New York Portrait of a Graduate transcripts.

The IHIP in 60 seconds

Music: Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), CC BY 4.0

Also on YouTube: The New York IHIP in 60 seconds

What New York changed, and the gap it left

New York's Board of Regents adopted a Portrait of a Graduate in July 2025, the culmination of the state's Graduation Measures review. It moves the state away from a single Regents-exam route to a diploma, toward multiple pathways (projects, performance tasks, capstones, and CTE) and names the competencies a student should leave high school with: academic competence, critical thinking, effective communication, global citizenship, and more.

The framework is good. The artifact lagged behind. In most New York districts, a student now graduates “having met the Portrait” but still receives a traditional grades-and-credits transcript that documents none of the competencies, projects, or performance tasks they actually completed. The college, scholarship, or employer reading the application has no way to see the part that changed.

That gap, between what New York now asks students to demonstrate and what their transcript reports, is the problem this page is about.

What a New York Portrait transcript should include

1. Header: student identification, dates, issuer.
2. Portrait section: one block per competency, with proficiency level, the artifacts that demonstrate it (linked and hashed), and a short narrative.
3. Outside-graded signals: Regents exams, SAT/ACT, AP, dual enrollment. These carry extra weight precisely because the family didn't grade them.
4. Traditional translation transcript: courses, credits, grades, for receivers (including parts of SUNY/CUNY) that still require the familiar format.
5. Counselor or parent narrative: context that doesn't fit the structured rows.
6. Verification block: receipt ID, issuance date, and a public verification URL any receiver can open with no account.

You don't need the district's permission

The Portrait of a Graduate is a public New York State framework. The fact that your district hasn't shipped a Portrait transcript format doesn't stop you from documenting your student's evidence against it yourself. A family-issued Portrait transcript, supported by artifacts and outside-graded signals, is verifiable at one link, and the receiver's own published policy says what it needs.

Eformogi is built for exactly this. You attest evidence against each competency, the record stores artifacts encrypted on your own device, and you issue a verifiable transcript any receiver can confirm at eformogi.com/verify/<id>. A teacher, coach, or counselor who was there can co-sign a course or a project, which is what turns a self-attested record into one a college can lean on. Free for the learner, forever, by contract. Read the sovereignty contract.

Frequently asked questions

The IHIP and quarterly reports (homeschooling in New York)

New York homeschool families operate under the state's home-instruction regulations (8 NYCRR §100.10). Each school year, the family files an Individualized Home Instruction Plan (the IHIP) with their school district by August 15, or within 14 days of beginning home instruction if they start mid-year. The IHIP lists the required subjects for the child's grade, a plan of instruction for each, who is providing instruction, and the dates the family itself sets for four quarterly reports. Each quarterly report states hours of instruction and what was covered; an annual assessment is filed with the fourth.

Here is the part worth noticing: the records a family keeps to satisfy those filings (what was studied, how many hours, which materials, what the student made) are exactly the record Eformogi captures. You don't keep a compliance binder and a transcript file. You keep one record; the IHIP, the quarterly reports, and the verifiable transcript are all views of it.

If you fill the forms in by hand, start with the free blank New York IHIP template: it prints clean, covers the required subjects by grade, and needs no account. If you already keep your record in Eformogi, you can generate them from your record instead. The preview, filled in, is free.

Homeschooling in New York City: one office, all five boroughs

The law is the same (8 NYCRR §100.10), but the process runs differently in the city. Instead of a local district superintendent, every NYC family works with one citywide office: the NYC Public Schools Office of Home Schooling (333 Seventh Avenue, 7th Floor, Manhattan). All paperwork goes there, for all five boroughs.

• Letter of intent: sent to the office by July 1, or within 14 days of beginning home instruction mid-year. Email works: homeschool@schools.nyc.gov (mail is accepted too; fax is not).
• The IHIP: the office responds with NYC's own grade-band IHIP forms, and the completed plan is due back within four weeks. The quarterly report dates you write into it govern the rest of your year.
• Quarterly reports and the annual assessment: all four reports go to that same central office on your IHIP's dates (prorated if you started mid-year). For the annual assessment, NYC publishes a written-narrative option and template alongside the norm-referenced testing route.

The record-keeping is identical to the rest of the state: what was studied, hours, materials, what the student made. One running record fills the IHIP, the quarterlies, and the assessment, whichever borough you file from.

High school graduation for New York homeschoolers

Here is the fact that surprises almost every family homeschooling into high school: in New York, there is no district or state diploma at the end. NYSED's guidance is explicit that a high school diploma may only be awarded to a student enrolled in a registered secondary school, and a home instruction program is not one. Sitting Regents exams doesn't change that. A homeschooler may take them at the district's discretion, but passing them earns no diploma. Even district reviewing officials will tell you this is where families get confused.

What finishing actually looks like: the student completes the required units for grades 9–12 under 8 NYCRR §100.10: four units of English; four of social studies (including one of American history, one-half of participation in government, one-half of economics); two of mathematics; two of science; one of art and/or music; one-half of health; two of physical education; and three electives. The units are cumulative across the four years, 18½ in all. When they're done, the parent issues the diploma and the transcript. That is legal and ordinary, and what any given receiver asks for is written in that receiver's own published policy; the military and the NCAA each publish a homeschool track built on the parent-issued transcript plus proof the family followed state law, which in New York means the §100.10 paper trail.

New York adds one document no other state has: the superintendent's letter of substantial equivalence. On request, the superintendent of your district of residence can attest in writing, on district letterhead, that your program was substantially equivalent to a four-year high school program. NYSED's own guidance notes the superintendent may, but is not obligated to, do so. The letter matters most at degree time: a New York college must document a student's preliminary education before it confers a degree (8 NYCRR §3.47), and SUNY's system policy accepts the letter for that. The evidence a superintendent looks at is the record you filed all along: IHIPs, quarterly reports, annual assessments.

Where a state-recognized credential is required, New York offers two equivalency routes: the GED (New York's high school equivalency exam since January 2022, and the credential it earns is the NYS High School Equivalency diploma) and the 24-college-credit pathway, where completing 24 semester hours in a degree or certificate program earns the same HSE diploma. One honest caution: eligibility for state financial aid (TAP) is the murkiest corner of all of this: the HSE diploma is the only unambiguous qualifier for a homeschool graduate, so a family counting on TAP should confirm with HESC and the college's financial aid office rather than rely on any general guide, including this one.

Notice what every one of these doors has in common: the paper trail. The diploma is one page; what receivers actually lean on is the record behind it: the IHIPs and quarterlies, the transcript, the artifacts. Keep one record, and all of it (the filings, the letter request, the transcript a college verifies) comes from the same place.