However compared to home schooling, the virtual school has less freedom/choice, more time wasting, more annoying school nonsense, mediocre (not great, not terrible) course materials. Acceleration is easy, but they don't have real gifted materials, you just get to go faster through the standard coursework. Okay-- some observations from the road ahead-- that is, if you don't detour, I mean.
1. AP
does offer more enriched curriculum-- look ahead into secondary and see what IS actually offered-- oh, and ask questions of your STATE provider to make sure that it is
actually available, other than on pretty marketing materials, I mean. AP Art History
wasn't actually a course that my DD could take. The reason why I suggest doing this is that AP will move more rapidly, and the level of thinking and analysis will be much higher. Oh-- and don't overlook the costs associated with homeschooling those classes. Textbooks alone can set you back a thousand or two a year.
2. Ask (if you can) those who have had older students (esp. very bright ones) go through the secondary program. I know one who did your program through 8th grade before jumping ship to go with Connections, btw. They were not particularly pleased with K12 in secondary, but seemed to be more or less okay with Connections. The assessmemt scheme and what it means for class ranking, GPA, etc. was a big factor for them, I know.
3. Understand that virtual school is by definition more rigid... but also carries weight with outside agencies that no homeschool transcript can compete with. (Right or wrong, I mean). In secondary, that ridigity is both an enormous pain the backside, but also good preparation for kids as they prepare to launch into post-secondary settings-- they HAVE to learn to do things that others ask of them (others meaning someone NOT mom or dad). That's another issue with adolescents, in fact-- that doing it because mom/dad have asked begins to pale significantly as an effective strategy somewhere around 10-11 yo for most kids. Even PG ones. Being
flexible themselves, as students, rather than expecting OTHERS to flex to meet THEM-- that's one very important difference in virtual vs. pure homeschool, to my way of thinking.
4. Do you
have to "choose" at all? That is, is the virtual schooling tolerable enough to keep doing it for the paltry few hours it takes each week? This is what most of the very brightest of DD's classmates have wound up doing in high school, in the end-- that is, adding afterschooling and extracurriculurs (that they'd NEVER have time for if they were in brick-and-mortar settings) and then just chugging along,
officially-- to generate the requisite transcript.
5. When you say "time" freedom, how do you mean that? Day to day? Weekly? Monthly? Or literally--
no deadlines, ever? Because you can get pretty much all but the last with a virtual school. You may have to develop a thick skin about concerned teacher phone calls, and you may have to play don't-ask-don't-tell with the attendance ticker (What? Writing a novel IS educational time! Five hours!
) but it can definitely be done.
6. Some kids who are perfectionists are driven by grades to such an extent that virtual school would be a continuous set of hits on a drug that they are clearly addicted to... and for others, it's an opportunity to face down that particular demon early enough that it makes a difference long term. Some of this is in the handling, of course-- but some of those opportunities will NEVER be available without the capricious behavior of others (teachers who take points away because they don't share your perspective), and without the time-pressure of producing adequate work with a deadline. This is a tough one for HG+ kids, who reach secondary material quite young-- before they have the emotional maturity that they need to wrestle with it, probably.
7. How much will homeschooling allow the child to compensate for weaknesses with their strengths? This is a VERY real concern to me with HG+ kids. Their strengths tend to be seriously impressive. But-- as a mom, I felt that I was not doing DD any favors by allowing that to happen. She
had to learn to write well, or she was eventually going to find that her educational opportunities were limited because of the resulting inflexibility. Because it wasn't ME asking her to write an essay about something she didn't care about... she couldn't manipulate me into letting it go. DO think about what sort of child you have.
