I've had two requests in the past two days for a-g classes on our schedule.
We are not a school. Only schools can submit syllabi to the university system for a-g approval so only schools can grant a-g credit on a high school transcript.
All charters offer a-g classes. Some of those will allow our classes to count toward those a-g credits and some won't.
Private homeschoolers cannot issue a-g credit on a transcript.
We cannot issue transcripts at all because we are not a school. We cannot become a school because the minute we did, we could no longer serve any charter students. No one can legally be enrolled in a private school and a charter school at the same time. Not an option.
Again, we cannot offer a-g courses because there is no path for us to get approval from the university system which only grants approval to regionally accredited schools.
We do offer Bio and Chem labs which all local homeschool charters have allowed to be used for the wet lab requirement of their a-g biology and a-g chemistry courses. A-g science has to have a textbook component (which we cannot offer), and a wet lab component that we can offer because the charters need to outsource that live hands-on piece since most don't offer their own wet labs.
A-g is only important if your student will go directly into a UC or a CSU as a college freshman. Anyone going through the community college system first can get into a UC or CSU without a-g. Anyone going to a private or out-of-state university would have no need for a-g.
A-g is the brainchild of the California university systems that allows them to review all high school courses and put their stamp of approval on the individual courses they will recognize for freshman admission to the university.
You can find a list of all a-g approved courses here: https://hs-articulation.ucop.edu/agc.../results;searchType=2
For example, South Sutter has a dozen world history courses they have submitted for a-g approval. They can offer a-g credit for any of those courses. Sutter Peak has two world history courses they have submitted for approval. They are not the same as any of the 12 South Sutter world history courses. There would be no
way for us to offer a class that the various charters would recognize as a-g because there is no specific set of standards. It is all about individual courses submitted for approval by individual schools.
Before the state system did away with the SAT, you could use SAT scores instead of a-g to qualify for freshman admission to the UCs and CSUs. That is no longer possible.
I understand that we all want to keep all of the options open for our students, but with two years of free community college in California and the opportunity for our high school students to take college courses, most homeschooled students will find it easier to avoid a-g in favor of community college.
Some homeschool charters make a-g fairly simple to achieve and some make it very difficult. If a-g is important to you, I can help you find the schools that make it more manageable.
At this link you can find the UC freshman admission requirements as well as all of the alternative ways to meet them for homeschooled students, out-of-state students, etc.
If you have questions, we do have experts available who can answer them.