Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments EPGY not accredited

I thought I should post this factoid so that no one else gets burned by it.

DS13 took an EPGY English course last year. It was expensive and a ton of work. This year he's enrolled at an independent study high school in our district (which is fantastic). Unfortunately, it turns out that EPGY isn't accredited and public schools can't give credit for their courses. This "we're not accredited" information came straight from EPGY. DS had (luckily) taken 3 English courses last year and has fulfilled his English requirement, but is behind on overall credits.

So beware of this fact if your child is a homeschooler who may transfer back into the public system. Stanford seems to be somehow folding EPGY into its online high school, so this situation may change. There are no guarantees though, and I've found them to be somewhat disorganized up there. So if your child will need credit for online English and you're considering EPGY, you should check with Stanford to see about EPGY's accreditation status.

It's possible (highly likely) that other EPGY courses are also not accredited.

IMPORTANT: this is confusing, but EPGY and the Online High School are two different entities run out of the same offices at Stanford.

Similarly, the school couldn't give him credit for Algebra II because I taught it to him and I'm not accredited. Private universities may accept it on a transcript, but public ones probably won't.

Interestingly enough, the school was happy to plop him into precalculus. They just can't give credits for the algebra course.

This is 25+ years ago, so the rules may well have changed. But I took everything between algebra and calculus at an unaccredited summer program. I was able to get credit for all of them in high school by doing "independent study" for each course, which meant doing all the end-of-chapter homework and tests. I didn't actually get around to doing many of these until after the AP test was over in Calculus AB, but then I was knocking out 2-3 quizzes a day and turning in all the related homework. (My calculus teacher was kind enough to agree to accept and grade all of this for me.) I have credit for 4 years of math in my freshman year of high school because of this.

I was also in California at the time.

public schools can't give credit for their courses


Correctomundo. That's what we found re: Connections, as well. This is why we ultimately opted to have DD take the school's version of this course, though I seriously doubt that the quality of the curriculum is as high. In the bonus round, the course through the high school also qualified for dual enrollment as MTH 111-112, which is the College Algebra coursework that serves as a prerequisite for introductory college calculus sequences.

Another interesting tidbit from a bit up the way on I-5, here, is that no credits = no high school diploma, at least in some very specific areas, and those algebra credits would be among them. Kids must-- SPECIFICALLY-- have credits on the transcript for "algebra" and for "geometry," as well as at least one other math course beyond algebra I.


Ironic, isn't it? Especially when you stop to consider that Val's DS and my DD essentially had the same Algebra II experiences as homeschooled students-- the difference is in the formal enrollment in my DD's case in something with titular "accreditation" no matter how pragmatically lacking.

I have researched this in my county in FL. The pupil progression plan in my county says if you return from homeschooling and want credit for your homeschool class say 9th grade English...you are placed in 10th grade English and progress is monitored for first nine weeks. If you fail the first 9 weeks your credit for 9th is revoked and you get a schedule change back to 9th grade. Not sure about the specific requirement for algebra...they could require you to take the eoc test (they have many opportunities for retakes for those who didn't pass the first time). If you didn't pass require you to retake the class.

I guess if you have an extremely accelerated math student that you are homeschooling it might be to your advantage to ask to take the EOC test through the school at the end of taking the class just in case you ever re-enter public school.