<p>Rising junior D1 hasn’t yet taken health or life skills, two classes that are required for graduation. Most of the students at her school take these classes during summer school, usually right before junior or senior year. Summer school was supposed to be cancelled this summer, but the school somehow managed to get dispensation to offer those classes during summer school for currently enrolled students (i.e. rising freshmen can’t enroll). If I’m reading the tea leaves correctly, that likely means this will be the last time summer school will be offered for quite some time. </p>
<p>D1 has other summer plans, so summer school this year won’t work. She’s really reluctant to give up any of her academic classes over the next couple of years to make room for health and life skills. It’s supposedly possible to take these on-line, but it’s apparently difficult for some reason. All of which makes me wonder: what if she just took the GED rather than the classes? When I look at college CDSs, it seems that anywhere she’d apply accepts either a high school diploma or a GED. She is not looking at tippy-top schools. Would using the GED have any downside in admissions? It may be that D1 finds a way to get the courses done so that she can go through graduation, but I’m curious to know if the GED route is a real option or a stupid idea on my part. </p>
<p>In my ideal world, the school district would realize that these classes are a waste of time and money, and would eliminate them as a graduation requirement as one way to help deal with upcoming state and local budget cuts. A parent can hope…</p>
<p>SlitheyTove, will your school district accept online coursework? In my state, there are similar requirements (health and physical fitness), and many kids who are too busy to take these classes take online courses from BYU.</p>
<p>BB, yes, the district will accept certain online coursework. But we’ve been told that it has to be very specific courses. People really seem to have a tough time using the online option.</p>
<p>My stepfather, who had dropped out of high school, got a GED later (after military service). He did not go to college.</p>
<p>He said that he felt that potential employers regarded the GED as an inferior credential, which sometimes counted against him when he was looking for jobs where he was competing with high school graduates.</p>
<p>I don’t think, though, that the GED versus high school diploma issue would have mattered as much if he had gone on to college. Potential employers would have been looking at his college record, not his high school record (although he still would have had to list that GED on every job application he filled out for the rest of his life).</p>
<p>For your daughter, I think a useful question to ask is whether there is any chance that she might not complete college or might interrupt her college education at some point to work for a while. If she did either of those things, she might regret going the GED route because she would be offering employers a credential often regarded as inferior. On the other hand, if she is sure that she will go through college and graduate, without interruption, perhaps the GED is OK.</p>
<p>If it were my daughter in the situation you describe, I would recommend that she take the health and life skills courses but set aside the summer between her junior and senior years to study the academic subject that she would miss because she had to do this. Perhaps she could take a closely equivalent academic course online or at a community college during that summer.</p>
<p>At least your school allows the courses to be taken outside the regular school year… in my district, health/PE/tech are REQUIRED, period. You can push them off to another year, but you can’t graduate without them and you can’t take them online or during the summer. (You can take Drivers Ed over the summer if you pay $400; most people don’t, though.)</p>
<p>I think I would make the effort to get the real diploma. If online course requirements are strict, I’d work within the rules to take the right ones. A GED is viewed as a lesser credential and may impact her options both for college admission as well as for summer employment.</p>
<p>We taught S at home K-12, and S obtained a GED before applying to colleges because we believed that it would ameliorate some of the issues public colleges and universities might have with his lack of an objective third party transcript. S applied early to his first choice school and didn’t need to apply anywhere else. </p>
<p>Neither a high school diploma nor a GED is much of a “credential”, so I wouldn’t expend energy trying to intuit which might be “better” than the other. I suspect many people who are responsible for hiring to fill jobs for which suitable employment candidates are only required to have a high school level education, are managers who rose through the ranks and who are more likely to have GEDs themselves.</p>
<p>Check the colleges she wants to go to (maybe they have forums here) and see what they’ll think. It’s probably best to just take the classes and kill one of the academic ones though.</p>
<p>When a student receives an acceptance letter from a college, it almost always has a clause that says something like: “This offer of admission is dependent on successful completion of your high school career/coursework” etc. When a student applies to a college, usually that student plans to graduate. Not completing requirements could impact her recommendations, and as I am sure other parents (and students) on here would verify, most schools systems --including the fancy private schools-- have stupid requirements. Sometimes, we have to do things we don’t want to. At my daughter’s school, they required ethics and that was a total waste of breath for most of the students: they learned nothing because they couldn’t even see that their behavior was unethical. Hmmmm. Have her take the classes and enjoy the lighter workload.</p>
