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Calculating a GPA
Determining you child's GPA is as simple as 1, 2, 3, and 4. To begin with, you must have
grades for each of the classes your child has taken.
Next, you must determine how many credits the course is worth. Most high school classes are measured by Carnegie Units. One Carnegie Unit equals 120 hours of class time, generally defined as direct instruction time - not time spent doing homework or independent work outside of the classroom. You can break the 120 hours down to five 1-hour class meetings over 24 weeks. Alternatively, some courses are designed to only last half as long, making it a .5 or .25 credit course.
As a homeschoolers parent you do have some flexibility with determining credit hours. For example, you can still grant one full high school credit for Algebra 2 even if your child successfully completes the course in four months, rather than the traditional 9-10 months. Some online courses are self-paced, allowing a student to compact a year's worth of material into a shorter period of time. Again, if the student has successfully completed the entire syllabus, one full credit can be granted.
To figure a semester's GPA, you must calculate the number of Quality Points for each class by multiplying the Grade Value by the number of Carnegie Units.
Grade
Grade Value
A
4.0
A-
3.7
B+
3.3
B
3.0
B-
2.7
C+
2.3
C
2.0
C-
1.7
D+
1.3
D
1.0
F
0.0
You then total all the Quality Points and divide that sum by the total number of attempted Carnegie Units to determine the GPA.
