working on that subject area. While this sounds reasonable at the start, the truth is that most students in school are not spending that much time on a single class. This 180-hour assumption doesn’t include pep rallies, fire drills, half days, or substitute teachers just putting on a movie to fill the time. All of those things dramatically cut into instruction time. One more thing is that your school may not even have hour-long class periods. Currently, in my state, the average class period is just 50 minutes long. So, in our state, even if they had class on all 180 days and it wasn’t cut short, the students are only in class for 150 hours.
Focusing on only the amount of time students typically spend in class also doesn’t include how much class time is wasted in a typical class of 25 students versus a homeschooled class of 1. Part of each class period can be eaten by basic things like taking roll, waiting on everyone to get out the right book or find the right page, or handing out worksheets. All of those take a fraction of the time with a single student, and some aren’t even necessary. (Homeschoolers don’t need to ever take role.)
Even if you add back in time spent on homework, I estimate that most students are spending less than 100 hours on any given subject, and much of that time is not necessary. Much of the work in public school is either busy work, or just unnecessary in homeschooling. For example, in a classroom, a discussion on a given topic can be derailed by a confused student or take forever to get everyone involved. As a homeschooler, you can cut out all the excess and get to the heart of a lesson faster. You can read and discuss things faster, have discussions instead of tests, and know that the student is learning the material. I’ve also used various videos with my students that covered topics faster than we could cover them just by reading about them. The videos often convey more information in a more digestible format.
Text Books
Another way we are often told to count a course as completed is by finishing the textbook. This is another idea clearly thought up by people who never attended public school. In my own public education, I don’t think we ever finished a single textbook in any class. However, I got credit for those classes as though we had.
This idea is problematic for a couple of reasons, beyond the obvious. First, as I mentioned a moment ago, there are often much better ways to learn than through textbooks. Living books, movies, online courses, videos, and co-op classes are just a few of the ways homeschoolers learn information. Limiting yourself to a textbook means not doing the experiments, projects, and interesting hands-on activities you can achieve as a homeschooler. So, tying yourself too tightly to a textbook isn’t ideal. You can use them, just don’t consider finishing them as the end all be all.
The other issue I have with this method is that every single program covers different material than others, even by the same name. My mother used to teach high school Spanish. I recently showed her a program I purchased for high school Spanish 1 that I was frustrated with. She looked it over and announced that by lesson 8, this program was covering topics she didn’t teach until second-year Spanish. Ultimately, we decided to use a different program. However, it doesn’t hurt to realize that what one teacher/school/book calls Spanish 1 is not what another one does for the same course. In this case, and many others, it makes sense to do your best to judge how much effort your student has put in and how many topics they have covered.
What I Actually Do
In reality, every credit my students have earned has probably had a different number of hours spent on it, different amounts of effort, and different results. That is just part of how our education works.
In general, I do try to count a math book as a math credit. We use a program that has a reasonable number of lessons in the book, and we don’t do every workbook page.
I also give my kids credit for the classes they take at co-ops. Our co-op gives homework, but the kids only have classes for about 1-2 hours per week. Despite that, the nature of the lessons, the depth of the learning, and the experience of them deserve credit. Between the time they work on things outside of class and the time they spend there, I know the learning is often going deeper than the classes I took in school. For example, one of my kids is taking a painting class this semester. She’s worked on multiple paintings both in class and at home. She has watched videos the teacher assigned about how to do different techniques and she can discuss all kinds of new concepts she learned through this class. Yes, I do think that counts as an art class on her transcript. I have no clue how much total time she has spent, and there isn’t a textbook, but her paintings show a depth of shadow, color, and contrast that is far beyond what she knew before this class started.
My kids also get credit for courses I cobble together. An example of this is that a few years ago I put together a World History course that included various videos to watch each week, discussion topics, and hands-on projects I made up. The content of the course covered the Big Bang through the fall of Rome. It took us all year to do it, and we went more in-depth than many history classes I took in school. So, without worrying about exactly how close it is to any known course, my kid gets a credit in history.
In English, we work on writing, literature, and grammar. I often use different programs for each of those. As long as we do some from each category, and my kid is progressing, I consider it a year of Language Arts for whatever grade they happen to be in. My own choice includes that we usually study a Shakespeare play each year, some kind of poetry, a novel, and whatever else catches our attention. We work on writing better and better sentences, paragraphs, and eventually essays. Yes, I said eventually. So far, none of my kids have written a real essay in 9th grade, or even 10th. We spend time laying the foundation, but my goal is to write essays by graduation, not excessively in advance of that. And yes, to remind everyone, my oldest did get an A in freshman English at college, so this method worked out.
Don’t be Stressed
It can be very easy to get super stressed out about what can and can’t be considered a credit in high school. My advice is to worry less. If your kid did enough for you to call it a class, then count it as a credit on their transcript. Give them credit for what they did.
For most purposes, a high school transcript is the first step to getting their foot in the door at a college, trade school, or job. Once they are there, it is on them to do the work to succeed. Don’t withhold credit for their work in high school because you aren’t sure they did enough. Let them walk into the next phase with the paperwork to move forward, showing off all they have learned. They probably know far more than you realize!
About the Author
Laura Sowdon, OTR/L is an occupational therapist, writer, speaker, educator, and creator of the Five Senses Literature Lessons homeschool curriculum. She has worked as an occupational therapist with children in public and private schools, as well as private practice. Laura has taught and managed homeschool co-ops as well as homeschooling her own three children. Laura is dedicated to the idea of educating children at a pace that aligns with brain and physical development milestones and respects neurodiversity in all its forms.
