Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Online Charter School?

I am wondering what the pros and cons of this sort of school are? I, rather accidentally, looked into K12 months ago thinking they were more of a boxed curriculum site. Then I ended up getting a call from them, but was immediately turned off when they said they were a online charter. Months have passed, and now I am thinking it might not be such a bad option. What are your experiences with these schools, and what are their rules on acceleration, etc? Does this guarantee that your child will be online too much over the course of a day?

If you search here for K12/K-12/k12/k 12 and Connections/Connections Academy, you should find lots of information about both.

We've been with Connections for 7 years now. The reasons why we prefer them to K12:

* differentiation isn't SOLELY limited to acceleration. Yes, it's anemic in many ways, and you will want to offer differentiation and enrichment on your own, but hey-- that's better than nothing.

* teacher contact is MOSTLY greater than in corresponding k12 schools (from what we've seen with good friends/family in three different states)

* acceleration rules are easy and fairly straightforward in K-8, and less flexible in high school.

* how much time online... um... this varies dramatically by grade and by family, but with Connections, K-8 CAN be done with only 1-2 hr of computer time daily, no problem. A HG+ kid can easily get a days' worth of work done in just a few hours, anyway, which helps.

* Connections uses textbooks. While I may not love their choices... at least I can purchase them myself when they aren't provided. I *hate* online-only platform coursework, since the option to provide offline materials doesn't exist. This is the problem with a lot of k12's material (from what I've learned through conversations with family/friends, as noted).


It's not what I'd call "ideal."

If you have a child prone to perfectionism, this system can REALLY fuel that in a bad/multiplicative manner. I think I've detailed that elsewhere fairly liberally already, so I won't rehash it all here.

I'd like to know about acceleration with these options too. I think my state may only offer K12. This is our out if kindergarten is a massive fail next year. I gave DS the K12 grade 2 reading placement exam the other day and he got every question right (I probably should have given him the next one up, but anyway...he did hesitate over a couple). Would they place him as easily as me reporting scores, or is it much more difficult than that?

Drives me crazy how there's always emphasis on K12 website about being "free" public school yet in Illinois (not sure how it's in other states) it is free only in very few selected areas.

It's important to know how these are structured. K12.com and Connections are two competing national for-profit curriculum companies. You can access their curriculum in basically 3 ways, at least from what I know of k12.com.

(1) You can purchase their (or anyone else's) courses separately, with no teacher and no credit, for a modest price (maybe $1k/yr total for all courses, though there are varying pricing options), and basically be an independent homeschooler,

(2) You can go in their private school (expensive, maybe $5k/yr), and have online teachers and get credit for the courses,

(3) Public Virtual Charter School. It's free, and is essentially equivalent to (2) except that the online school itself is not run by k12.com, but instead is run and staffed by a (usually not-for-profit) state or district based public charter school. It is subject to state and local rules, and the same bureaucracy/politics that B&M schools can have.

Also K-8 is somewhat like homeschooling, while in high school the teaching is more done by online (human) teachers.

The national for-profit curriculum companies are definitely trying to get into every state and region, but where they are absent it is due to local obstacles. Also many other drawbacks of the Public Virtual Charter Schools stem from state/local rules.

Our experience has been that we can go at our own pace. In two years, our son has covered 6 grades in maths, and 3 grades in other subjects, though in a couple of cases he was blocked from moving to the next course. Also, there are various strings attached (that an independent homeschooler doesn't have) like logging "attendance", class connects (teacher led online sessions which you may have to waste time watching (live or as a recording) while they duplicate the material already covered in online courses), work samples (submit proof that your actually doing the work and not just faking it, to satisfy the school and the state), and they may make you do stuff on Study Island, etcetera. The advantage, compared to being an independent homeschooler, is that you have more structure, and you officially get credit for courses taken, but the disadvantage, compared to being an independent homeschooler, is that you give up some freedom.

You need to check with your local Public Virtual Charter School to check how they treat acceleration and gifted students, as there is much variation between regions. (And be aware that high school is less flexible.) Our school has allowed most but not all acceleration.

As for daily or weekly schedule, you can pretty much do whatever you want, any time, any day, provided you get the work done. This allows us to travel, if we want, and go to places that aren't busy because most kids are at school. But again, beware that some schools may not allow such flexibility.

Check with your local Public Virtual Charter School (if you have one).

It has worked for us, mostly due to the ability to accelerate, despite other drawbacks.

Option 1 doesn't actually exist with Connections, so far as I can tell.


Calvert would be another alternative, for those who like the ideals/level and want to do K-8 themselves using similar philosophy and materials.

Connections is owned by Pearson, by the way. That has become increasingly evident during the past 18 months.

I am reminded of what an article on MOOC veterans said:

http://chronicle.com/article/What-Professors-Can-Learn-From/139367/
Chronicle of Higher Education
May 20, 2013
What Professors Can Learn From 'Hard Core' MOOC Students
By Jeffrey R. Young

YES.

