Ged?

Parents Forum
1

<p>I'm a sophmore in high school - I've always had good grades and attendance up until this year (with the exception of spanish). However before freshman year during a manditory physical to play football my doctor found a tumor in my thyroid and it evantually led to finding out I have hurthle cell thyroid cancer. I had surgery and one treatment cycle and missed about 20 days my freshman year. However this year, my health deteriorated even more - I needed bone cancer tests, I had to go on another cancer treatment cycle, I needed to get my heart checked, and I got sick a good amount (due to my cancer treatment, I wasn't allowed to take any other medications besides my thyroid hormone pill). It isn't even the end of the third marking period and I've already missed fourty days of school and I can not go to school during my treatment because I'm radioactive. The school is now adding insult to injury by trying to hold me back - I'm already an old sophmore due to when my birthday is (August 23rd), and I could be a junior but my parents decided to hold me back. The last thing I want to do is get held back and be even older for my grade - and retake a grade I'm still managing to do decent in, even when I have missed alot of work and lessons. So I was wondering, if the school decides to hold me back, would dropping out, getting my GED then taking courses at the local college therefore garduating college early than I was supposed too be a good thing to do? </p>

<p>I had this posted in "High-School Issues" but somebody said I should post it in the Parents section because there would be better insight... which made perfect sense</p>

2

<p>I don’t normally recommend alternative programs to high school, but you are a special case. </p>

<p>First of all, you should do what you enjoy first and foremost. I hope your prognosis is good but doing things you enjoy is important.</p>

<p>Second, for preparing yourself for college, I’d recommend a virtual high school or home school high school option over GED. Either way you end up with a high school diploma, while a GED makes you look like a high school dropout. Your state may offer a virtual high school, while the homeschool high school diploma option is through a non-profit or for profit entity.</p>

3

<p>Have your parents contact the guidance counselor in order to set up a meeting about the possibility of getting a 504 plan put into place. With the 504 in place, the school may provide a tutor for in-home instruction. </p>

<p>The first thing you and your parents need to do is have a meeting with the guidance counselor to discuss the possibility of 504/IEP plan. The plan may even include an in-home tutor for times when you can’t attend school.</p>

<p><a href=“http://specialchildren.about.com/od/504s/f/504faq1.htm[/url]”>http://specialchildren.about.com/od/504s/f/504faq1.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I tried to go back and delete “IEP” from the above post but I was timed out.</p>

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<p>Your (public) school should have been offering homebound education services to you, and may still be required to do so over the summer. Please ask. For next school year, a virtual (or on-line) public school might be another option. You should at least be entitled to a 504 plan, but you have to ask for one. (They’re not required to offer it to you, but they’re required to provide one if you ask and qualify, which you certainly should.) It might be helpful to get a letter (quickly!) from your doctor explaining your limitations. You might be entitled to an IEP that might adjust graduation requirements (eliminating PE, for example) or provide alternative ways of handling certain coursework.</p>

<p>I would rather strongly encourage an option that yields a full high school diploma rather than a GED.</p>

<p>Are you being seen (medically) through a Children’s Hospital? They usually have social workers who are adept at working with the schools. Some even have school programs for cancer patients who often have only windows of time when they’re able to fully focus on school. </p>

<p>I really wish you good health, and I hope that the adults at your school get it together and do what needs to be done to support you. Fingers crossed!</p>

6

<p>Wishing you good health!!! I would recommend any alternative other than the GED as others have posted. Depending upon which state you reside in, you may not be allowed to take the GED until your classmates have graduated. That is the case here in Illinois. So, GED would not really help in your case. Virtual high school, homeschooling, or the 504 plan are all highly preferable. I am a thyroid cancer survivor myself, keep up your spirits and remember that everyone out here is pulling for you.</p>

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<p>I agree with both points the others have made - 1) your school should be doing more to help you out and if you’re doing all right you should get to move to 11th, and 2) diploma is better than GED.</p>