<p>I think the GED is regarded as inferior and will be something she will be writing down on every job application for the rest of her life. I’d have my kid get the HS diploma. My son ended up taking a required course the last semester of his senior year. It wasn’t all bad to have an easy course.</p>
<p>Also, I’d check with the principal to see if it might be possible to get those classes waived for her. Ours has the ability to do that. He was willing to waive the above mentioned required class for my son so he could take an additional academic solid class in its place. My son’s other classes were set in stone though, so they couldn’t make it work due to scheduling.</p>
<p>Just talked to the GC. Students at the school can do the online course only from one local community college, because when they take it from that one particular school the course does not show up as on-line. On-line classes are not allowed by the district, but since this one doesn’t register as on-line on the transcript, it flies under the radar. So the BYU option is unfortunately a nonstarter. The principal will not waive the requirement; I don’t think he even has the authority to do so. </p>
<p>Since the CC is on the quarter system, she could possibly do the course over winter quarter, where there are three weeks of winter break. Or see if she can do summer school next summer. Or take it in the regular school and give up an academic class. Or consider the GED option, with all of the caveats that are associated with it. Thanks, all.</p>
<p>Quote:
Since the CC is on the quarter system, she could possibly do the course over winter quarter, where there are three weeks of winter break. </p>
<p>Just a word of caution: many schools offer far fewer courses over winter break, so before you commit to this option, make sure that this class will be offered at that time.</p>
<p>You have the right to ask for an exemption for your kids from health classes. Our kids did not take health all the way through Elementary, Middle and High schools, with the exception of one health class in HS. This is usually done on religious grounds, but we just felt we could teach it in a way that was more suited to each individual kid. This is part of state law, I believe, in our state at least. Worth looking into, although your motives are a little different from those that the exemption describes.</p>
<p>Also, there are online programs that will give a diploma, usually through some obscure private school. If you PM me, I can go into detail. We are looking into GED versus online diploma for our dancer daughter, who has finished 3 years of HS and has 4 courses to go, so it is a similar situation.</p>
<p>The advice to look at individual schools’ requirements is a good one. I did that. Also, talking with the schools is helpful. They often can tell you what the “real” scoop is. Good luck…</p>
<p>What state are you in? In CA, they offer something called the CHSPE which you can do instead of the GED, and, is legally equivalent to a high school diploma (inside CA)</p>
<p>Plus, you do not have to drop out of school to take the CHSPE, you can stay in school afterward.</p>
<p>I have no clue about how colleges will take it if you take all the regular academic classes and then graduate with a CHSPE instead…I would hope they don’t care.</p>
<p>Still, you can anonymous cold-call the schools you’re interested in and find out…</p>
<p>CHSPE is an interesting option. We are in CA, so whatever she does I’d want to make absolutely sure is acceptable to UC. Which is probably a good reason to just take the courses. Anyway, she’s said she wants to sign up for the online in fall, at least for health.</p>
<p>CoffeeAddict, Paris Hilton may have a GED, but Mortimer Adler was a high school dropout. He also never got his BA. If I’m remembering correctly, there was a swim requirement that he couldn’t pass. Yeah, my kid is no Mortimer Adler, but then again, she’s no Paris Hilton. In some communities hereabouts, the kids leave (private) school at the end of their junior year, do community college for the next year, then apply to UCs as transfers. Slick!</p>
<p>Actually a GED is not the same as a diploma. Last summer the Social Science Research Network released a paper showing that people with GEDs did little better economically than did high school dropouts. The paper attributed this to a lack of soft skills. Soft skills include attending regularly, being punctual, following the rules, getting along with other people, and completing assigned tasks.</p>
<p>“something she will be writing down on every job application for the rest of her life.”</p>
<p>?? The rest of her life? I’m a lawyer with a GED, and once I enrolled in college, I didn’t fill out a single job application that required me to write down my high school credentials. They always asked for highest level completed, and the answer was 1 year of college, 2 years of college, etc. This is a non-issue once you have a bachelor’s degree.</p>
<p>And and FYI. The military will no longer take a GED. You have to have HS diploma. My sister’s son who has really struggled in HS just wanted to “GED out” and join the military. When he went to the recruiting office last year, they said no go. He has spent the last year in our systems alternative high school (not just for “bad” kids) but alot of kids who do major sports, ie gymnastics 6 hours a day, will go here for abbreviated course work just to get a diploma in their hands. Anyway, her son has finished his work and should still be a 1st semester senior, but has graduated, with a diploma and will join the service in January.</p>
He also never got his BA. If I’m remembering correctly, there was a swim requirement that he couldn’t pass. Yeah, my kid is no Mortimer Adler, but then again, she’s no Paris Hilton.