Parent question: If we are homeschooling with (name removed) Online Academy, can we still earn college credit from different sources?

That’s a great question and the short answer is YES! But you might not like the long answer.

Homeschooling for College Credit looks for ways that you can bring college credit into your homeschool. Fun fact, even public or private school students can earn college credit. YOU determine how much /which college credit your teen earns- ALWAYS.

But, when you involve other schools or organizations into your high school process, you do give up control over what will qualify as high school credit. In your case, the (name removed) Academy has control over whether or not they’ll award high school credit for classes outside of their program.

As an example, say you’d like to sign your teen up for a college class through your local junior college. Your high school academy may or may not recognize that course as *also* being high school credit, but even if they don’t, it’s still college credit. So the actual limits here are on whether or not the class is counting twice (once for high school and once for college as is typically what we call “dual enrollment”) BUT, no matter what their high school decides, your teen can take as many college credits as you like.

Resourceful Planning Tip

If your teen’s high school program denies the college class for high school credit, you may decide not to add it to your teen’s schedule. This is reasonable, and since college classes are a lot of work, your teen might not even want to take classes that won’t count toward high school.

In this situation, my advice is to have your teen take CLEP exams that line up with their current high school schedule. For instance, if your teen is studying United States History this year, you can have her study for both of the United States History CLEP exams and possibly even the Social Sciences & History CLEP. That set (3 exams) can yield up to 12 college credits without much extra work beyond their normal high school schedule.

Credit by exam is then held in an account with The College Board for 20 years (or until your teen goes to college) and there are no age or grade restrictions for taking CLEP exams. Since CLEP exams are currently free when you obtain a waiver through Modern States, any student in any type of school can rack up HUGE amounts of college credit even if they’re enrolled in an otherwise restrictive high school program.