Written by Martha Freitag
This
has been an interesting week in the PHEA office . . . one where someone is
asking the question, “Why does it matter?” while someone else is experiencing
the pain of finding out the hard way that it really did matter. What is ‘it’ you ask? RECORDS.
Records and more specifically turning them in to PHEA.
This
week we have had two families wanting to register with us. They have high school students – seniors
actually which makes the issue even more critical. Neither wants to turn in grades to us, so they
are asking, “Why does it matter?”
So here is the answer to
why it matters. First, we all know that
the home schooling law in South Carolina requires us to do semi-annual progress
reports. By the time your student is in
middle school, these reports should be in the form of numerical grades. (The exception to this is with our special
needs students.) This means you do have
the records, so the real question is, “Why do we have to send them in?”
Most of you know this is
a fairly new policy for PHEA so let me explain how it came about. All home school associations are accountable
to the State Department of Education.
When they make a law or give the authority to another entity to make the
rules, we have to abide by the laws and rules.
These laws and rules (especially the rules) are subject to change. When they change, we have to change as well.
One of the laws is that
we must use the South Carolina Uniform Grading Policy (SC UGP). We began helping parents with transcripts as
the SC UGP can be confusing to work with.
Around that same time, the Commission on Higher Education (CHE) changed
the rules of how to apply for the Palmetto Fellows Scholarship. Originally home schoolers could apply
directly to the CHE for the scholarship.
There were so many issues with the GPAs and transcripts that the CHE
made a rule that home schoolers could only apply through their associations and
just like that we had to change. In
order to apply for the scholarship, the associations had to provide a class
ranking. As leadership at the CHE has
changed, so too has the interpretation of the rules that are in place governing
this scholarship. It has gone from 1)
telling the top seniors and just providing the names and school districts of
the rest of the seniors (no addresses or other identifying information) to 2)
doing a GPA for all seniors to 3) doing a class ranking for sophomores, juniors
and seniors (because students can qualify in each of those years) to 4)
providing a document to the CHE stating our policies on who and how we do the
class ranking. We have to abide by this
if we want to be able to nominate students for these scholarships. So a large part of why it matters is because
PHEA has to follow the law and the rules.
When a family does not follow our policies, they actually put the entire
association and all its members in jeopardy.
The State Department could revoke our status as a legal association.
There is however another
reason, much closer to home for why it matters.
As home school parents, we pour our heart and soul into preparing our
children for the life ahead of them. We
would not intentionally do something that would make their future more
difficult, but sometimes we are too short sighted and do not follow through
with paper work. I have had countless
parents tell me, “My senior is not planning to go to college, so we don’t need
to do a transcript.” This brings us to
the family who learned the hard way why it matters. Every year we receive requests for older
records, sometimes from the parents, sometimes for the students
themselves. It may be that there was a
fire or flood that destroyed the records or it may be as simple as the parent
not keeping the records once the student has left home. This week we had a young lady ask for copies
of her transcript and diploma. When we
went to the file, we had nothing for her.
We checked the family’s file and they were not registered with us during
her senior year, though they were registered both before and after that. We have no record that the family home
schooled or that the girl graduated. Our
hands are tied – we are unable to help her because her parents did not follow
through with the paper work. And here is
the really rough part, the girl graduated in 2004! Now, ten years later she needs her records
and there are none.
None of us knows what the
future holds. We may have a student that
we know for sure will not be going on to college when they graduate. We do not know however if in the course of
their lives, they will decide they do want to go on. If they do, they will need access to those
records. It is not only for college
either, that they need the records. More
places are requiring a copy of the high school diploma for employment. Also this week, we had a mom call us asking
if she could come pick up the diploma she had just ordered rather than waiting
for it to come in the mail. Her daughter
graduated in December and was already working.
There was a new law passed that people employed in this field must have
a copy of their diplomas in their work files.
If she did not bring it by the next day, she was going to be fired. We have had graduates contact us to get their
records to: to go on to college, to work in their chosen field, and to join the
military, even to become a New York City fireman (after 9/11). This young man
had graduated from college but the NYC FPD rules required the high school
diploma. Since none of us can tell our
children’s futures, we need to do everything we can to make sure they can
pursue whatever dream God leads them to.
So next time you sit down to fill out those horrible class ranking
forms, do it lovingly, knowing you are making sure your child will have access
to their records even if it is ten years from now. It matters!
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