"Inge Canon had a lot to say about Carnegie Units at the transcripts seminar I went to recently.
"36 weeks x 5 session x 45-50 min each =135 -150 hours. School administrators then assume that this will generate another 65-150 hours of "outside" preparation. So a Carnegie Unit is assuming 200 hours of work."
Mrs. Canon went on to say that homeschools should, rightly, adjust this time requirement since the tutorial setting is so different from classroom instruction. She then had us read this study done on "Time-on-task" in public high schools. The author of the study was invited to do it, and surveyed close to 2000 high schools. Here are the results:
Gross School Year = 1080 hours
subtract 15% absenteeism=918 hours
subtract 40% of the day allocated to non-instructional activities (lunch, homeroom, class switching) = 551 hours
subtract 12% of class time for administration = 485 hours
subtract 25% for students being "off-task" (various reason, most teachers said they were being conservative with this figure) = 364 hours
"After 1080 hours in a typical high school year, the average high schooler is getting just 365 hours of actual instruction time! Amazing, isn't it?"
"So while we want to be totally honest in our reporting of time when using Carnegie units, we can see that we have some leeway for demanding exact numbers. Diane's 120 hours sounds much more resonable for a homeschooler than 200 hours."
This homeschooler went on to say, "Also, if you are keeping track of this yourself, you can mix Carnegie units with other forms of tallying credits. Math, for example, is a good example of something that really needs to be kept by "completion of book" rather than number of hours. Science may be another one if you are using a standard text."
I thought some of you homeschooling freepers, especially those in states that have a requirement for a number of hours of instruction might find this useful. Just count up the hours like they do in the public schools! Actually, homeschoolers have lots MORE hours of instruction than the kids in public school. That may explain why they are cleaning their clocks in standardized tests!