I have overheard sales people at these booths using potentially misleading phrases such as “equivalent to a high school diploma” (hint: if it’s equivalent to something, it’s not actually that thing). But perhaps the most confusing word for parents out in the alternative high school diploma industry is accredited.

YOU MAY NOT NEED ACCREDITATION, BUT WHEN YOU NEED IT, YOU REALLY NEED IT
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe everyone needs an accredited program to get them through their high school years. I don’t believe that an accredited program is, based on that fact alone, automatically superior to one that is not accredited. If I were homeschooling high school aged children right now, I personally wouldn’t choose to use an accredited program unless I was educating under constraints that made its use necessary. (Stay tuned for a later post on that!)  Remember that you might not even need a high school diploma at all, even if you want to go to university.

But, if you’re asking whether or not a program is accredited, that probably means you have come to the conclusion that your child needs or wants the benefits of accreditation. And if so, then you need to ask, “Accredited by whom?” or you may as well not ask at all.

HANG OUT A SHINGLE, AND YOU’RE A CERTIFICATION BOARD
I’m bringing up this topic again because of an article I read this morning in the Boston Herald regarding U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul’s claim to be a board certified doctor. It turns out that Paul is indeed certified . . . by a medical organization that he himself founded and currently heads. The Boston Herald article explains:

Paul, a Republican from Bowling Green and an opthamologist, says he’s certified by the National Board of Opthamology. But, Lori Boukas, a spokeswoman for the American Board of Medical Specialties, said the organization considers certifications valid only if they are done by the two dozen groups that have its approval and that of the AMA. The American Board of Opthamology said Paul hasn’t been certified since Dec. 31, 2005.

From what I gather from this article, the American Medical Association considers certifications issued by the American Board of Opthamology to be valid, but not those issued by the National Board of Opthamology, the latter being an organization that Paul created himself because he took issue with the certification practices of the former.

I’m not implying that there’s necessarily anything shady about forming your own accrediting body, but you can see how it creates confusion. If you were a budding opthamologist, then you would really need to know that the American and National Boards are two different entities, viewed differently by the American Medical Association and probably, therefore, by future employers. While both boards can offer you certification, those certifications are not equally accepted in the medical profession. Presumably there’s a professional organization to advise doctors and medical students. But surely the average patient would be clueless about these certification issues. (“Oh, you are certified by the National Board of Opthamology?  Sorry, my insurance only covers visits to an American Board of Opthamology certified doctor.”)

QUESTIONING (PRESUMED) AUTHORITIES
We see shades of this outside the world of certification. “Super Objective Scientific Plastics Research Organization” (whose website you may visit while researching toxins in plastics) is nothing more than “Petroleum Giant Inc.”‘s PR department with carefully selected pro-plastic information. The “Stop Bill C-crackdown-on-natural-medicine” website is funded by “The Acai Berry Scammers of Canada” … who may in turn be simply a crafty department of “Big Pharma Monopoly Inc.” who have the resources to pull off the best double scam in history: reap the profits from selling supplements advertised as natural (but that don’t actually work) and then expose said natural medicine scams to create laws that make it impossible to sell herbal remedies, leaving pharmaceuticals as the only option.

(As you can see, my years of asking, “Who is really behind this?” have sharpened my creative skills!)

DO YOU KNOW WHO’S ACCREDITING YOUR CHILDREN?
Most of us are aware of the need to question who is behind the sites we visit online and how objective or reliable its contents are. But, when it comes to certification and accreditation, we can really be fooled by authoritative sounding organizations and institutions. We still tend to think that it means something if a person or program is certified or accredited. It may, or it may not.

ACCREDITED HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMAS IN CANADA
Fortunately (for simplicity’s sake), in Canada there really is only one accrediting body for high school credits: the provincial Ministry of Education. If you are inquiring about earning Canadian high school credits and want to ensure they are the official credits that count towards an official high school diploma, the answer you want to hear is that the program is accredited by the Ministry of Education. You want to hear that the program offers a ministry- or government-accredited high school diploma, not an equivalent diploma. There is only one “high school diploma” in each province, whether earned through correspondance, through a private school, at an alternative education centre, through a combination of night and/or summer school classes or at a regular public school – it’s the government-sanctioned, provincial diploma issued by the Ministry of Education.

