How to award high school credit in a homeschool: hours, textbooks and half credits

Where the 120 hours come from

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching describes a high school Carnegie Unit as "120 hours of study", from classes meeting four to five times a week for 40 to 60 minutes across a school year (Carnegie Foundation, What Is the Carnegie Unit?). It is a convention, not a homeschool law: most states do not tell homeschool families how to award credit at all. Your state's page says whether yours does.

Three ways families award credit

HSLDA, the homeschool advocacy organization, describes three methods in 3 Ways to Determine My Teen's High School Course Credit. They are its recommendations, not legal requirements:

• Textbook. A high school text designed for a full year is 1.0 credit and one designed for a semester is 0.5. HSLDA recommends the student complete at least 75 to 80 percent of the assignments.
• Logged hours. At least 150 hours for 1.0 credit in a core course (English, science, history, math or foreign language), at least 180 hours for a lab science, and 120 hours for 1.0 credit (60 for 0.5) in an elective such as art, music or physical education. More hours do not earn more credit; honors and AP courses take more time but are rewarded in the GPA, not the credit.
• College courses. A 3 to 5 credit college course taken in one term is recorded as 1.0 high school credit. The dual enrollment guide covers this, including how Ohio and Georgia write the conversion into their public-school rules.

Worked examples from real hour logs

The guitar log shows what the benchmarks leave to you: 90 hours clears the half-credit mark but not the full credit, so it goes on the transcript as 0.5 unless the student logs another 30 hours. The chemistry log is enough for a credit but not for a lab science, which matters if a college on the list asks for lab sciences by name.

Credit values differ between school systems

HSLDA notes that some public schools use unusual credit values: a one-year course is 10.0 credits in California and Nebraska, 5.0 in New Jersey, and 2.0 in Idaho and Indiana. A homeschool in one of those states can follow the local convention or the 1.0 and 0.5 system used in most states, but HSLDA's advice is to keep one system for all four years. The builder uses the 1.0 system, in steps of 0.25.

Keeping the evidence

A credit on the transcript is only as good as what stands behind it if a college asks. The course description template in the transcript PDF has a line for exactly this: "about 150 hours logged" or "completed the full text". Where your state requires records (Pennsylvania's portfolio, New York's quarterly reports), those are the records to keep; your state's page lists them with the statute.