My DS13 took all three CTY middle school self-paced science courses last year. He loved them. If you finish a course before the designated time is over, you can apply the left-over time to a new course. This gave my son a taste of the new class without paying to try it out. If he liked it, which he always did, we went ahead and bought the class.
My son is currently taking the Plato High School physical science course through Homeschoolbuyerscoop.
Now that we have tried two versions of Plato science (one with CTY and one by ourselves) I feel like I have some insight into the differences...
1. The CTY courses require a science fair type project to complete the course. This project is graded by the teacher. -- My son recently was accepted into a prestigious MagLab mentorship program based on these projects he had completed for CTY.
2. The CTY teachers are available for questions and you get technical Plato support through their IT group. We didn't really have any "teacher" questions, but we did use the IT help and it was wonderful to have some hand-holding in this area. -- Note: the teachers also send out a lot of supplemental links, etc., but we were too busy with other work to take full advantage of this offering.
3. The Plato we are using through the coop is not laid out as well as the CTY course. It could just be us, but it is rather cumbersome to figure out what you need to complete to progress. Since my daughter is also using this program, we've had lots of chances to explore all the hiccups in the system and I feel like we might finally understand it better (1/2 year into it).
4. Before buying the coop version, I called Plato to try and find out the differences between the two: CTY vs. Coop. It took me two days to finally reach someone that felt like they could answer me. Their answer was that they really didn't know and they didn't think they could find someone that would be able to tell me. I figured the coop version was worth a try at the price.
Going forward, if I can afford it, I would choose CTY. I feel like it is laid out more methodically, I like the project component, I appreciate the IT help, and I like having a formal grade from CTY to add to our portfolio for future opportunities where we have to prove our son's scientific aptitude, such as the MagLab program in our home town.
If we cannot afford CTY, I won't lose any sleep over having to go directly to Plato/homeschoolbuyerscoop. It is a good program and if learning is your main objective, it certainly should help your student accomplish that goal.
