What does Graduation from a public or accredited nonpublic high school located within the US or an accredited US Department of Defense high school mean?

Answer 1

Every single normal, traditional, in-classroom-type public high school, in every single local community, city/county school district in America is accredited by one of the six big "regional" accreditors approved by the US Department of Education (USDE). They are, then, what we in the US call "regionally" accredited.

Most non-public (private... such as Catholic or other religious) high schools -- and also most Department of Defense high schools (typically high schools located on US Military bases in non-US countries), no matter where on the planet they happen to be -- are also "regionally" accredited in exactly the same manner.

And so, what it means to graduate from such a school is that said school has the imprimatur of the biggest and most-impressive educational quality assurance framework on the planet; overseen by a government with perhaps the most palpable culture of educational accountability on the planet.

Therefore, pretty much every college, university, seminary or post-secondary trade/career school on the planet will accept a high school diploma from such a school. So will most of the planet's employers who only require a high school diploma; as will most of the planet's governments which, for whatever reason, require only a high school diploma for whatever it is for which they so require.

As high school (secondary education level) diplomas go, then, a US "regionally" accredited one is pretty much best-of-breed.

Now, that said, don't get me wrong: it's not that certain other countries don't do pretty much just as good a job as the US does. The UK's and the EU's secondary educational quality assurance frameworks, for example, are pretty much just as good as the US's. So is Australia's, and South Africa's, and many other countries. I don't mean for my answer, here, to make it sound like only the US gets it right. Far from it! Many other countries do an excellent job; and persons from them who come to the US with one of their high school diplomas will have it approximately equally respected here.

Granted, such a person with a non-US diploma might firstneed to have his/her non-US diploma reviewed (and declared equivalent to one from a US "regionally" accredited high school) by one of the US's reputable "Foreign Credential Evaluators (such as AACRAO or any NACES member agency); but once that's done (and it costs surprisingly little), then even a non-US high school diploma, as long as it's from a country with a culture of educational accountability, evidenced by its having a governmentally-overseen educational quality assurance framework, will be respected in the US.

There is no question, however, that the US's "regional" accreditation system is probably the best in the world; and so anyone graduating from a US "regionally" accredited high school -- regardless where it's physically located; and regardless whether it's an in-classroom or online school -- will have his/her diploma respected pretty much by everyone, everywhere.

So, then, that's what "[g]raduation from a public or accredited nonpublic high school located within the US or an accredited US Department of Defense high school mean[s]."