Gap Year before high school

I think a lot of people have lost sight of the OP’s intentions. I don’t have a problem with homeschooling, but I can’t fathom that California laws are going to allow a kid to just play truant for a year while he grows in stature enough to be a contender for D1 recruiting in four years. And, that is what the OP is looking for. She doesn’t want him involved in academic study because then he might lose his NCAA eligibility.

My Ivy roommate unschooled her child in California for 10 years. At 15, he has a book on the Amazon top 100 list. Truancy laws exist to discourage delinquency and criminal behavior, not alternate paths

^ But that’s a bit like saying it’s ok to drop out of college because zuckerberg and gates did ok. Just because someone managed to make “unschooling” work into an uncommon success, doesn’t make it the right choice for the majority of kids.

I wonder what the child actually wants. I don’t know if that’s been mentioned anywhere?

There is no sign that it isn’t the right choice for this kid. The parents have thought about it and have a plan. Hundreds of thousands of people homeschool successfully, often when their primary focus is athletics or dance.

There is no evidence that unschooling produces negative results regularly any more than evidence that it regularly produces ivy graduates.

I guess this is the point we agree to disagree over.

Parent’s attempts to manipulate children’s journey to get desired results often backfires. There is no way to know if it’s going to work out but as there is no guarantee of success with straight path either, you sure can gamble. You’ll have to make sure your teen is completely on board and understands this detour’s unintended consequences.

Most of those cute little gymnasts and divers we watch at the Olympics have done this-along with hundreds more who tried it but didn’t make the Olympic team. Many, probably most, professional ballerinas as well. It really isn’t that big a deal to take a one year break in formal schooling, whether that occurs with a delayed entrance at age 5, or a break at 13 or gap year at 17. I’m not sure we would even say Pres. Obama started much formal schooling until he was 10 in Hawaii. It really isn’t a race to rush through as quickly as possible if there are interesting detours available along the way. One of my kid’s HS graduating class had kids ranging from 16 to almost 20. Things happen. They were all fine.

A registered homeschooler is not “truant,” and there are no curricular or testing requirements in CA. The OP has said that in addition to having her son read books on social studies topics and work on science with her and her husband, she intends to enroll him in AoPS math classes. For those who aren’t familiar with AoPS, it’s an extremely rigorous, in-depth program specifically designed for advanced students, many of whom compete in national and international math competitions. In addition to the usual Alg/Geo/Precal/Calc classes (which are taught in far more depth than a student would get in PS), they also offer classes in topics like Number Theory and Group Theory, as well as prep classes for AMC, AIME, and Math & Physics Olympiads. The fact that the OP is not only familiar with this program, but her son has already taken classes with them, suggests that this family is perfectly capable of keeping their son academically challenged for a year. And there’s certainly no indication they plan to cloister him at home and prevent him from ever having friends! The claim that homeschooling = “choosing to exclude him from neighbors and local culture” made me snort.

This kid isn’t going to be “missing out” on anything — he’s essentially gaining a “bonus year” in which he can take really challenging, advanced math classes, read lots of books, travel around a bit, focus on his sport, and then join his same age peers next year for 9th grade. Seems like a win-win situation.

If a student passes 8th grade at the top of his class then homeschools for a year, it may be a challenge to get a CA public high school to place him in 9th grade. They can place him where they want. If OP doesn’t teach the depth and breadth of courses CA requires for 9th graders, that could cause academic issues if he’s placed in 10th grade by the district. If the student doesn’t agree that they should fail 8th grade, that’s likely to create a whole other set of issues.

^I was thinking the same thing. The OP may run into the same problem they’re already facing, that the school system may not let their child repeat a grade. IOW, if he passes his 9th grade homeschooling courses what justification would there be to have him repeat 9th in CA? While entering a private school would be an option, 8th isn’t an entry year at many schools and at that age the school will usually want to see a reason beyond sports for a repeat. It may be worth investigating anyway.

I’m not sure why the OP wants this child to have an extra year now. If he is talented in his sport he’ll end up playing club anyway, and that’s usually independent of grade. I’m really not sure a full time sports academy is a great idea for a kid who’s on the cusp between D1 and D3 sports unless this is a kid who lives and breathes his sport. He could always do a PG year if he needs extra maturation before college. As to taking time off to travel, my kids travel a ton during vacations and long weekends. It can certainly be done without pulling your child from public school. One family I know who home schooled their child while traveling around the world had a wonderful experience. Their kids were in elementary school. Another I know came home early because their middle schooler was so miserable “trapped” with their parents all day.

I think a lot of people don’t understand how homeschooling works. Allowing this kid to have an extra “bonus year” before HS doesn’t mean he needs to have “failed” 8th grade and therefore repeat all of the same material he had last year. Nor does it mean he’ll be forced to use “9th grade” textbooks and then either have to repeat all the same material in 9th grade PS or be forced into 10th grade because he already “did” 9th grade as a homeschooler. People seem to be imagining homeschooling as “PS at home” — working through the same textbooks, doing the same quizzes, same assignments, same basic schedule as PS except sitting at the kitchen table instead of a school desk. Maybe some homeschoolers work that way, but that is not remotely what homeschooling looks like for my family, or any other family I know.

