Looking at the current game manual, there is a note that 9th grade students are eligible to compete under specific circumstances:
Anyone enrolled in grade 9 on April 30, 2019 is only eligible to participate on a VEX IQ Challenge team when enrolled in a middle school or district, which includes grade 8, but not grade 10.
How does this impact home-schooled students? My oldest child will be in 9th grade next year and the next child down will be in 7th grade. Would this qualify for that year, or would he be required to move up to the VRC competition? The team would likely also contain children from other families in the same situation.
If you have one MS in the district that does 789 in an middle school they are both on an MS team. If you have schools that do a smorgasbord of grades, that the one you like best. Good luck
I’ve been trying to get RECF to clarify this for 8 years, specifically for how it should be applied to homeschool and community base teams. The issue also applies to 6th grade students and whether they are considered elementary or middle school. I run homeschool teams and none of my students are enrolled in public schools or districts. In Indiana homeschools are unaccredited private schools, so depending upon how you look at it we either don’t have a district or each homeschool is it’s own district. If it were based on public school districts even that wouldn’t help me because I pull students from 20+ school districts across 6 counties. Other non-school based teams from 4H, scouts, etc. have the same issue, without any further guidance from RECF.
So, I handle it on a team by team basis. If all of the team members are the same grade we move 6th grade to middle school and 9th grade to high school. If a team has a mix of grades then they generally compete based on the grade of the majority of the team members. This is just how I have chosen to handle it based on how I read the rules. Others may do it differently or disagree, but I don’t think they would have any more solid ground to stand of for their reasoning than I do.
Unfortunately I don’t expect RECF to clarify any of this now since they haven’t addressed it to this point.
Rules look very clear to me. What clarification is needed? Your child is not enrolled in a school that includes grade 9 but not 10. Your home school is K-12. Move them on! I don’t see how else they could clarify it.
The rules definitely don’t say to go by a majority of the team members, so that will fail by the letter of the rule and the <G3> test as well.
Student – Anyone born after April 30, 2005 (age 13 or lower) or enrolled in grade 8 or lower on April 30, 2019. Anyone enrolled in grade 9 on April 30, 2019 is only eligible to participate on a VEX IQ Challenge team when enrolled in a middle school or district, which includes grade 8, but not grade 10.
I would disagree with you on the K-12 school. At this point in time, our home school is K-8. We have no students above grade 8, so calling it K-12 is disingenuous. Next year, the oldest student will be in grade 9, so it will be a K-9 school. If we had a 12th grader, then it would be a K-12 school. You could possibly argue that if we have graduated children it is a K-12 school.
We may well do EDR/VRC, but there is a VERY significant difference in startup cost, especially since we already have some VEX IQ components. I appreciate the different viewpoints on the issue.
As far as the definition goes, calling your house a school is just as disingenuous. I was just trying to give some example. These rules are written for a global community, and kids who are homeschooled (which is wonderful if you can), are not enrolled in what we would normally call a school. If you continue to argue this point, I can see why you are no longer getting responses from RECF. They simply have no enforcement mechanism and they count on parents and coaches to do the right thing.
It would probably be a smoother transition if you did a pilot team next year with your ninth graders and a couple of eighth graders to ease the transition, especially as far as the cost is concerned. The longer you put it off the harder it will be.
Not necessarily. I know families that only homeschooled through elementary or middle school and some families that only homeschooled for high school.
I never argued the point with RECF, I simply asked for clarification on how to apply this. After several years of asking in the official Q&A without a response I quit asking.
No, it isn’t. By definition in Indiana we are an unaccredited private school. Other states may treat this differently.
So what grades do you actually have in your home school? You claim to be K-8. Do you have kids in K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8? Or are you a 4-5, 8 school?
I think it’s worth trying again. I just did. I agree that the definition needs some work, but we can’t even agree on what a school is…
Right, so this is where <G3> comes into play. You’re saying that a student in Indiana and Illinois should be treated differently based on what side of the state line they are on. The VEX IQ manual is written for a global community and applying your state’s definition of school here does not pass the <G3> test. A school in Cambodia could say they are a 4-9 school but also allow students to stay in 9th grade for 4 years. We have to use a common sense approach here.
I’m not going to comment on the actual rules here. I’m just going to note that most of our local competitions are mixed grade school and middle school until we get to states. Would your 9th grader feel comfortable and challenged competing with elementary (sometimes 2nd graders) students? States has 5th-8th grade in middle school division, heavy on the 5th and 6th graders. My 7th grader is already seeming on the older side. Isn’t the spirit of the age limits to get kids of the same age and ability competing together? Can you gather all the 9th graders together and make a VRC team?
I am not saying that we will try to do an IQ team. I already have enough IQ hardware to run a team and have been watching with dismay the VEX EDR V5 rollout process. It seems imprudent to start a brand new team with V4 hardware that is only likely to be allowed for 2-3 more years. If V5 hardware is unavailable next year, I am simply trying to see if an alternative option exists for our group. If VEX is able to resolve the supply issues on EDR V5, that is our preferred option.
VEXIQ Elementary question:
If the season in the Fall starts with a 6th grade student who is 11 years old & turns 12 years old in Spring (Jan-April), then
?: can they still be on their current IQ-Elementary team for States & Worlds?
?: is it emphasis age restriction on the start of season versus their age at State or Worlds?
— I have students that are in this situation for 6th grade.
Thank you Teresa for quoting the Definition of Student with the born after dates.
We need better clarification from RECF for students at the start of 2019-2020 season will be 11 years old & turn 12 in the spring.
– Request that an amendment be added “students start the season at age of 11 year old to have the ability to participate with their IQ Elementary team at State and/or Worlds if they turn 12 years old in the Spring (Jan-April)”
__ Happy Mother’s day to all!
__Thank you for your help.
The current rule is quite clear - if a student will be 12 or older on 5/1/2020, they are not eligible to participate on an elementary school team at all this season, even if they start the season at age 11. The age at which they start the season is not relevant, the only criteria to determine eligibility is the student’s age on 5/1/2020.
You are definitely correct that this change poses problems for teams in the ‘boundary grades’ between elementary and middle school - see this recent thread for an in-depth discussion of this issue. But what’s needed to solve these problems isn’t a clarification of the current rule so much as a change of the rule itself.