Times Union education reporter Kathleen Moore recently reported on the story of a 14-year-old home-schooled student named Michael Sweeney from Bethlehem, New York. Michael has been taking advanced college courses, but because he is only 14, under New York State law, he cannot graduate. And, because he does not have a high school diploma, he cannot enroll where he wants to go to college, at Arizona State University. Here's a portion of WAMC’s Sam Dingman’s conversation with Kathleen, who tells the rest of the story:
Sam Dingman: So, what is Bethlehem saying? They are refusing basically to certify him as a graduate?
Kathleen Moore: Right, so what happens when you're homeschooled is, at the beginning of each year, really in the summer, you file an IHIP. That's your Individualized Home Instruction Plan. And there are regulations that New York State has, and they are what you’d expect: English, Math, Social Studies, that kind of a thing. In that, you also say what grade the student is going to complete that year. Here's the sticking point: they said he'll be completing 12th grade.
Sam Dingman: This is the parents saying that, right?
Kathleen Moore: Yeah, and the school wrote back, and they said, “No, no, no, he's going to be doing 9th grade.”
Sam Dingman: So, they're basing it entirely on his age.
Kathleen Moore: Right. They've said, look, there's no possible way for him to actually complete the 990 hours of schoolwork that is expected for each year. So the IHIP last year said that he was going to be doing college, but that they didn't know what classes he would be taking yet because you have to sign up for classes later than the IHIP is due. So then with each quarterly report they reported what classes he'd done and what his grades were, and so on. Well now Bethlehem is saying, “Well you didn't list those classes specifically on the IHIP last year.” Of course they couldn't have because they didn't know what they would be yet.
Sam Dingman: Right, and meanwhile, Michael's parents are sharing with the district his transcripts and his test results, all of which demonstrate that he is not just enrolled in these courses but passing them with flying colors.
Kathleen Moore: Right, he's excelling. He's taken the California Achievement Test, the CAT test. This is a common test that homeschoolers use to fulfill the state's requirement. The state says that every year in high school, a homeschooler must take a standardized test. The idea is to have some sort of guardrail there to make sure that a kid's actually progressing. And this test gives you a result. For example, if you took a math test and they gave you an answer of 9.5, that means you're halfway through ninth grade level on math. I'm terrified to take this test. So he scored at a 13.5 on all of the categories.
Sam Dingman: Which would mean basically well beyond…
Kathleen Moore:He’d be like a sophomore in college. Which interestingly is actually what he is right now, right? Based on the courses he's taken, right? So here he is, a sophomore in college, and next school year, he wants to be a junior in college at Arizona State University, and he can't do that without a high school diploma.
Sam Dingman: What has the district said to you as you've been looking into this? Have they given you any rationale for why they're unwilling to, I don't know, create some sort of special permission here?
Kathleen Moore: No, they won't talk about individual students. Although the family has obviously given permission, which is why we're sitting here talking about it, right? So they did schedule the family for a short, like a 10 minute presentation in executive session at the school board meeting this week. But then the day of the meeting, that morning they said to them, "Oh, actually, we're canceling that." By this time, the family had hired a lawyer who was going to do the presentation for them, obviously, and they had talked to the press, and so then the school district said, "You know what? Actually, we're canceling this meeting. We're going to see if the lawyers can work something out."
Sam Dingman: Okay, so we don't know what's going to come of those deliberations. Have you spoken to Michael since all of this transpired? What's his reaction to all of this?
Kathleen Moore:Yes. Well, I think he's frustrated. He's already filled out his whole application for ASU. And he wanted to hit send, you know, right after the board meeting. I think he was really hoping that the school board would say, "Oh, wow, you're taking Calculus III. We don't need you in our high school anymore. You can you can move on.”
Sam Dingman: Has Michael expressed to you, or has parents expressed to you, why is it so important to him to move so quickly to get started on the college journey? Why is he in such a hurry?
Kathleen Moore: This is the conversation that we were having in the newsroom because kids always seem to be in a hurry to graduate from high school. They want so badly to get through it as quickly as possible and go off to college and be free, right? And I think that's very common for teenagers. Those of us who are boring adults, we're like, "What's the rush? Relax!"
Sam Dingman: This thing you're racing towards – it’s not all it's cracked up to be.
Kathleen Moore: Right? But the kids universally that I interview, they're just in such a hurry to get out of high school, and so is he.
Sam Dingman: Well, as a last question for you Kathleen, I mean, you've reported a lot on homeschooling over the years. How would you fit Michael's story into that broader context that you've been following?
Kathleen Moore: Yeah, so I think this is a really important piece of homeschooling that people don't hear about a lot. There are a lot of students who excel, who are in homeschooling. And of course, it's a chicken and egg, right? Are they excelling because homeschooling gives them the time to do that, or are they homeschooling because they excelled and it wasn't something that their public school could provide? And probably there's both, right? But there are of course a lot of homeschoolers who choose to do college credits to graduate, right? So there's a very strong cohort that goes to Hudson Valley Community College, for example, and they do the 24 credit option there. There are lots of other students actually who are, like, brilliant, who are homeschooling because they're busy in their robotics competition or whatever, or are very brilliant in something else like racing motorcycles is another one. So then they have to go to all these different competitions that are in other parts of the country so then they just sort of have to homeschool and they get ahead that way, right? And there is this really interesting cohort of kids who we don't see because they're not in the public school, right? So we don't see them walking across the stage. We don't see them getting the awards. We don't see them winning the sports games, right? But they're out there in the community working and being part of major competitions and putting together research projects and all this stuff, and they're doing huge amounts of excellent work at a young age, and we just don't see it.
Sam Dingman: Kathleen Moore, education reporter at the Times Union. Thank you very much.
Kathleen Moore: Thank you.
