If you are homeschooled can you flunk a grade?

Question

If you did poorly would your Mom actually flunk you and hold you back?

Answer 1

Your mom probably wouldn't make you repeat the entire grade like a school would, but she would probably have you retake that *subject*.  Pushing you ahead into a book you're not ready for is setting you up for failure.

However, your mom should be tracking your mastery levels all through the year - i.e., explaining things you don't understand and making you redo specific concepts until you get them.  That way, you don't fail a subject or a grade.

(For example - my son gets A's not because I grade easily - I don't - but because we don't move on from a subject until he's mastered it.  If he gets a poor grade on one assignment, we go back over it in different ways until he shows mastery.)

Answer 2

Well it could happen I suppose.  However it wouldn't in my home, if my kid was struggling in a subject we stay on that subject longer, while moving forward with everything else.  So the child might be in 8th grade math, 9th grade English, and 7th grade science, all the while still being "officially" an 8th grader.

The only thing that would cause me to flunk my child would be cheating.  And in that case the child would start over with the year but would be required to do twice as much and work weekends until they were caught up to where they were supposed to be.

Edit.  Michelle L. probably knows what she is talking about in regards to the specific program she used, but that one program is NOT what the majority of homeschoolers use.  In the majority of homeschools, the parent, and the parent alone, decides what gets credit and what doesn't.  There are some states that require portfolio reviews or tests, but in most of those states the tests cannot actually determine your grade level.  There are a few exceptions.

Answer 3

you probley can flunk but if your parents really cared they would do anything to help you pass........... but try your best because they can flunk you!!!!

Answer 4

Evaluations and the school's review of the portfolio pretty much determine whether you move up a grade or not.

Answer 5

well it depends on how your parents are but yes you can definetly flunk a grade/and or hold you back.

Answer 6

Yes, she can.

Your mum has the right to make you do it all again if that's what she chooses to do, just the same as she has the right to make you do the laundry or sweep the house or brush your teeth or wash behind your ears or babysit your little brother or pretty much anything else she chooses.

(Yep, we may very well be the only kids anywhere on the planet with authoritative *AND* unschooling parents! It's a truly mind boggling combination, *grin*.)

However saying she *can* do it, certainly doesn't mean she *will* do it. That depends totally on your mum as an individual and her personal parenting style and educational philosophy.

Only you know your own mum; how pedantic she is and how conventional her approach to your education is, how much weight she attaches to things like grades, school, results etc.

If it was my mum: No, she wouldn't because when it comes to any of those conventional school-type subjects, we are unschoolers. We never bother with grades (or tests or anything else that hails from 'school') so it's impossible for any of us to flunk anything that's 'schoolie' in origin.

In our family, you can only 'flunk' things that originate in real-life learning such as delivering calves and foals, castrating the bull calves, artificially inseminating the heifers and getting your pilot's licence (ppl); then Mum and Dad'd make you do it again and again and again and keep doing it 'til you succeeded. But school stuff? No.

However, as it's your mum, who knows? who knows what she'll do? Who knows if she even knows what she'll do!

There's only one person in this world who can answer your question for you and that's your mum. Sorry, but if you want an answer, you'll have to go and talk to her about it.

You should probably be talking to her about it anyhow if, between the two of you, you've somehow allowed things to go unchecked and unchallenged for so long that you're now in danger of 'flunking out' on your lessons!!!

Edit @ Michelle: What you did sounds heaps more like it was 'distance education' and not 'home-education'. It seems a lot of people get confused over this but just because you and your brother were doing your lessons at home does *NOT* make it homeschooling!

Answer 7

I think that you are always in the same grade if you are home schooled, the only difference is that you are passing a test or not.

Answer 8

Over half of the respondants so far don't know what they are talking about.  In most states you don't have to "take a test" to go to the next grade - not in HS'ing, anyway.

The HS'ers I know, which is a lot IRL and even more online, do not worry about grade levels.  Most teach toward *mastery* of lessons, units, and courses.  We work with the child until they understand it.  This could mean going quickly through one unit of grammar, as my son did this morning, since it was all review, or it could mean taking a lot of time to practice until the child understands it - long division, for example.

Also, most HS'ed students don't fit into a nice "box" of a grade level.  That is a public school idea, so that everyone can go through the assembly line idea of education.  My son is 10 and has some courses in 5th grade, some in 9th, and one at college level.  So what "grade" is he in?  It just doesn't matter *at all* when HS'ing.  You work at the grade level, in each course, that is the best fit for a student - be they "behind", "average", or "ahead".

In a case where a student wasn't understanding something, and couldn't "pass" a test (not all HS'ers even use tests), then the parent would figure out what was going wrong and do something about it.  This could be changing the curriculum used, dropping the concept until a later date and moving on to something else, doing remedial work, finding supplemental learning materials to help the student understand, etc.

Now, if you're talking about school at home (such as a virtual public school), then yes, you could "flunk" and have to repeat a grade, as you'd be a public school student, NOT a homeschooled student.  The same goes for homebound education.

Answer 9

Hopefully if you have a loving caring mother she would make sure that you do all of your work and get good grades on everything before that happened.

Answer 10

This is just public schooled "box" thinking.

We don't give grades. We work on a topic until we have mastery, then we move on.  It isn't a matter of flunking - it is about knowing the material, and we don't just keep moving when someone knows half the material, we move on when they know it all. You might think this would make it take a lot longer, but remarkably it does not, because then you don't struggle on the next area because you only half knew the first area.

Answer 11

Only if your homeschool had grade levels.  I'm not aware of any that do.  Being homeschooled, you set up your structure any way you want.  You could say you're in the 2000th grade if you want to, it doesn't make any difference.

Certainly, any caring homeschooling parent would not try to push a child to learn past what he can handle, so in effect, yes of course you can "flunk" in the sense that you can move at your own pace and level of ability.

Answer 12

Yes you can! You have to take a test at the end of the year and they see if you are capable of passing to the next grade!!

PS: for the girl under me! I do know what im talking about because me and my bro were home schooled last year and we did have to take a test to get credit for what we did and be able to pass!

Answer 13

If I didn't pass the tests, my mom would hold me back. But the thing about homeschooling is that you can be in more than one grade at once. Right now, I'm doing 7th grade math and 8th- 9th grade english.

Answer 14

well if she really loved you and you flunked then yes she should hold you back but if she only wants to baby you then she wont hold you back but you wont learn anything but thats in my opinion

Answer 15

In NY, you have to take a standardized test every year. If you score at or below the bottom 33%, you're basically on probation for a year. If you s***w up again, you have to go back to school.

I think it's interesting that there's nothing like that for the kids in school who make up the bottom third.

Answer 16

If you can't pass the curriculum tests you should flunk. If you are flunking home school you must not be trying and need to get back to public school