No. We have been unable to find an accreditation board that can certify whether or not the adult accomplishments that we coach our students into meet the high school standards for these accomplishments.
The simplest answer to this question is that there are no accredited home schools out there.
Accreditation does not come from the textbook used. It comes from the school who is teaching it.
Accreditation is a painful process, ranging from 2 to 4 weeks, where the accreditation agency inspects everything from facilities and certification of your teachers, to the textbooks used and the pedagogy in your classrooms.
Accreditation boards will not even talk to a school about conducting this inspection until they have been up and running for at least 3 years.
Accreditation is designed to standardize the outcomes so that the next level can make an informed decision about the merits of various candidates for a given activity.
For high schools, accreditation is so that colleges can make an informed decision as to whether or not they are admitting a hero or a zero.
But an excellent textbook can be taught poorly (or not at all) in the classroom, while a sub-standard textbook can be taught well with excellent student engagement and supplemental materials. This is why accreditation agencies insist on evaluating the individual schools that are teaching the material – not primarily the material itself.
That’s the simplest answer.
The more direct answer is that what we are offering is enrichment curriculum for your homeschool.
You have courses on your child’s transcript that were taught by you, assessed by you, and, for many of you, developed by you. The reality is that, if you can show that the student learned what the colleges are expecting them to have learned from your course, they will accept the grade that you have given them.
You are responsible for your child’s transcript.
This means that you have the ability and the responsibility to determine what your child has actually accomplished in that course. We have some suggestions and assistance that we provide to help with transcripts, but the only people for whom we provide official transcripts are our “All In” graduates at the Silver Level or higher. Please see “What about college?” for a more detailed description as to why we are confident that our transcript will hold up with colleges.
So, no. We are not accredited, but, in fairness, any accreditation board would have a hard time telling whether my high school novel writing course met the state standards for high school novel writing courses. You get the point.