Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources EPGY Open Enrollment- new program and changes

Many of you might be aware that I stepped back from the program and OE groups to some degree over the last few years while I didn't have a student in the program. My youngest child is now moving up the ranks and will be my "guinea pig" with the new program, and I am stepping back into my role as a group leader. I am excited that they are making changes to multiple areas of the program, as well as putting a renewed focus on the gifted and talented. The first of the changes will come into effect tomorrow with the roll-out of the new website. I spoke with the new OE coordinator and my contact with EPGY today and had a few of my questions answered so I thought I'd pass them on to anyone interested in the program, or currently enrolled in my group.

The Beginning Algebra course will be expanded upon and moved to the tutor supported coursework.

There will be significant changes to the scope of the courseware this fall. "The need to keep the courseware competitive in the market and more rigorous to meet the needs of advanced students has been seen and is a focus." I see this as a positive move in the right direction.

There will be other changes to the system to increase the graphics and add more "gamification" to keep students interested.

The SSA program will be changed to a new advocate program, with better ways for advocates to communicate directly with parents. I hoping that the new changes will allow for better communication between EPGY and their Advocates, and for better communication between Advocates and parents.

​I will do my best to update this thread will new information as I receive it.

I started a 10 month subscription a few weeks ago, with our family being a "group" with parent as SSA.

Will we be "grandfathered in" with the courses (inc. Algebra) for the full 10 months?

Will I continue to have the SSA ability to fine tune things, so I can set "assignments" to have my children work through particular sequences of topics (that I select to fill in gaps), and set pacement tests, exams, etc.? If the SSA account is to be shut down (in the next several hours) then I have not much time to set some course parameters.

(Do you want to convey such questions to the EPGY people, or should we find out oursleves?)

According to the newsletters that went out to the SSA's group functionality won't be relaunched until the fall.

I can ask about the grandfathering of courses, but someone else mentioned that on another thread. In that instance they were told that they would be accessible for the period of their enrollment.

The new page http://giftedandtalented.com/ is not up yet ("coming soon").

However if you try to log into an SSA account at http://epgyschools.stanford.edu/doe/
it says
"Record Not Found
We could not find a record for you. Please use the back button and try entering your information again."
Trying again doesn't help. It looks like the SSA accounts have been disabled. This means that I lose the ability to customize my kids' courses, which is a big problem for me.

My DD tried to log into EPGY today and was redirected to giftedandtalented.com but that site is still "coming soon." I e-mailed my contact at Redbird Learning, but it can take awhile to hear back. I was wondering if anyone here had news about when giftedandtalented.com will be up and running (it was supposed to be up July 30).

My contact at Redbird Learning just replied to me. She said they hope to have the site up as soon as possible; she was hoping it would be up yesterday. Hopefully, this is just a temporary delay as they shut the former site down and transition to the new one. Anyone know how long such a transition (closing an old site and allowing log in access at a new site) usually takes?

Yesterday the site said it would launch "later today" today it says they're putting the finishing touches on, so it seems like they hit a snag that will take awhile to fix, but I don't think they'd shut down access from the EPGY site unless they thought they'd have it fixed fairly quickly (hours or days rather than weeks or months), but like Portia said it "is dependent upon the issue and the fix-it knowledge of those on the implementation team."

The new website is up.

I am a little surprised by the new price point.

It's been up and down all morning for us. Now it seems to stay open, but page loads are very slow.

melmichigan was right. The price for Independent Study which replaces the Open Enrollment program is now 30 dollars a month for K-7 math and language arts, up from 13.50 a month. Most in my group didn't use the language arts, so those of us with subscriptions won't miss it terribly, but still over twice the price for fewer than half the courses doesn't seem wise. Also, algebra is gone from OE and now has to be taken in the tutor supported version.

My DD started algebra a couple weeks ago and is just over one quarter of the way through, so she should be able to finish before our subscription runs out if she keeps up the pace. She has a two week ballet intensive starting tomorrow and school will start shortly after, so I don't know if she'll be able to keep up the pace to finish in time. We definitely won't renew if we have to switch to tutor supported. Our plan was to go to AoPS once algebra was finished anyway.

I'll update after DD tries a session today.