Feb 19 2008
What About Home School Report Cards?
It is a big step when you decide to pull your child out of public or private school and home school them. They no longer have that all day interaction with other children their age that is so important to the successful social development of the child.
Social Experiences
The experiences of going to school are lost and the memories that most other children will have of their school days will not be shared by your child. The thrill of playing team sports for their school will be gone. The excitement of the school dance and even the prom will be something your child may never experience as a home school student. So when you weigh the losses with the gains it makes home schooling a very serious decision that each parent must weigh very carefully. But one thing that seems lost in all of this is one staple of the public and private school experience. What about report cards?
It raises the question of whether or not home school children get home school report cards. It is a complicated question because if you are rewarded or punished by your parents based on your report card, and your parents are the ones home schooling you, then is it fair to have the parents give out the home school report cards? Of course we all know that any child looking to enter college needs a high school transcript and a transcript is just a summary of your report cards so do home school students get a summary of their home school report cards in the form of a home school high school transcript? The short answer is yes.
Break It Down and Keep It Real
A report card is nothing more than a progress report on how a child is doing with their state mandated school studies. Those state mandated studies are the same in traditional school as they are in home school. Progress reports on home school students need to be submitted to many states and many states also have mandatory testing for home school students. So that is where home school report cards come in.
A home school report cards is simply a summary of the student’s progress each marking period. If state law mandates then it is submitted to the state. If it is not required then there still should be home school report cards because making a high school transcript without report cards for periodic progress reports is almost impossible.
Home school students do get to avoid many of the pitfalls of traditional schooling but they do not escape report cards. Any home school report cards are necessary to keep track of the student’s progress and create a transcript for that student so that they may move on to college. There is just that nagging question of whether it is fair or not that the parents that judge children based on their report cards should also be the ones making the report cards.
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