<p>I was watching the evening news when an ad for it came on. I'm guessing it's a charter school that's online becuase it's free if you go the public school route. I went to the website and saw that while it's all online, there are still different "schools" in different states, I suppose because of differing graduation requirements. The one for my state only goes to grade 11. Can kids actually graduate from there?</p>
<p>Also, I found really interesting that it offers online public and online private schools. What are the private school kids getting the public school ones aren't?</p>
<p>I used this program for homeschooling–about 10 years ago when my state first offered it as a public school option. Many states use it for their “Virtual Schools.” The benefit was that the state paid for all the materials–even art supplies, and a computer. Occasionally a supervisory teacher would call (on the phone) to see if the students were keeping with the schedule, or if they had any questions or problems. At that time it only went through 6th or 8th grade. I thought it was a high-quality, standard American curriculum. (Two of my kids used it–they were primary school students at the time). After looking at the website, I can see that it has really expanded over the years. </p>
<p>I think that using it for “private schooling” means that the program will not be supervised or paid for by your state public schools. Private schools, or homeschoolers, may purchase the products/access to courses in the same way that the public schools do. The curriculum is the same. You could also choose individual courses and pay for them yourself.</p>
<p>We used online courses while our kids went to regular public schools, to supplement the curriculum or solve a scheduling problem (such as having a conflict for one period and not being able to schedule a needed class as a result). We used educere.net as an umbrella organization and within that, chose Virtual High School and Aventa Learning classes.</p>
<p>Our local education foundation funded membership in Virtual High School for our high school, which means that 25 students/semester can take an online class for free. Many kids love these classes and they appeal to different learning styles.</p>
<p>We found some online schools (such as Keystone) too loosely structured and our school would not approve credit from them. Other programs have actual grades and teacher supervision, and we had not problems with our local public school principal or guidance in our kids getting credit for the online courses they took.</p>
<p>That’s interesting, compmom, the idea of using it occasionally as a supplement, I assumed it was all or nothing. I’m really happy with ds’s HS, but it seemed like an intriguing idea and surprising to see a commercial for it during the natl news, which I imagine is a pretty pricey buy. Though, in retrospect, it’s not that surprising; the privates have been advertising more as well because the local districts’ budget woes have been well-documented.</p>
<p>I’d never even heard of an online HS before joining cc.</p>
<p>ETA: I just remembered that during the budget crisis talks the idea of online courses were floated by admin. People hated the idea. I think it will take some education to bring people around if that’s a way they decide to go eventually.</p>
<p>Georgia has changed the requirements for the HOPE scholarship to include “rigorous” courses in high school. The challenge is that GA has some systems that have high schools with less than 300 students and are in very impoverished communities. </p>
<p>When opponents to the changes in HOPE mentioned lack of access to such courses, the legislative committee adjourned for the day only to come back the next day with the solution of On line courses. This works well for some but not all students.</p>
<p>I suspect because of budget constraints we will see more and more such courses but I wonder how we will know the long term impact.</p>
<p>I called them based on their advertisements as we were looking at alternatives. The admissions counselor was sales person, she really did not anything about curriculum or special needs etc, all she wanted us to sign up for the school and kept giving me marketing pitches like “We have so many thousand students, we are licensed by your state, we are state of the art etc.” They would call every week and even after I told them to stop calling, I would still get voice messages and robot calls for quite some time.</p>
<p>We never used them, so I am not going to comment on the quality of education, but I was put off by their aggressive sales tactics.</p>
<p>Youdon’tsay - the president of my son’s university believes that online learning is the way of the future. For this reason, every college student at this school is required to take one online class in order to be familiar with this type of learning. </p>
<p>My kids took a few online classes during their high school years so it was not new to them by the time they arrived at college. They prefer classroom learning - but only if the professor is interesting and isn’t a ‘reads-to-the-class-from-the-textbook’ type. One huge advantage is that you don’t waste much time with this type of class. The ‘class time’ is focused on the topic being studied and there are no bunny trails (which can be a colossal waste of time in a traditional classroom).</p>
<p>Our school signed us up for AP Biology through K12 due to not being able to find a teacher for that year. The education was top-notch, the teachers were always willing to meet up over Skype or their own virtual office chatroom, and I was overall very pleased.</p>
<p>I got a 5 on that AP exam with NO outside studying, just what I got from that class.</p>
<p>My son did EPGY math in 3rd and in 5th grade because he was so bored with the elementary school curriculum. It was okay, but he’d have far preferred to be in a classroom with other kids. Unfortunately there was only one year in elementary school when we were able to persuade teachers to just let him accelerate to another grade for math. It was very quick. In about 15 minutes a day he got through two years of curriculum. I suspect Skype and other advances have made all these programs feel less isolating.</p>
<p>bookreader, the discussion in my state has centered on online classes as a way to save money, not because, from what I can tell, anyone thinks they are superior education tools. Not saying they aren’t, but I’m always suspicious of those touting them in order to cut budgets.</p>
<p>D considered it but didn’t like the faculty & the pervading atmosphere of the school that the kids there were failures & needed to be watched so she declined to enroll. It was a public charter school & some scandals came out recently that there is a lot of nepotism & a lot of unqualified staff/faculty.</p>
<p>Our CC is starting to have increasing #s of courses online & so are other Us, including the private U where my niece is getting her masters in education. Neither D nor niece have really liked the on-line courses, tho mileage varies–depends a lot on the instructor & some do it much better than others.</p>
<p>My college aged child is taking on line math this summer session. I think he is enjoying it – but he has to be really disciplined. It is not self paced. The professor provided varies way to contact her, including a home phone number .</p>
<p>For on line learning to be the wave of the future, someone has to solve the digital divide. I work with kids who often don’t even have a computer at home and if they do, they often don’t have internet access. Do you know that you have to have decent credit to find affordable internet access? </p>
<p>Our system uses online learning for credit recovery. (The courses are a joke, way to easy but since graduation rate matters, that is the plan.) This doesn’t help kids with no access, which has been a growing problem in our system.</p>
<p>HIMom
You hit the nail on the head. The online courses vary in how good they are - just like brick and mortar classes. The teacher still makes a huge difference. One of my kids had a teacher who consistently gave vague assignments to her on-line class. This was incredibly frustrating. Of course, this has also happened in ‘regular’ classes. </p>
<p>Availability outside of class is another big issue. Will the on-line teacher respond in a timely fashion to emails. Some do and some don’t - just like ‘regular’ teachers. </p>
<p>On-line classes can be a great solution, but the teacher must be able to articulate well and be available and responsive to questions. </p>
<p>And this can be a good way for schools to save money, but it will only work if the teachers are good. (Have you seen the recent CC thread on Khan Academy?)</p>