<p>OTOH, IF your HS won’t cooperate, and since you’re doing well in school, it is possible that you could go on to your local college without a HS diploma. Your parents could homeschool you and call the college classes dual enrollment or you could just move on. Of course, you miss out on your HS and friends you have there. Even though the school is being a turkey, the support of your friends is pretty important.</p>

<p>Good luck, best wishes, and we’re rooting for you.</p>

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<p>GEDs CAN be GOOD for RIGHT KIDS</p>

<p>First, congratulations on handling so much, so well! Having serious health issues on top of everything else in HS is really a challenge. We can really identify with this, as I explain further down in this post.</p>

<p>I agree that your family should work with the social worker who should have been assigned to your case from the children’s hospital. She should have extensive experience in this. You should be able to get a 504 plan at the request of your family, with support from your docs (put a request in writing and have it hand delivered to your school principal and counselor). This is a very helpful option to kids enrolled in public school but is NOT available to kids in private school.</p>

<p>For what it’s worth, we had a similar situation in our household. Our kids both missed 1/4-1/2 of each of their HS years due to chronic physical health issues. Both were born in November & I held both of them back so they started kindergarten a year after they could have been enrolled.</p>

<p>S was able to hang in there at the competitive private school, keeping up despite having to do much of his work independently. He is the only kid in the school’s history who missed so much school (45-90 days/school year of 180 days) and still graduated as a national merit finalist, going to a great private U with great merit aid.</p>

<p>D worked as hard as she could with the HS. Initially, she even considered repeating a grade because she struggled so much to catch & keep up, but ultimately, the HS required her to leave after her junior year of HS. We explored the on-line school available in our state but D felt it was not a good fit for her (they were very rigid and punitive). She did not want to enroll in her neighborhood public school as a new HS senior, so she chose the 3rd option–took adult community school at night for weeks over the summer, took the GED & enrolled in CC in the fall. It was a great option for her. She loved the ability to choose her courses & schedule at CC & did extremely well there. After her 1st semester, she applied to her dream private U & was accepted as a 2nd semester sophomore for the following January.</p>

<p>She has not been penalized to her or our knowledge for getting her GED. We are not sure what it would have taken for her to get a “regular” HS diploma but it would have been much more involved than the GED she did get–she would probably have had to make up some PE credits and possibly some other subjects. Some sources have told us that neither of our kids would ever have graduated from our public school system due to their extensive absences. (Fortunately, we never had to find out for sure whether they were correct on this point.) For the GED, she got all the answers correct on all 8 of the exams (winning a national award for excellence), which we feel also helped her get into her dream U (which is the same very competitive U where S is enrolled & will graduate this spring in EE). </p>

<p>This worked for her because she was older (17, turning 18 1st semester of CC), had basically covered most of the coursework she wanted & needed to in HS by the time this all happened, and was pretty close in age to the kids she would be attending CC with. In fact, there are HS kids also at CC, who are co-enrolled & because she looks so young, they figured she was one of them anyway. :)</p>

<p>I would say that you should explore ALL of your options with an open mind. Do not automatically discount or throw out the option of a GED, as it can be one option, which in our case worked better than the alternatives.</p>

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<p>You have already received some good advice here. I just want to add that your school system may owe you compensatory homebound instruction since you should have been getting it and have not. You do not need a 504 plan to get it, a note from a Dr. stating you will be missing a lot of school will do it. I assume your school knows why you are missing so much and they should have started the process, asked you for a note, etc. Homebound instruction will not give you anything close to what you’d get at school, more like a few hours per week, but it would give you a way to maintain contact. Through the homebound instructor you could take and return tests, quizzes, and assignments.</p>

<p>A 504 plan would allow for accommodations at school. If you cannot do regular PE, for example, an alternative PE program would give you credit. If you were too tired to take more than one test per day, others could be rescheduled. </p>