A “bonus year” of science doesn’t mean being forced to either reread last year’s Physical Science text or work through a 9th grade Bio text and then repeat it all next year. He can do anything: astronomy, paleontology, marine biology, meteorology, geology, or he could choose a new topic to explore every month. Ditto with English and social studies: read books, watch documentaries, audit EdX or Coursera classes, interview people, volunteer in the community, etc. He could get a head start on HS foreign language with Duolingo or other online resources and/or local tutoring. There is absolutely no reason to either redo everything that was done in 8th grade or pre-do everything that will be done again in 9th. There are infinite possibilities for learning outside the narrow confines of PS classes.

I’m not a CA resident so I can’t speak to the requirements in CA but in my state a student who leaves the public school system to either go to public school or homeschool and then returns to the public schools is required to reenter at the grade level they would have been at if they had never left the public school system, that is unless they have a compelling reason not to advance, such as academic failure or a serious illness that kept them from being able to complete the curriculum. You cannot (in my state) simply repeat at will.

I wasn’t implying that the child would have to repeat the same work, but that the family might not be able to simply choose the grade level he would enter at. The OP wants their child to have an extra year of middle/high school and I’m not convinced this plan accomplishes that.

Honestly, the double 8th grade/ 8th grade gap year is far more common than people realize, this thread is teaching me. It’s actually pretty common advice in homeschool circles for kids who are both behind academically or young for their grade due to being advanced. In many cases homeschoolers are either automatically placed with their age peers when returning to public school before high school, or they’re forced to start in ninth grade regardless of their actual grade if they return for high school. I’ve never once heard of a homeschooler being forced to put their kid in a higher grade than their age would dictate.

I’ve been a homeschool advocate for over 2 decades, so I have a passing familiarity with how it works. In our region, if a parent homeschools for a year after a student successfully completes 8th grade they won’t be permitted to classify them as an 8th grader. They’ll get the paperwork back for revision.

As homeschoolers, they can teach the topics they want as long as they cover all the subjects required by their state, so no, they don’t have to repeat the same material. They’re free to teach as broadly and deeply as they want. But they’re going to have a difficult time justifying why a top student in 8th grade needs to be enrolled in 9th grade after completing a rigorous year at home. Homeschooled students returning to public school are placed in grades based on an assessment test. The parents don’t get to choose.

@austinmshauri that must be highly regional and was not our experience in CA at all. Public high schools where we lived would not place a homeschooler above ninth grade without an accredited transcript. We saw similar happen even to teens who’d moved from unaccredited private schools out of state.

In CA, homeschools legally function as private schools, so her son would essentially be transferring from 8th grade in a private school to 9th grade in a public school, and he will be the normal age for a 9th grader. And as milgymfam noted, CA public schools generally do not accept credits from unaccredited private schools (which is what homeschools are) so kids are generally put into 9th grade by default anyway. Even if this student was registered as a 9th grade homeschooler next year, he would likely have to repeat 9th grade in PS anyway! But that would cause him to lose a year of eligibility, so it makes far more sense to just register him as an 8th grader next year, and then start 9th the following year in PS.

The OP is basically just “undoing” a prior grade acceleration that now seems like it was not the best choice. Lots of people do that — and others wish they had done that. I have also known homeschoolers that have done the reverse — after a student repeated a grade in PS (often due to undiagnosed LDs), they were able to “catch up” through homeschooling so the student graduated with age peers. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind about a prior grade acceleration and readjusting the grade level before high school.

^ That makes sense (undoing a grade acceleration), but what do CA families do if they move their child from homeschooling into the public school system after ninth grade? If they try to transfer in at 18 do they have to go back to ninth grade?

@Sue22 Many states are similar to CA in that respect (including mine). Sometimes schools will allow students to test out of certain subjects by taking end-of-year exams or other tests, but even then they might only agree to use the results for placement, not credits (meaning the student would still need to take a minimum of 24 credits at the school, or whatever the state requires, in order to graduate from that PS). That’s why many homeschoolers choose school-at-home type charters when they hit HS, just to keep their options open. Others plan to homeschool 9th & 10th, and then do DE for 11th & 12th; its not uncommon to graduate HS with an AA. I think that route is especially common in CA, since their CC system is very good, it’s cheap, and there are guaranteed transfer agreements with 6 of the UCs, plus CSUs. So the most likely scenario for a CA homeschooler who decided not to homeschool any more after 9th or 10th would be to enroll in the local CC rather than the local PS.

How does that work socially, putting a 15 or 16 year old in with high school graduates and often older students? (What about extra curricular activities - just keep on with whatever the kid was doing while homeschooled? ) I can see how this is an academic solution but if part of the rationale in at least some cases is wanting to undo an earlier acceleration, putting the student in with significantly older classroom peers rather than just a year older seems paradoxical.