If Homeschooling, should I create a parent or teacher account?

Hi Dan,

I recommend having the Teacher/coach functionality if you are homeschooling. This will allow you to create a class and assign content to it. You can also check the Parent box if your children are 13 years old or younger if you want be able to manage their accounts. You can always edit your roles in your settings. 

I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Hi Dan,

There are two different user roles that can track learners’ progress in Khan Academy: Parents and Teachers. Fortunately, your parent account can also serve as a teacher account (so there’s no need to create additional coaching accounts!).

If you are currently only using your account as a parent (accessing the Parent Dashboard), you will only be able to see the progress your child is making as they work on coursework, but you will not be able to see the progress reports or individual grades on assignments that were created by their teacher.

Now, if you activate the Teacher Dashboard on your account, create a class, and add your children as students, you’ll be able to assign content and generate reports on your child's progress. To do this, please see this article.

Once you’ve set your account up as a Teacher account, the best way to leverage the work your child already did on their account is to add them to a class and set a Course Mastery Goal for them.

Course Mastery Goals look at the mastery of an entire course, so any mastery already achieved by your children/students in that course is accounted for and should be retroactively updated! Please refer to our article: How do I set and view Course Mastery Placements/Goals? for more details.

That said, if you’d like to assign content and track a child’s progress in a more granular way, focusing on assigning tasks, I recommend the following articles:

• Our Teacher Start-up Guide

• How to Manage your Roster

• How to Edit, Copy, and Delete Assignments

• How to Manage Assignments

• How to View Students' Performance and Progress

I highly recommend our course, Khan for Educators, too! This is a dedicated course for teachers getting started at Khan Academy. It’s composed of seven lessons that explore everything from getting started to classroom implementation and diving deep into Khan Academy’s teacher reports.

I hope this helps!

It's unfortunate that KA has never made it crystal clear at the very outset for new users the difference between parent, teacher, and coach roles, especially for homeschooling parents.  All it would take is a simple few questions about what the person wants to accomplish.  There is no mention of homeschooling parents.  Why is that? 
Years ago I signed up as a parent because I wanted to homeschool my 3 children.  I learned the hard way that the parent role was not going to work.  I couldn't even create a class and give assignments. 

So I created a teacher role to be able to make assignments, track progress, etc. SO, for homechoolers, just sign up as a teacher. 

In recent years it seems they have expanded what a parent can do, so choose both if you're a homeschooler, as being a parent can allow you to control aspects of  your child's account.