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We keep records for the charter school to show what Emily is learning each month. These records can be as simple or as detailed as we want. We don’t give grades. Occasionally, Emily wants to have grades put on her papers, which we do until she loses interest in the idea. Our evaluation process is simply being aware of her strengths and weaknesses, supporting her desire and ability to learn, and giving extra attention to areas we think might need extra attention. Our goal in all this is not to intimidate or demean her, but rather to reinforce her natural desire to explore living in the world successfully.—Doug, California

Once you’ve got a good idea of your reasons for keeping records, you can decide which of the many options will best suit your needs. Most homeschoolers will use some version of traditional grades, portfolios, or narrative descriptions of their children’s work and abilities, and many will combine all three approaches to develop a system that works for them.

Traditional Grades and Transcripts

Traditional letter grades are probably the easiest form of evaluation for most of us to understand, because most of us have had vast experience with them. They work best, of course, with a traditional, structured approach to homeschooling, with clearly defined subjects and assignments, and clearly articulated goals and objectives.

Advantages

Letter grades are familiar and easy to calculate; they are especially suited to “objective” evaluations with answers that are clearly right or wrong.

Traditional letter grades most readily translate homeschooling experience into terms school officials, admissions officers, and potential employers can understand.

Drawbacks

Letter grades often convey little concrete information about how well the student actually understands and can apply the material covered.

In conventional schools, grades are often used as a gauge for comparing students’ work. Homeschool grades, however conventional they look, give little basis for comparison with other students.

I keep a log of what we do, tracking the number of days I have recorded as “school.” I grade obvious things like math papers, but I’m not overly concerned about grades at this time (third and sixth grades). Honestly, I have come to disapprove of the whole idea of grades and grade levels. As far as I am concerned, learning should happen at the child’s natural rate, not according to what some textbook says, and the next step should not be approached until the current one has been mastered. (In other words, they either know their stuff or they don’t.)—Tammy, Texas

I keep a grade book with checks to show that work has been accomplished and if a test was given, what the grade was. Grades are based on a scale and reflect the percentage of correct answers. Major projects are also graded. Those are subjective grades based on whether the child met the objectives for the project. I have also made report cards on the computer with our school name. They look very official. I have the children tested each year and put those forms in their school record folder. When we placed our daughter back in school, they were glad to have the test scores, but I felt like they thought the report cards were worthless—that parent evaluation was somehow prejudicial.

We also keep portfolios of work for the entire year. The children file their papers behind the weekly schedules in their schedule notebooks. Every nine weeks we go through them and keep the ones we think reflect improved work or excellent work.

The grade cards and grade book are really kept for extended family and officials. They provide us a means of showing educational progress in a form that they understand. The portfolios are just for us. If I were ever required to keep a portfolio for state evaluation, I would include only those papers that showed outstanding accomplishment.—Beverly, Nebraska

Portfolios

Portfolios are a common tool of what professional educators refer to as “authentic assessment.