there are right and wrong answers. and there are subjective and objective criteria.

>Do you grade your kids work? Is there any meaning or
>relevance to home school grades?

we grade. same as in traditional school. answer is right or wrong.

now, we have leeway in that we can let the kids retest if they bomb a test or do something stupid. that's an individual call.

the integrity of the grades are up to the integrity of the parents/teachers. some ppl cheat on taxes. *shrug*.

how do colleges deal with this? in general, admissions offices look to see if students' GPAs are in line with their standardized test scores. if your kid has a 3.9 GPA but scores a 900 combined math and reading on the SAT, they probably using mad grains of salt in interpreting their GPA.

so there are checks and balances.

because my son is heavy in the bball circuit, i know kids from AAU from public and private schools that are dumb as a box of rocks and, in both situations, who have been given grades or had them inflated.

we were just talking about two kids who transferred schools mid season, and it was because they went to bball powerhouses, but were failing out. so they went back to schools where they don't do anything but play ball.

a kid who 'graduated' w/ my daughter and was a highly ranked D1 football recruit had to go to prep school for two years and then 2 yrs of JUCO to be eligible to get in the side door of a major university. (he's a really nice guy. he just was lacking academically from waaay back and it was too much for him to qualify coming out of high school).



>Like when applying to colleges, I had to send in my high
>school transcript that had my courses taken, grades, and class
>rank.
>Is there anything similar to that for home schoolers.
>Basically, how do colleges evaluate them along side
>traditional students?

we use a planner that is online and allows us to keep track of our books, grades, attendance, standardized test scores, and all that stuff. and one of the things it does is print report cards and running transcripts.

when it was time for us to do college applications we used that and that was more than sufficient. only thing that was N/A on the college apps was class rank.

but SATs, GPA, extracurriculars, and all of that were on there. and homeschooling is mainstream enough that several schools have provision for homeschooled (under 'which school did you attend?') on their online applications.

the research on homeschoolers is that they tend to be above average academically and have experience in being self-directed learners, and therefore tend to transition well into school.

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

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I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad