Jayne,
Yes, I'm becoming more and more familiar with this phenomenon. It is bureaucratic, not serving the students, and extremely frustrating--my state is as horrible as yours for allowing advanced study or credits. There are a couple things I've come to realize: many colleges do not require high school diplomas! I think they would prefer non-diploma than GED, so be careful (don't go get that GED quite yet). Even 25 yrs ago (my husband did this) one could apply to colleges early if they had good recommendations and showed that they had "outgrown" their high school...in other words, cannot be challenged. Wes Beach (I think that's his name) from your old state, California, has written articles, maybe a book on writing your own transcript, for homeschoolers or for independent schoolers (kids who have taken courses here or there, university or high school, online, even self-taught, working experiences, volunteering, travel, etc.) I'm coming to realize that in backwards states, we really have 2 choices: either do our own thing and not worry about diploma, or let kid waste time, repeat some stuff they know, and have that "normal high school experience". Your son sounds Very Gifted. It may just be impossible for him to do the "normal" route, and you'll have to "homeschool" (meaning, continued university classes, and fill in others from other sources)--side note: you're very lucky that he is so self motivated and self directed and has advanced so far on his own to date. I think the hardest battle is the Calc at college vs. AP Calc--difficult for a district to rationalize letting him take a college course when they offer what they consider to be the equivalent. I've just discovered that my state has initiated eLearning through the state Education Department (districts have to authorize, but they are clearly eligible for High school credit...the key is getting district to authorize!) Among these eLearning courses are 19 AP courses. They're only $200/so it's way cheaper than teacher salaries and ultimately could phase out a lot of teachers, offer rural area students great variety of opportunities, but clearly teachers unions are unhappy.
Lastly, over half the states have a Virtual Charter School (free) which generally offer more flexibility. (My state is not one). Gaining in popularity are the international cyberschools like K12 or Stanford Online High School. It just depends how important the diploma is...some colleges DO require it, so he might want to think where he wants to go to school before he goes off-grid.
We're trying to figure this out ourselves, so I really shouldn't be giving advice--though I will say that all of the zillions of hours of meetings with school district admin, counselors, etc. last year were a WASTE OF TIME for me. And very depressing. Good luck.
