State Requirements for High School Graduation
(as referenced on page 16 of Rethinking School: How to Take Charge of Your Child’s Education, by Susan Wise Bauer)
As you plan out your child’s high school curriculum, remember four things:
- High school graduation requirements are state-mandated. There are no national high school graduation requirements.
- They’re constantly changing.
- They don’t actually apply to home educators. Or private schools, unless those schools are pursuing state accreditation, which many don’t bother to do. (For more on this, see Chapter Two of my book Rethinking School.)
- It’s far more important to design high school around the child’s interests, abilities, and eventual college application than to follow state standards.
Nevertheless, state standards can provide you with a useful template—as long as you’re willing to adjust the template to fit your kid. Links are provided below.
| Alabama | Alaska | Arizona | Arkansas (Arkansas Makes it very hard to find the standards. Go to page 9 of the linked document.) |
California |
| Colorado | Connecticut | District of Columbia | Delaware | Florida |
| Georgia | Hawaii | Idaho | Illinois | Indiana |
| Iowa | Kansas | Kentucky | Louisiana | Maine |
| Maryland | Massachusetts | Michigan | Minnesota | Mississippi |
| Missouri | Montana | Nebraska Standards set by districts, not the state. |
Nevada | New Hampshire |
| New Jersey | New Mexico | New York | North Carolina | North Dakota |
| Ohio | Oklahoma | Oregon | Pennsylvania | Rhode Island |
| South Carolina | South Dakota | Tennessee | Texas | Utah |
| Vermont | Virginia | Washington | West Virginia | Wisconsin |
| Wyoming |
It’s time to update a few links. NV standards for HS graduation can now be found here:
https://doe.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/ndedoenvgov/content/High_School_Graduation/Grad_Requirements.pdf
Updated! Thank you.