Homeschool Basics: Grading Homeschool Work

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Welcome to my Homeschool Basics Series! How do you grade your kids work? This really comes down to what your state homeschool requirements are. You can find this out by going to HSLDA.org,  click on your state and it will tell you if you need to keep records not.

Some states are really strict where you need to provide attendance records, and grade documentation and needing to do state testing. Some states are a little more relaxed where you don’t have to necessarily have to provide grades or attendance records. But they do have to do a portfolio evaluation at the end of the year to show that you’re actually doing something.

If you are in a state that does require a lot of documentation, the good thing is that homeschool curriculums already have some kind of grading system in place. What I mean by that is that most curriculums provide some kind of end of unit test or end of chapter test to make sure your kid is actually learning something. You can just grade that test and then log their grade in whatever it is you’re keeping records and submit it to the state when it’s time.

Now even though I live in a state that doesn’t have to provide all of that, we do do a chapter test within all of our curriculum and I do grade those. I think it is really important really more so for our children to see what a grading scale even is because when they do eventually grow up and if they decide to go to college I do want them to be familiar with the grading scale. So for us I do grade the end of chapter test and I usually do it with my kids so I don’t make it weird like I’m the teacher…I’m the boss… I’m in charge of … and I’m just showing her the grade. It’s not like that. I will sit with them and we’ll go through it together . Then I’ll put a percentage at the top so she will see what that is. Then I put the percentage where she can see where it falls on the grading scale. To me to really show mastery of a concept I feel like 90% and above is true mastery.

So in our house if my kids get between 80% and 90% on something I’m usually pretty comfortable with that although I might go back and review some things that I think they missed. Then of course that 90 to 100 range to me is showing mastery and ready to move on.