<p>I once talked to an admissions counselor about GEDs and her opinion seems to be the norm. It’s not a deal killer but they assume something went wrong. Drugs, addictions, etc. are what goes through their minds first. Since you were going to play football, I’ll assume you are male. For girls they may assume pregnancy. This may be overcome by an essay talking about beating your cancer–for college. When you start applying for jobs after finishing your education there may still be some stigma and you may not want to tell a future employer that you are a cancer survivor. Fair? No, of course not. Getting cancer in the first place was not fair either. I wish you a happy, healthy life no matter what option you choose!</p>

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<p>Check the rules in your state but here you can’t take your GED until either your class graduates or you turn 18. </p>

<p>That said - many people have gotten their GED and been very successful.<br>
arabrab - good pointes
Have you checked into a cyber school?
Where is the social worker in all of this?</p>

<p>I, too, wish you good health.</p>

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<p>Yes, it appears that rules do vary by state. In my Ds case, her getting her GED the year before she would have graduated didn’t cause anyone any concerns at all. I had no idea how negatively GEDs may be perceived, but for us, it was the best of the available options and we have no regrets (other than we’re still hurt that the school forced the choice without more warning, after 7 years of paying tuition–4 years for brother & 3 years for her).</p>

<p>I did not see her essays but assume both D & her brother touched on overcoming their health issues in their essays and that the school which admitted them admired them for their perserverance and resiliance. You don’t have to be overly specific about what health issue was overcome & I’m sure my kids didn’t go into much detail (needn’t mention CANCER but can talk about overcoming serious health issues).</p>

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<p>In Ca for GED you must be 18. CHSPE is for under 18.
In our district you would qualify for Home Hospital School. Basically what that means is the school district would provide a teacher who would come to your home.</p>

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<p>Just to clarify – the requirements for a district to provide homebound schooling of some sort are federal requirements, not something that the local district can either choose or not choose to do. I second the suggestion that you strongly request summer compensatory schooling, since your district should have been offering earlier options and you’re now somewhat behind.</p>

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<p>You can enter most community colleges (not sure if that is what you had in mind) without a diploma or GED. If your local college requires a diploma or GED, it would be fine if you want to get a GED to start college early. But check on your state age requirements.
Stigma against GEDs has changed. It used to signal “dropout” or “student with problems,”
but now there are a lot of homeschoolers and others who get them for various reasons GED shouldn’t be a problem.</p>

<p>Of course your health is the most important thing, and your parents will have to agree with your plan. Maybe the school will not hold you back under the circumstances, especially if you are still passing your classes. You and your parents should meet with the counselor/administrator.</p>

<p>You can also homeschool and issue yourself your own diploma from your homeschool.
My 2 college kids did this. The colleges they applied to (variety of public and private colleges) required a HS diploma (or GED), but did NOT require a “diploma from an accredited school”. The main thing you will need is a transcript that indicates you’ve completed that college’s admission requirements (4 years of English, 3 of Math, etc.), and, usually, standardized test scores. Check the admission requirements of the colleges that interest you.
Good luck with your treatment and education!</p>

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<p>As atomom posted, you can enter MOST community colleges without a diploma or GED. Again, you will have to check your local requirements. Our local community college had a policy that if you had not graduated high school, then the principal of your school had to sign off an OK to attend. In the case of our son, the state math & science magnet school required a high school lab science course on their application. Since our school district would not allow him to take high school courses while he was in middle school, they did sign authorization for him to take a course at the community college. Once the community college realized he was only 12 they did not allow him to take the course. They immediately amended their policy to high school age students only. Fortunately, the magnet school allowed him to take an online course to satisfy their application criteria. </p>

<p>My point is that the bureaucrats may not make it easy, but the work to reach your goals will definitely be worth it. Good luck!</p>

16

<p>Our CC does require either proof of passing GED or HS diploma to take CC courses. In CA, they don’t require that, so rules definitely vary among states.</p>

<p>As was said, it is a FEDERAL LAW that you need to have medical accommodations that allow you to get a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). Your public school is required to work with you & your family on this.</p>

<p>Good luck, but remember, your health comes first! The school issues can and will work themselves out (your folks can & should be your advocate, allowing you to focus your energies on healing).</p>