Do you want to help your teen get ahead in college—while still in high school? This week on Home School Heartbeat, HSLDA Chairman Mike Farris explains one option, as you give your homeschooled high schooler a foundation for life.
Mike Farris:
If you homeschool a high schooler, you may have heard about advanced placement courses, and wonder, “Should my child be taking these kind of courses?” Before I go any farther, let me remind you that “AP” courses or, “advanced placement,” usually refers to a set of exams developed by an organization called the College Board. Students who take an AP exam can receive college credit and, perhaps, skip some of the course requirements at the college level, depending on their exam score and the specific college they choose to attend. Advanced placement courses prepare students for these AP exams, which are accepted at over 1,200 colleges.
What are the advantages to having your student take an advanced placement course? There are three. First, it’s great instruction—it’s challenging, excellent academic instruction. Second, it counts as high school credit and goes on the high school transcript. And third, it also counts for college credit for those vast majority of colleges that accept AP courses for college credit.
But it’s important that we not just prepare our high schoolers for the academic challenges of college; they need to be ready for the ideological challenges, as well. That’s why HSLDA started Patrick Henry College Preparatory Academy—to offer online AP courses to homeschooled teens that combine academic rigor with a solid grounding in a biblical worldview. I’m Mike Farris.