ACCREDITED HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMAS IN THE UNITED STATES
In the US, however, there are a handful of organizations with super-serious, boring names that do accredit US high schools on behalf of the US government. Not surprisingly, there are also a few organizations with super-serious, boring names that offer accreditation to schools and programs who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for accreditation through the government-recognized organizations. So, if you’re considering a US-based program that claims to be certified, you have a little more work to do to figure out which body certifies the program and then whether that body is one of the government-recognized ones.

RECOGNITION OF HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMAS BY CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES
Canadian universities only recognize high school diplomas from the US that the US government would have recognized themselves. Students with a differently-accredited US diploma can not apply as regular high school students. They can, of course, apply for alternative admission (for example, as homeschoolers) and their diplomas can be considered in the admission process. But, Canadian universities can only accept a US government-recognized high school diploma to satisfy the “has a high school diploma” requirement. If you have one of the “other” diplomas, you do not, in the Canadian university’s eyes, have a “high school diploma” and you can’t apply as if you do.  So, that accredited diploma you earn may not come with the door-opening credentials you expect because of the organization offering the accreditation.

CONCLUSION
Not everyone needs accreditation for their high school level studies.  But if you do in fact need a government high school diploma, then you need to find out who is accrediting the program and confirm that the diploma is government-recognized.

Related Posts:
High School Credit Courses
Do I Need a High School Diploma?
7 Ways To Get Into University Without A High School Diploma
Homeschool Diplomas – Fact vs. Fiction

Many Canadians don’t realize the extent to which our university tuition is subsidized by the government.  If you’ll allow me to grossly oversimplify for the sake of expediency, pretend that university tuition in Canada really costs the same as university tuition in the US, but that our government pays difference in the “sticker price.”  So, a private university, which would not receive this government subsidy would need to charge a significantly higher tuition, thereby pricing this private education out of the reach of the average Canadian student.  It’s an easy argument to say that only the wealthy will be able to afford this kind of education for their children, so therefore these private schools will create a two-tiered education system wherein the wealthy receive the “better” education.   So, we don’t dislike private universities so much because we dislike their offerings.  We dislike them because not everyone can afford to attend them.

As an advocate of choice, I don’t have a knee-jerk fear of private universities.  Redeemer University is a good example of a private university providing students with more choice: a fair compromise that allows a Christian university to offer degrees while not funding a religious mandate with secular tax dollars.

Quest University is a different kettle of fish.  As a secular institution offering a liberal arts education which wouldn’t automatically disqualify it from public funding, but its unique common curriculum and block scheduling are just some of the features that make it a very different kind of university.  So, do we need it and schools like it?  

In an age where all the information you need for an undergraduate education and more is available freely on the internet, I don’t think our public universities are the gatekeepers of higher education that they once were.   If students wish to access facts and ideas privately instead of through a public institution, and can satisfy the province’s accreditation requirements, then I don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to earn a degree for the same calibre of work. 

That being said, to protect our current public system, I’d probably want a private university to be providing something that a public university can’t or won’t: a religious curriculum, alternative program offerings, unique delivery methods, optional attendance etc. Our public institutions already allow students to choose from a variety of sizes, programs and locations.  There are even established, credible distance and independent study programs. Most students should be able to find an existing undergraduate program at a school that works for them.  But, far be it from me to put up obstacles to innovation and experimentation.  

If you just want to imitate what our schools already offer, then no thanks.  But I say, if you want to try something different on your own dime, then why not diversify the educational landscape in Canada?  

Another idea that comes to mind, but that I haven’t fully thought through yet:  do you “suffer” when you drive a $30,000 car simply because some companies produce $100,000 cars?  Are you suddenly driving a second-class car, or are you just suffering from envy created by a slick marketing team?  Assuming both cars are in decent, working order and assuming that you’re a competent driver, don’t you arrive at your final destination no matter which car you’re driving?  Someone else may choose to over pay to ride in a little more comfort and style, but if you have a full tank of gas, a good map and a healthy supply of tunes, there’s no reason why someone else’s choice should stop you from having a great road trip. 

Read the Macleans articles here:

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2008/12/13/public-vs-private-universities-in-canada/

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2008/12/18/the-private-university-debate/

So, if transcripts are not meant to demonstrate mastery, but only one’s proportional lack thereof, how is a homeschooler to use a transcript? Is one necessary at all?

UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE – WHO THE IS TRANSCRIPT REALLY FOR?

Of course, the exercise of preparing transcripts is not so much for the child; it’s for some third party who will use the transcript to make assessments or evaluations of your child.

