Being the parent of a high school student also turns us into high school administrators. We're in charge of grades, credits, and transcripts. Perhaps our child is earning dual credit by being enrolled at the local community college, or they may be taking an AP course. How do we determine how to award credits for these various types of courses? 

The easiest way to award credits is to give one full credit for a course that takes a full year or 120 hours of instruction. For example, Biology is generally a course that takes a full school year to complete, so completing that course would earn your student one credit.  This would apply whether your child took Honors Biology or AP Biology. You can keep a log of instructional time if you wish, or you can just figure that a full year course would take roughly 120 hours of instructional time. 

A course that is a single semester course or which takes only 60 hours of instructional time, would be worth a half-credit. Typically these would be extra-curricular or elective courses. 

Things get a little tricky when your child is taking dual enrollment courses. In this situation, a semester of college English or Algebra is equivalent to a full year of high school English or Algebra. For a dual enrollment course (DE) you would award one high school credit upon completion of that one semester course. 

Another way to decide which courses earn a full credit and which earn a half-credit is to determine if the course is a core course, which would be a course that is required for graduation. Core courses would include English, Math, Science, Foreign Language, History, Geography, and Physical Education and would earn your student a full credit. Courses which are electives might only be awarded a half credit, particularly if they only took one high school semester to complete. 

Whichever method you use to determine your student's credits, be sure to use that method throughout your child's high school years.