High School Graduation Requirements

The law in many states, including Florida, does not outline the specific credit requirements for a homeschooled student to graduate from high school.   Nor does the state issue a diploma to home-educated students.  This means that you are responsible for determining which credits your student must earn before you declare them graduated and issue their diploma.  In reality, you should not worry so much about what it takes to get out of high school, but rather plan for what it will take to get into the next phase of life. High school graduation requirements are secondary to college entrance requirements if your student plans to go to college.

There are many options for the homeschooled graduate!

Florida public school students have the following requirements for graduation and our state university entrance requirements parallel these.

• 4 English (strong in composition in literature)
• 4 Math (at least Algebra 1 and Geometry)
• 3 Science (2 with labs)
  • One Biology and two equally equivalent
• 3 Social Science
  • 1 United States History
  • 1 World History
  • 0.5 United States Government
  • 0.5 Economics with Financial Literacy
• 1 Fine or Performing Arts
• 1 Physical Education (to include the integration of health)
• 8 Electives (I suggest 2 world languages)

Should a homeschooling family decide to return a student to the public school system to graduate, the student will be required to meet all of these requirements, as well as pass the Grade 10 ELA and the appropriate End of Course exams before the public school will issue a diploma.

When you begin to look at colleges, you will find that minimum requirements for admissions to many of them are similar.  You will, of course, want to check with individual colleges early to determine what their specific requirements will be, but they typically look like this:

• 4 English
• 4 Math (all Algebra 1 and higher)
• 3 Science
• 3 Social Science
• 2 Foreign Languages
• 2 or 3 additional academic credits

This will give you a general idea of classes you may wish your students to take in high school.  If you are college bound, you will want to exceed these requirements as your student will be competing with others who have also met these minimum requirements.  If, however, you want to follow a different path in order to prepare your student for a unique role in life – feel free to do just that!

~to your success!

Joanne