<p>My daughter missed nearly 2 months of her junior year due to sickness and is still not well, so we have withdrawn her from school and she will be completing senior year as a homeschooled student with a mixture of online and local college classes. Her school granted her an extension over the summer to complete junior year work and she has managed to make up 3 subjects (math, spanish, art) but is currently not well enough to work. Is she better taking incompletes for the remaining 3 subjects or submitting mediocre work and getting poor grades? If she has incompletes in biology and US history, should she retake next year or, as she will be homeschooling for health reasons, does it not matter as long as she is taking rigorous classes? She already has chemistry and physics, and 2 previous years of world history. She is more interested in other subjects such as philosophy, politics and economics.</p>
<p>If she takes incompletes, when will she have the time and stamina to complete, especially when taking what sounds like a full load for SR year? Does she want to consider switching those courses she hasn’t finished to P/NP instead of graded? Is that even an option. Having 3 incompletes hanging over your D is a rather daunting way for her to start her SR year. </p>
<p>Are all of the incomplete courses NEEDED, or would a medical withdrawal and lighter SR load make more sense? Our kids had extensive absences due to health issues and D admitted that the incompletes weighed heavily on her and made it so hard to catch up and feel on too if her schoolwork.</p>
<p>I’m sorry to read about your daughter’s illness and hope she’ll be feeling much better soon. In answer to your question about whether it’s better to take incompletes or submit mediocre work, it seems as if there’s more of a disadvantage to receiving a poor grade than an incomplete. Is your d hoping to complete (eventually) all work in the incompleted courses and be assigned a grade for them by the school she’s leaving? Or can she complete this work later as a homeschooled student, or at a community college?</p>
<p>There’s a CC forum for homeschooled students and college concerns that might be helpful to you: [Home</a> Schooling and College - College Confidential](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/home-schooling-college/]Home”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/home-schooling-college/)</p>
<p>She has a right to do her best work. If there are no accommodations that can make that possible at the moment, she should not be doing school. Incompletes are one option. Can the remaining classes just be wiped from the transcript entirely?</p>
<p>We have been through this. I will PM you.</p>
<p>Apparently it is not possible to PM you. There are a number of options for your daughter. Look up North Atlantic Regional High School, which grants diplomas. A GED is a possibility, as is community college. Virtual High School is a good online program. </p>
<p>How much of biology and US History did she do? She should be able to finish the high school courses when she is able to.</p>
<p>What accommodations was she provided by the school? Tutoring? Or is this a private school? One of my kids was in and out due to serious health issues. When able, she would go up for a class, maybe come home for two, then back up for another. That kind of thing. Every day the teachers filled out a form with what they did in class, the homework, etc. and attached notes, papers done in class, tests and quizzes. They also filled out what grades were missing, so my daughter could stay organized and caught up. There was a lot of flexibility as to when she could get the work done, and postponements of tests and papers was also possible.</p>
<p>Sometimes an hour with a lawyer is helpful. Or an advocate. I brought suggestions from my meeting with the lawyer to the school in a positive way, so that solutions to the problem were provided rather than school officials getting frustrated by their inability to solve it themselves.</p>
<p>My daughter went through a similar situation in her Sophomore year (she had a surgery in Dec 2011) where she had a lot of absences (2+) months and continuous absences from school due to appts in her first semester.</p>
<p>She went on to ‘Home Hospital’ program offered by her school which was not really helpful in the sense of helping her academically. She finished 5 and took an Incomplete for one course. And she feels she did the right thing by taking a hit in the grades and completing the courses as scheduled rather than getting an Incomplete in all since she could handle her second semester.
Maybe she can take the help of a tutor to help her complete on time if your Home hospital program at school is not up to the mark.</p>
<p>Good luck!
–RS</p>
<p>It is hard to tell if the original poster’s daughter has a chronic or more acute problem. In our case it involves several chronic, fluctuating, conditions though there were surgeries involved which made for acute periods within the chronic problem. The acute issues, or bad flares, were handled differently since she could not go to school at all. So it depends.</p>
<p>If the daughter is still unwell, then, with medical documentation, there should be more time allowed to finish the incompletes. She should not have to lose work already done, and also should not have grades suffer due to health.</p>
<p>Also, certain tasks might be substituted for those usually submitted for courses. For instance, instead of an exam, the student could write a paper. There are advocates/lawyers who know a lot about clever approaches to this kind of situation.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, U.S. History is something everyone should probably take, though as I remember colleges only require two history classes so perhaps the two world history classes are enough. You might check that out. Many schoosl want 3 or 4 sciences but my daughter ended up doing fine with college admissions, with 2.</p>
<p>For the future, at the college level, accommodations can include reduced course load (with financial aid for the extra semesters), excused absences, extensions on papers, postponements of exams, single room and so on. My daughter uses these as little as possible, and the reduced course load has been the most helpful. It has been a long haul for many years but she is about to graduate: hope that helps encourage you.</p>
<p>Thank you so much everyone - it’s easy to feel you are the only one going through something like this and it is comforting to have that dispelled. She was at a private school for junior year only - she completed until start of April but the last few weeks were effected by many absences and she had regular absences throughout the year. The school gave her the summer to complete the work. She worked reguarly with a tutor but a relapse in her health has caused her to have to put aside all work for at east another 2-3 weeks making the completion of all courses very hard. I want to either ask the school for extensions or, if it seems better, for permanent incompletes or withdrawals.
If she were to go for one, which subject would it be best to finish - English, US history or biology? I am assuming English is least important because3 she will simply do another English course next year? Biology is very difficult for her. With chemistry and physics, could she take a different science next year? If so, what is considered appropriate? She has good SATs and is hoping for a LAC such as Grinnell, Macalester, Kenyon etc.</p>
<p>I feel 1 subject would be possible. I agree with several of the above posts, having 3 incompletes hanging over into senior year would be a burden.</p>
<p>Wishing your daughter a full and speedy recovery.</p>
<p>Does your daughter attend a public school? </p>
<p>If yes, I am suprised that she was not given home instruction , where a teacher comes to your home and gives your child the lessons and works with her in doing the work. If your daughter was in the hospital, does your school district have hospital schools (where department of education teachers work out of hospital to provide school for students who are patients).</p>
<p>IF your daughter attends a private school, they may not be able to offer these options. If your daughter is still going to be home for an extended period of time and she attends a private school I would advocate for her to be given a full medical withdrawl from classe which she has received an incomplete.</p>
<p>If you can transfer her into your local public school, find out what she needs to meet graduation requirments in yoru school district. Have the GC/administration work with you to come up with a plan for her to meet the diploma requirements. I would definitely recommend inquiring about and investigating the options in your school system for home instruction as a mechanism for her to take. IF she can get home instruction with on-line learning (many schools have adopted a blending learning or on line classes using Plato, Aventa and other soft ware systems that should be free for her as a student), she should be able to complete her senior year.</p>
<p>Taking 4 English classes in high school is important everywhere. I think there is more flexibility with history and science.</p>
<p>Aventa and Virtual High School work fine (Aventa is not week by week, whereas VHS wants everything in on a certain day each week. One of my kids had performances and did Aventa so that in weeks when she was performing, she didn’t have to do any work. Ditto with the other who was home w/illness: when well she did work and it didn’t matter if she skipped a week. However, later on, she preferred to do VHS because getting things in each week prevented a pile-up that was too overwhelming.)</p>
<p>Community and state colleges and universities, as well as many private colleges, have online courses available to anyone.</p>
<p>Hope she feels well enough for this all to be relevant, soon.</p>