Why I keep academic records as a homeschool mom

It took me a while to figure out how to plan for the administrative side of homeschooling three grades. At the beginning, it seemed like I was constantly behind on grading, had three weeks of records to catch up on, or arrived to Monday morning without a solid plan for the week.

Now I know that once we finish our 4-day school week, I have the 3-day weekend to complete three tasks: planning for the coming week, grading the previous week, and academic records for the previous week, in that order. That usually adds up to 2-3 hours of administrative work total, and most commonly I do it between the hours of 5-7a.m. on one or two of our weekend days.

I used to grade and complete records first, closing out the week we just finished, but now I always start with planning for the coming week. I find the weekend feels much more peaceful if I know even if something unexpected happens and derails my plans to finish administrative work for school, I’m ready for Monday.

I actually get asked on a regular basis, Why do you keep records?

Michigan state law doesn’t require it.

It’s extra work.

Why not just keep notes on your phone or remember what you’ve finished?

Or unschool and just don’t worry about it?

Each family figures out what is most important to them and what works the best when it comes to how they choose to handle education at home.

You may land somewhere else, but I felt strongly about keeping records from day one. My convictions have only strengthened over the past year, and I view accurate academic records as a non-negotiable.

When I chose to homeschool, I accepted responsibility for my children’s academic future.

At 8, 10 and 12 years old, I don’t know who my school-aged children will become, or what passions will grow in their hearts. I don’t know whether they’ll start businesses in highschool and become their own bosses, whether they’re hard-wired toward engineering or nursing, or whether God will call them to be teachers, electricians, writers, farmers, mechanics or plumbers.

I do know that many professions require a college degree. And as the person who accepted the responsibility for my children’s academic futures, it’s my job to make sure I have done what is necessary to prepare them for whichever direction they choose.

That means that by the time they reach high school, I need to be fully prepared to grade and record their work in a way that allows me to furnish them with transcripts, in the event that they want to pursue work that requires a college degree.

From my perspective, I shouldn’t just be starting to keep records when they begin high school—by then, I should be highly proficient.

At that point, my ability to document accurate grades and create a transcript will affect their ability to apply for GPA-based scholarships, which could drastically change the cost their of higher education. An accurate transcript could influence what pre-requisites they take—or have to retake, if I didn’t bother to be intentional through their highschool years. It can also be necessary for certain occupational or professional licenses, among other things. I view a solid transcript as a non-negotiable, which means I see records the same way. You can’t have one without the other.

Academic records help validate our education—for myself and for others.

Right now, Michigan law doesn’t require homeschool families to submit records. But sometimes laws change. I would rather err on the side of preparedness in this case. In the event that they did change, I would rather not be scrambling to validate our schooling. I would rather know it was already done. If anyone (the state, a family member or friend) ever comes to ask me to prove or validate what we’ve done for education, I’d like to be able to calmly pull out our records from year to year and show them.

On the flip side of that, academic records validate our work to me. 

In many ways, I find this to be a far more compelling reason to keep them than the possibility that homeschool laws may eventually change.

Anyone who has decided to educate at home has encountered weeks where you wondered if you were accomplishing anything, if the kids were learning anything, if you were failing at teaching x, y, or z (or at life in general, perhaps).

For me, the thoughts around failure can easily become a spiral. When too many areas of life are not being managed well, or I fall too far behind on regular, repetitive tasks, or I am under a high level of stress that is causing me to struggle to keep my nervous system and emotions regulated, I begin very quickly to wrestle with feelings of failure. They’re not logical or rational, and I’m fully aware of this—but once they start in one area, it seems easy for them to spread to others. When we began homeschooling, I found for a long while that in adding a new layer (education) to the things I was managing in life, failure spirals became much more frequent and pronounced.

Maintaining the regular discipline of recording our studies has stopped those feelings of failure faster than almost anything else I do in this season of life.

The act of sitting down and writing (or typing) out the things we accomplished together over the week validates so strongly that we are doing a good job together.

The kids are learning.

We are working together well.

Even if it may have been a challenging week, there were wins.

We are moving forward.

When I’m aware of what we’ve accomplished, I find it’s also easier to give grace when we are ready to take a week off for projects, or rest, or deviate from what we planned for something spontaneous.

Maintaining the discipline of keeping records actually frees me up, because I don’t have to invest any mental energy in wondering whether we are where we should be, or whether we’re covering the material we need to.

It’s already written down. The pressure is off.

*I'll do a separate post on this at a later time, but keeping records doesn't need to be difficult. I just use a favorite pen and composition notebook, like the ones linked here. Next year I may transition to digital records.