For Homeschoolers If you home school do you get a diploma from somewhere or does the child take the GED? It is really looking like my child will not graduate with a diploma, so I'm thinking about homeschooling him. He was in a private school for LD's the first semester of this year( did great)and then he went back to public in Nov. his self esteem has already taken several blows and I am concerned about his mental health at his public school, plus the stress academically is taking a toll on all of us. He says he will just kill himself or run away when he could not complete home work to schools satisfaction. We cannot afford the private anymore and the private did not offer science or social studies. I'm sick about what to do. He is 15 in the eighth grade so next year he will be in high school and if you don't get the credits you cannot get a diploma and you cannot be in special ed and recieve credits or have modifications but you can have accomodations which he does have. He has been in spec. ed since second grade with an IEP. Any advise is welcome. Thanks I graduated home school. I had to take a proctored test at the end to get a certificate saying I had completed the course work. I don't have an actual diploma, though I did go to college.  If you homeschool you do not get a diploma unless you homeschool with an umbrella school.  There is a a school called Northeast Atlantic Regional HS which will give credit to homeschool work and will issue a diploma once you meet their requirements, and I am sure there are other school like them.  You will end up spending a few thousand $ to get the diploma. Most homeschool families are telling me not to have my son take the GED as it is associated with hs dropouts.  We just started homeschooling our 14 yr old, 9th grader- he has an many dx-adhd, bipolar, tourettes, aspergers and was struggling in public school. We are pretty certain our son will continue on to college and the local community college does not require a diploma so we are just going to start taking classes there in the fall- on a very part time basis and homeschool the rest.  If I didnt think my son would get at least an associates degree I would probably pay for a diploma through the above school or another. My daughter has graduated from our homeschooling family and is now applying as a 19-year-old "mature student" and most colleges and universities in Canada are not giving her any trouble whatsoever with this way of doing things.  She chose to stay an extra year to work part-time and take a correspondence course while still living at home, and this way, she would be 19 and able to apply as an adult student. There are many options for homeschoolers ... we have homeschooled our 4 children (including out NT teens) and have met many very homeschooling-friendly post-secondary schools along the way. Best of luck. Claire in Canada Loki:  Look to your state for requirements.  Neither a "diploma" nor a GED is generally required; but if you feel like your child must have a diploma, there are many umbrella school options or you can simply grant one (several homeschool associations offer the forms... all you do is self-certify completion). My eldest is already looking at college entry.  We transcript all work (some keep portfolios) and also do standardized testing for benchmarking (not required for us, but we do this to document progress).  That and an SAT or ACT score is all he'll need for college entry. Thanks to all of you, I am checking with our local colleges, state requirements to see what he will need too take courses there. Also I found a HSDL in my state that I will call today. I believe he will be able to take a few courses at a time and maybe get some kind of post high school education. Again, thanks to all of you for the encouragement and information. I just dropped him off to school and started crying on my way home. It took us four hours to get his homework done yesterday and at about 10 pm last night I found a paper he forgot to do that would take at least another hour to do, and that does not count the time for his meltdown he would have had trying to do it.  I know he will get a lunch detention for this. Fortunately my DH agrees that we need to find an alternative soon and he is the calm, smart level headed person in the family. DH lost it yesterday while doing homework  said we cannot keep doing this the pressure and stress is not worth it. I'm just scared,worried I won't be able to home school him as well as you guys do with your kiddos. I need to get some self esteem myself. I guess I'm having a pity party today. Loki, you can ask your local HSLDA about upcoming homeschooling conferences in your area (they usually hold these in the spring) and see if you can attend a "beginner/intro" seminar/workshop.  These seminars are very useful for all homeschooling families and they sometimes touch on teaching students with different needs too.  Most conferences have a website with a list of all the seminars and speakers who will be there.  It would help you and make you feel more confident too.  They also have a vendors' hall where you can check out curriculum choices (much nicer than trying to figure it all out on a website or through a catalogue alone) There are a lot of useful websites for parents teaching their ASD child at home.  You might want to hit the search button on this message board and see what comes up for homeschooling.  I know we have had many threads on this over the last few years. Best of luck to you.  You CAN do this. Claire clairemac40217.3916782407If not state you might want to try a k-12 school.   Have you looked into cyber schools?   I know you can get a diploma from those.  The one I went to you got a laptop,textbooks,lesson guides, printer, etc.  All the directions were in a almost like a lesson plan format in the book as well as online.  They offered feild trips and lots of outings.  The only thing you had to do was log pe hours and of course complete the lessons .  you also got reemberessed so much for your internet and  if you did a sport.   Not sure where you are located.   Try searching you state cyber schools. Cyber or virtual schools are a great option in they are offered by your state/school district.  I have heard of several people using Connections Academy for high school. I live in MA and my district does not offer any free virtual options, so we would have to pay the tution ourselves, for that reason I am not enrolling my son at this point and instead I am putting together my own program for my son.  My son is 9th grade and we are using Switched on Schoolhouse for Alg 1, Apologia Science, Rosetta Stone Spanish ( I got lucky and was able to get it for free on freecycle.org), SAT prep books, a grammer book and books from library for literature.  We just started homeschooling, so we are trying to figure out the best path for us.  I have not yet purchased a history book/program- that is next to decide for know we have been watching history channel, using the internet and planning field trips.  So far so good for us, my son is much more relaxed and I do not regret our decision. Good luck
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