Counting a Credit

There is no federal definition of a high school credit. The 120-hour figure everyone repeats is an accounting habit that dates to 1906, and knowing where it came from is most of what you need to stop worrying about it.

This is one page. The top half explains where the number came from and what it does not mean. The bottom half is a table you fill in per course: subject, hours, the text or spine you used, the level you are claiming, and the evidence you could produce if someone asked.

Why the evidence column is the point

Hours are the easiest thing to write down and the weakest thing to be asked about later. What answers a phone call from an admissions office is a folder you can go and open. The column is narrow on purpose. If you cannot name the evidence in a few words, that is worth knowing in October rather than in the spring of senior year.

What it cites

• The Carnegie unit. The Foundation's own 2015 report describes the original standard as "a course of five periods weekly", each credit "representing some 120 hours of instruction over a school year", and says plainly that the unit "was never intended to function as a measure of what students learned".
• The one federal credit-hour rule is postsecondary. 34 C.F.R. 600.2 defines it for institutions establishing Title IV eligibility. It is a student-aid rule for colleges and it does not reach your kitchen table.
• 20 U.S.C. 1232a, the rule of construction that no provision of an "applicable program", meaning one the Secretary or the Department of Education administers under 20 U.S.C. 1221(c)(1), may be construed to authorize any federal department, agency, officer, or employee to exercise "any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system". The same sentence goes on to cover library resources, textbooks, and the assignment of students.
• Two states, going opposite directions. New York counts time, at "at least 180 minutes of instruction per week throughout the school year" under 8 NYCRR 100.1(a). Ohio's Department of Education and Workforce adopts a statewide plan for earning units of high school credit by demonstrating subject-area competency "instead of or in combination with" completing hours of classroom instruction, and every school district and community school must comply with that plan and award credit in accordance with it, under Ohio Rev. Code 3313.603(J)(1).

Each of those was read in the primary text, not in a summary of it, on 25 July 2026. The citations are printed on the sheet, because the person who eventually questions a credit is not going to accept a link.

Straight answers

Does this tell me how many hours my state requires? No. Your own state's home-education statute governs, and the free state pages quote it with the date we read it. This sheet is about the credit itself, which is the part no statute defines for you.

Is it really free? Yes, and it stays free. Print and copy it for your own household as often as you like.

One page, US Letter, PDF. Print at 100 percent with scaling off or the table rules land a few millimetres out. Nothing here is legal advice.