Making a transcript is simply an exercise in comparing what your child has done to provincial standards. Or in other words, which courses and grades do I reasonably expect my child, in his or her current academic state, would have walked away with had s/he studied and been evaluated according to the provincial curriculum expectations? Of course, the only reason to do this in the first place is if someone somewhere is going to ask how your child would have done in this situation, and only if you feel it’s important to tell them!

In many cases, transcripts for homeschoolers are not meaningful in and of themselves because the child didn’t follow the provincial school curriculum (including provincially-mandated forms of assessment and evalutation) and therefore the transcript may bear little resemblance to what the child actually did.

YOU DO NOT THINK LIKE THE ONTARIO GOVERNMENT

Even if your child had a traditional textbook-based high school homeschooling experience, the Ontario transcript is still only a poor approximation of your child’s educational achievement. For one thing, and I can’t stress this enough, the Ontario curriculum not only mandates curriculum (what is taught) but also pedagogy (how this material is taught) and gives very specific assessment criteria.

For example, the use of graphing calculators is mandated in Ontario Grade 9 math. Ontario courses also have requirements that 30 – 40% of your final grade is determined at the end of the year by some cummulative project, assignment or examination. If your “grade 9″ homeschooling math curriculum did not include specific functions on the graphing calculator, or if your method of calculating a final average did not give the requisite weight to a massive activity at the end of the course, then already the percentage grade you may have diligently calculated based on textbook work, reviews and tests doesn’t mean the same thing as a percentage grade on an Ontario transcript.

Given the above directives of the Ontario curriculum (including content, pedagogy, assessment and evaluation), it’s extremely unlikely that *any* homeschooler not actually enrolled in an Ontario credit course can actually be said to be following the Ontario curriculum. This doesn’t just apply to unschoolers, but also to those who are following what is in fact (ironically?) a more traditional program of study than that offered by our public school system.

SO WHY BOTHER WITH A TRANSCRIPT?

It’s easy to justify that any attempt at putting together a transcript resembling the provincial one is an exercise in futility: we could do it, but it wouldn’t really mean anything! Given that many people homeschool precisely to avoid the all-too-common meaningless activities in education, one could conclude that there’s no point in preparing a transcript. And therefore, one could get pretty ticked off about being asked to provide one to the universities when applying for admission.

But, how does our perspective change if we think of the transcript as an olive branch extended to a university admissions committee, as our attempt to help them do their job of ranking and comparing (not assessing and evaluating) applicants? (That was my metaphor. Joe put it a little more harshly: What if we don’t want to appear like a boorish tourist who is indignant that, while visiting a foreign country, no one speaks our language?)

EXCUSEZ-MOI?

I think of generating a transcript as an exercise in translation. It’s an imperfect translation to be sure, since each “language” lacks the words to represent certain key concepts in the other language. But, it’s an attempt to approximate ideas, and to facilitate communication.

Language is culture-based, and sometimes our difficulties speaking and understanding foreign languages are based on this lack of shared cultural experience. So, a transcript can seem all the more difficult to generate because not only are the cultural notions unfamiliar (credits, grades, instructional hours) but they may also be in direct opposition to the values of our own culture.

From an Ontario university standpoint, the good news is that these strange, exotic creatures (university admissions officers) are for the most part willing to deal with those for whom transcript-speak is a second language, and are tolerant of imperfect translations as long as a reasonable attempt at communication is made.

Not all Ontario universities require you to submit a transcript, and those that do are really only interested in documentation that would relate to a typical accredited school experience. The key to effectively translating your experience into transcript speak is understanding their cultural notions.

WHAT TIME IS IT. YOU MEAN NOW?

One noteworthy example is the concept of “instructional time.” The Ontario transcript, and Ontario universities measure academic study directly in hours, and only indirectly in topics of study. This can seem very foreign when your curriculum plan is based firstly on achieving certain outcomes or covering certain material and the amount of time it takes to do this is only a secondary concern, if it is a concern at all.

For example, your child may have self-studied the equivalent of Grade 12 Calculus over a period of 3 years or zipped through it all in six weeks, but the university doesn’t really care how long it took. The proper way to record this on a transcript for them is to say that the length of study was 110 hrs, one semester, or one school year. This is because the university simply wants to know what, in relation to the provincial curriculum, was accomplished.

The provincial curriculum sets aside 110 hrs (or one semester, or one year) of time for this course and the material covered within it. To claim that you studied “six weeks” of calculus is like telling the university that you studied “a chapter or two.” Similarly, to claim three years of study is akin to saying you’re ready to jump into Topology at the university level. It’s not “lying” to say that you studied 110 hrs when it reality it didn’t take that long or more likely, when you didn’t bother to log the number of hours; it’s effectively translating into transcript-speak.

“ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US”

If the goal is effective communication in this non-native language, then the first thing we have to do is understand that direct, literal translation only gets us so far. It doesn’t take very long at all in studying French to realize that “I have eight years,” and “Today, it makes nice,” are in fact the proper ways to communicate to a French speaker that you’re eight years old and it’s a nice day out. It’s no stretch to realize that the translation for “instructional hour” (a concept not used in homeschooling, and different from a 60-minute hour) is going to sound even weirder to non-native transcript speakers.

Your homeschool transcript, should you use to create one, is going to be more about them than you. Your goal is to look through the Ontario curriculum and decide which courses (based on content) and grades (based on mastery) reasonably approximate the studying your child did throughout high school. It won’t be accurate, and it might sound incomprehensible spoken in our own, native educational language. But it’s all simply an exercise in communication, and it is one of the tasks we sign up for when we choose to assume the role normally taken by the school in our children’s education.

For reference:  Ontario Student Transcript Manual, 2007

I came home to a small backlog of local newspapers, and have just finished writing a letter to the editor I thought I’d share with you.

The “offending” article concerned a local school who had discovered, a few days into hiring a new replacement teacher over the semester break, that the teacher had given a false certification number and was not in fact registered as a certified teacher.

Fine. I understand laws, regulations and such. And, contrary to most people’s opinions, I’m actually a pretty big stickler for them. (I simply believe in having as few as possible.)

But, the principal’s statement to the paper really irked me:

“So, it was kind of comical, but it’s serious all at the same time, because this person was in no way, shape or form, any kind of a teacher.”

I was going to add emphasis, but I don’t think my readership requires me to point out why I’m so disturbed.

Not that I expect this to be published in my local little paper, since I’m sure it’s not a community hot button issue, but this is what I was compelled to write:

re: Uncertified teacher discovered working at Ebb and Flow School

While I appreciate the unfortunate situation Principal Paul Monchka found himself in when he realized he’d hired a teacher under false pretenses, his statement, “. . . this person was in no way shape or form any kind of a teacher, ” clearly displays one of the serious flaws of our education system.

I suspect the tutors, piano teachers and driving instructors of this country (just to name a few) might take issue with that statement, not to mention the homeschooling community.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fraudulent to claim certifications you clearly don’t have. Unfortunately, our school systems fail to recognize that our community has many “teachers” and reinforces the misguided notion that failing schools are the only sources of a meaningful education. We view “drop outs” as problems, instead of recognizing that some students simply need a different environment in which to thrive and develop their potential.

It is worth noting that in Ontario, teachers need not be certified in order to teach in private schools. This allows alternative options to flourish and attempts to meet a wider set of student needs.

Before moving to Dauphin this summer, I had 18 years of experience as mostly a high school/university math tutor (and owner of a successful tutoring business) in Toronto, but also as the co-founder/director of a private high school, as a guidance counselor and as a classroom teacher. I have no certification, but if you ask the thousands of students and families whose lives I touched, I’m pretty sure they will say I am in SOME “way shape or form” a “kind of a teacher.”

Apparently 4 and 5 year olds need more institutionalized time, but medical students can get away with less.

Reported in the National Post, Medical schools consider shorter training by Pauline Tam, Canwest News Service, Published: Sunday, November 18, 2007:

Under pressure to produce doctors more quickly, Canada’s medical schools are weighing the merits of allowing students without undergraduate degrees to enroll in physician training.

The schools are also considering shortening the time it takes to train doctors.

If nothing else, it makes for an interesting juxtaposition with the Ontario government’s plan for full-day kindergarten. But, the consequences of this change could be quite spectacular.

Arguments against schooling and credentialism, specifically against post-secondary level studies (university, college etc.) generally come with the disclaimer, “Of course, if you want to be a doctor, you need to jump through all the hoops.”

As much as society may now be accepting of the drop-outs-turned-successes or the life-long self-educated, the medical profession is the one that you just can’t mess with. They’re doctors after all! We need them to be up to their necks in degrees, certifications, and credentials.

If we are willing to rethink how we educate/train/credential doctors, then all bets are off — no profession is too sacred to touch!

And that’s good news for homeschoolers, who may expect to eventually benefit from a trickle-down effect: if the medical profession is taking a more needs-based approach to admission, surely other fields who need or value competent practitioners can feel comfortable relaxing arbitrary standards, too.

It just got pretty darn exciting in the world of credentialism.