I said I would write more this week about credits, transcripts and records. Let me write more about credits today. I shared before that basically, when your child does a class all school year, that’s one credit. A one semester class would be a half credit.
But your child doesn’t have to take a class to get a credit. You could issue credit for their time in a community drama club. You can take a wide variety of things and find the value of it and turn it into credit. You could list home economics on the transcript and give your child credit for cleaning, cooking and babysitting.
There is no one rule for what counts as a credit. Here is a list I found of Pennsylvania’s guidelines. To count as a completed high school course (one credit) a student can do ANY of the following: complete two-thirds of a textbook, have 120 daily logged entries, have 120 hours of logged study, complete a 10 page research paper, complete a college course, or pass an AP exam. These are good guidelines, except I don’t think you need to “log” your children’s every move unless you’re required to.
An Easy Peasy course meets the “120 daily logged entries” requirement. Let’s look at the time guideline. One credit is 120+ hours in a year. A half credit would be 60-90 hours in a year. Think about how much time your child spends making video games on the computer, writing a blog or a novel, taking photographs, etc. If there is something your child loves to do, chances are this time requirement is easily met. You can turn any of these types of things into a course listed on a transcript as long as they put enough time into it. I’ll plan on writing about transcripts tomorrow and how to put a grade on “courses” like these.