Exactly. Most teachers (both K-12 and post-secondary) know that text is non-equivalent when presented online versus in print hard-copy, as well.

It's a different learning mode. There are brain imaging studies which have shown this to be the case. It's a different processing pathway.

It's like typing versus writing longhand-- they really aren't equivalent in cognitive terms.

I would like to emphasize the point made earlier that Connections and K12 are both FOR-PROFIT organizations. They are corporations, and they are run like corporations.

In other words, if they can justify using all-online materials and not providing textbooks or workbooks, they will. (And do, in many cases.)

If they can justify "simulations" being "just as good as" hands-on offline laboratory exercises (and they do)-- they WILL.

If you have a child that is interested in the UC system, be very very wary of either provider for high school preparatory coursework. The lab classes offered will not (in most cases) meet UC's a-g prerequisites.

Math/science instruction is where we've had the greatest degree of difficulty. The rigidity of canned instructional materials is highly problematic there because a skilled instructor can see that a student's alternative method is effective and valid... but "the system" only knows that it isn't what "the lesson" taught. That's problematic for HG+ learners, clearly, particularly those with autodidactic, exploratory learning profiles.

In disciplines where students are asked to do tasks at the lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy, this model works fine. I still recommend it for bright students or average ones who can be hard workers, and for gifted children, it's not awful up through about 8th grade.

We were promised that high school, requiring synchronous movement through the curriculum (which is now enforced with fairly Draconian measures from our corporate overlords, incidentally) in order, would also come with more live instruction from teachers. My daughter has had about 40-60% of her courses come with NO live instructional component at all.

The most serious of those problems--

in foreign language, she gets ONE HOUR of instruction each week. ONE.

Math, similarly, ONE hour a week. ONE.

AP science courses-- ONE hour.

AP literature-- ONE hour.

Even in hand-picking the teachers who can make the very best use of the instructional platform (which I highly recommend), this is about half as much instruction as is ideal even for a learner as quick as my DD is.

In math, it's about a third what she needs.

This is a problem that has corporate origins-- corporate sees no problem with this level of "student contact" since teachers are also in contact via phone and will answer e-mails.

Also-- assessments are multiple choice. About 70% multiple choice. In AP coursework, that percentage drops somewhat, but it's still at about 50-60%. I don't think that too many people need to review Bloom's Taxonomy to see the problem with that.

The other big problem with the schizophrenic assessment model is that it can't quite decide whether it wants to be formative or summative. So it asks formative questions of students (think Trivial Pursuit from hell blended with lesson-specific analysis questions and questions that force a student to determine whether or not the question is literally intended or if they are to use previous knowledge-- this is a gamble, by the way, since the answer is usually one OR the other and it varies wildly), and then penalizes them as in summative systems. Even a "perfect" PG learner can count on losing 3-5% off the top of every course grade in multiple choice questions that are so poorly constructed as to have no one "best" answer. Many of the assessments are 3 to 5 question wonders, so this is emotionally devastating for students who are chronologically young and have near-age-appropriate EMOTIONAL maturity. "I failed my math quiz..." "Yeah, but that one question was stupid-- it was asking about that one example on page 83, but you know that the example on that page has a 'trick' component, so you answered the more general question correctly, right?" "Yeah, but I only got 66% on the quiz."

(Like I said-- the system can really fuel perfectionism.)

Oh-- one major difference between k12 and Connections is that Connections usually has VERY hard semester/schoolyear endpoints.

One big bonus with Connections is the literature elective for GT in grades 3-8.

That one is a keeper. It's truly differentiated. Based on the Junior Great Books program, this is a twice-a-week elective that runs from October through the end of the school year and the kids genuinely interact with one another, do fun projects and discuss the reading selections in a kind of fluid format under the guidance of a teacher.

It's been the single best experience of my DD's educational career.

Mass Virtual Academy at Greenfield (MAVA - http://www.k12.com/mava/home#.UbIDYBzXRCc) was the first and only public virtual charter school for MA . It's run by k12. I met a mother who was homeschooling her kids and using it this year. I don't think they're gifted though.

This year, however, MA legislature voted against MVA and it is slated to close this year (http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/04/first-and-only-virtual-school-massachusetts-close/fYQeUeLv2cA15Ts9snYW8J/story.html; http://necir-bu.org/investigations/ma-virtual-academy-lags/). There was a lot of opposition to the lack of oversight over it as well as the private corporation taking a lot public money without being overly effective.

I was going to consider MAVA for next year for 2e/pg ds7, but will have to go to the drawing board and come up with something else. We don't have the money to pay privately so that's not an option. Public schools are out. 2e expert said don't even consider the public schools; we'd get nothing. Sigh.

Take heart. There are many ways to educate a child on the cheap and without going through these private programs. It's not easy, but it is possible and perhaps more enjoyable/rewarding too.