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Why Keep Transcript Records?
It is important to keep good records of your child's homeschooled years. Transcripts are generally kept for a high school age student, though you can keep transcripts for elementary school students as well. This page is intended to outline high school transcripts for homeschoolers.

Transcripts or Portfolio?
The first thing you have to decide is is if you will keep transcript or portfolio records. Discuss this with your student. A portfolio generally consists of descriptions and examples of the student’s work and accomplishments. It also includes, programs, articles, photos, letters of recommendation. As we are are eclectic homeschoolers, we decided to keep a kind of hybrid file that contained transcript records and a portfolio like collection of samples, should we need it.We decided that this hybrid kind of file would help college admissions officers to understand the uniqueness of the student applying.

Transcripts are just one element of the student profile. It is the high level overview of the work completed in High School. The other element of the student profile is the Course names document. Read more about the Course Names document document and Student Profile here.

Transcripts
Transcripts, most likely will be required for college entrance. There is no right way or wrong to generate a transcript record, though a good rule of thumb is that transcript counts the number of hours spent or "seat time" on a subject. The idea of "seat time comes to us courtesy of the public schools and can be useful to college administrators if you are keeping transcripts in a way that is familiar and can be used to compare "apples to apples" at college admission time. One standard is the Carnegie Credit granting system which lists 120 to 150 hours of seat time on a subject. Realistically though, if you are the administrator keeping track, it really doesn't matter how many hours, as long as the subject has been mastered and you are honest and consistent in awarding credit hours.

Elements of a Transcript
Transcripts basically contain the date it was generated, the student's social security number, the name and address of the school, a tally of credit hours and descriptions of completed or in-progress courses, the student's GPA (grade point average). It also will describe how you arrived at your numbers for credit hours and GPA.

I keep yearly transcripts and a cumulative transcript.

Measuring Your Student's Work, or Standards
While my student was still enrolled in a school, one teacher had a method of measuring students using cutesy little symbols. Many of my students papers had a box-like symbol that had a face on it at the top of them. After about 5 of these papers, mind you this was first grade, I went to the teacher and asked what this thing was. I was told it was "Mr. Box" and Mr. Box meant very good work. I asked why couldn't the paper just have an A or a B, apparently that was harmful to children's self esteem.

I am very opposed to standardized testing, and I don't believe that standardized testing adequately measures student ability, but at some point, you do have to quantify the work that your student is producing. You can quantify it, or your student can quantify it, but you need some kind of idea what the caliber of work is to help determine where your student might apply to college. If your student does not feel he is doing the heavy hitting work an Ivy league may expect, perhaps he ends up looking at another kind of school. Regardless, a measuring stick of some kind we found is beneficial.It is also going to matter if you are going to generate transcripts.

In general, people seem to understand two methods for measuring. The Percentage System and Letter Grading System. Again, we use a hybrid of these two things. Places like Math where answers can be right or wrong are good places to use The Percentage System, Composition is a good place to use a Letter Grade System. If you map Letter Grades to the The Percentage System, you have a good start to calculating a GPA. (grade point average).

The Letter System
The Letter System seems to come in two flavors, the traditional :
A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-C+, C, C-
and
O- Outstanding, E - Excellent, VG - Very Good, G - Good, S - Satisfactory, N - Needs Improvement.

One way to map one to the other is
O =A+, A = E, A- =VG , B+ = G , B =S, N = C

The Percentage System
The Percentage system is based on the idea that the best you can do is 100%. To calculate a percent, you take the total number of the incorrect items and divide by the total number of items and then subtract that number from 100%.

(98%-+100%), (97%-94%), (93%-90%) (89%-86%), (85%-82%), (81%-78%) (77%-74%), (73%-70%)

Once you have a percentage you can map it to the traditional letter grade:
Letter Grades A+ (98%-+100%), A (97%-94%), A-(93%-90%) B+(89%-86%), B(85%-82%), B-(81%-78%) C+(77%-74%), C (73%-70%)

The Grade Point System
In the grade point system, all letter grades are converted to a grade equivalent based on the 4.0 system.Your grade point average may range from 0.0 to a 4.3 and is based on using the traditional letter system:


A+= 4.3, A=4.0, A-=3.67 B+=3.33, B=3.0, B-=2.67, C+=2.33, C=2.0 C-=1.67

The Grade Point System - Honors or "Weighted" Scale

Because Honors and AP classes are more difficult classes, the grades earned in Honors and AP courses at most schools are given an extra grade point. With the honors scale:

A = 5 points, B = 4 points, and C = 3 points.

Therefore, when these grade points are averaged with your regular grades, your overall GPA could be higher than 4.0 and your GPA is a "Weighted GPA".

Calculating Credit Hours and Grade Point Average
You calculate the credit hours based on the number of hours spent on a subject. A common measure for a credit hour is 120 hours on a topic. For example if your student reads Modern Literature for 1 hour 3 times a week (1 x 3 = 3 hours a week) and your school year is 40 weeks (3 x 40=120 total hours), you can grant your student 1 credit hour in English Literature, for the year.

You calculate GPA using your credit hour numbers. Typically, if you assigned a grade of "A" to a course that is 1 credit hour, that course earns 4 grade points. If you have 2 credit hour course where you assigned a grade of "A", the student earns 8 grade points. You do this for each course completed. Once you have assigned grade points to all courses, you total those points and divide by the number of credit hours to get the average or GPA.

Total Credit Hours 14
Total Grade Points 53.10
GPA 3.79

GPA = Total Grade Points / Total Credit Hours

3.79 = 53.10 / 14

See an example (PDF)

 

Sample Transcript Forms
Cumulative Example(1) Transcript (As Seen Below) [PDF]
Cumulative transcript Example(2) [PDF]
  High School Transcipt Example(3) (.xls) (This is the one I started with.
Our Transcript Forms
Our Elementary School Cumulative transcript (example - .pdf)
Our Elementary School Cumulative transcript blank (.doc)
Our High School transcript - Blank (.xls)(.pdf)

 

See all of our free downloads here.
See all of our information about homeshooling teens here.
Review our course of study and the resources we used here.

 

Place your homeschool name address, city state zip & phone on a label here

High School Transcript Graduation Year_________

Student Information

Student Name
(Last, First, Middle)

 
Address  
City, State, Zip  
Parents  
Phone  
Email  
Gender  
Date of Issue  
GPA  

PSAT (Pre-Scholastic Aptitude Test) Scores

Date Taken: Math Verbal Index
       
       
SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) Scores
Test Date Math Verbal  
     
     
     
SAT II Subject Tests
Test Date Subject Score
   
   
   
   

 

Year_______

Year_______ Year________ Year_______

Subject

Grade

Credits

Grade

Credits

Grade

Credits

Grade

Credits

Mid

Final
Mid Final
Mid Final
Mid Final
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         
                         

Totals

                       

Transcript Grading Scale

Letter Grade

Numerical Grade

GPA (4.0) Scale

A

92-100

4.0

B

83-91

3.0

C

77-82

2.0

D

70-76

1.0

F

0-69

0.0


Extra-Curricular Activities, Academic Awards, Community Service, Etc.

Date

Activity

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

This signature certifies that the information of this transcript is complete and accurate.

__________________________________________ Signature____________________Date