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.

just tried getting on and it still said "coming soon"

Questions for those with experience of EPGY...

Unless I have misunderstood things the open enrollment Maths only goes up to 7th grade. Did I misinterpret something?

Also, looking at the instructor led classes, I see that English Grammar is delayed until 7th grade.

Is this stuff actually aimed at gifted students? If so, how rigid are they about the grade versus the ability level?

TIA

Yes, the Independent Study math which replaces Open Enrollment only goes up to 7th grade. Algebra is now only tutor supported. I can't say how the new program will approach grade level in light of ability level. In the former program, students in OE could take a placement test and take math according to their ability regardless of what actual grade they were in. They could also move through grade levels as quickly as their ability levels allowed. I can't speak to the new program. I can tell you some of the parents who joined my EPGY OE group switched from instructor supported because it was much easier to get changes in curriculum pace and other settings through me than through versions in their school or through tutor supported. However, as I said, I can't speak to how accommodating the new Independent Study or Tutor Supported courses will be.

The site was down most of the day, but when it came back up, my DD was able to log in and complete a session. Speed was good compared to this morning when I was trying to explore the new site. It looks different logging in, but looks and works the same once the session started, so DD had no trouble with logging in or completing the session. Since this is algebra and it won't be offered for independent study, I can't say whether the K-7 sessions look and work the same as in EPGY. Perhaps someone else can post on that.

I couldn't find where or how to set up the parent account, but the calendar, progress summary, and concepts summary are there in the student account, and those are what I typically monitor.

Looking at the FAQ, I noticed that parents of independent study students (formerly open enrollment) cannot change their child's grade level (half a grade level at a time) as they could in the past, but they say they're adding that capability soon. In the meantime, you can contact them to change the grade level. I couldn't see anywhere if there are still two curriculums (reinforcement and gifted) as there were in EPGY. I don't know about other settings I could adjust as an SSA either (such as the number of review exercises, setting session time limits, etc.).

Tutor supported courses will start the student at their current grade level to avoid gaps. Grade level acceleration seems possible but not recommended based on the tone of how the information was presented. This doesn't seem new since I had some people join my group so the parents could have more control over the speed of their children's learning versus school groups and the instructor guided courses. I'm not sure if they still offer a placement test. If they do, requesting one may help convince them to change the grade level (in open enrollment, the grade level was automatically changed after a student took a placement test).

The initial pages at login look different, but the lessons are identical. I think whatever setting were made in the SSA account remain active, since I had set my DS an assignment to start on a particular lesson (unrelated to grade placement), and thay's where the lessons start.

The lessons themselves look unchanged.

"I couldn't find where or how to set up the parent account." Me neither. I found this.
http://support.giftedandtalented.com/hc/en-us/articles/202758840-How-To-Adjust-Grade-Placement-
I don't know if/when there will be "parent accounts" or what their capabilities are compared to SSA accounts. Losing the ability to customize my kids' courses is a big problem for me.

It looks like language arts now goes up to 7 instead of 6, but algebra will go (for new subscribers to independent study).

It looks like instead of $135/10months=$13.50/month (for math K-7 language arts 2-6 and algebra), the new prices for independent study are
$60/quarter=$20/month for math K-7
$60/quarter=$20/month for language arts 2-7
$90/quarter=$30/month for both math K-7 language arts 2-7.

Current subscribers keep their current subscription and courses until the 10 months expires, so we can still use the algebra. But I've actually decided to get the AoPS book and do algebra with that instead, since AoPS is what we'll be using for all the higher courses.

Off topic but in response to comments above : my DD went from EPGY into AoPS Prealgebra because Richard Rusczyk was teaching her class (she was in the first group to go through), he was just wonderful. She continued on with AoPS Algebra I without a problem. She loves the online classes.

I don't think that anything has changed in regards to content. My understanding was that the change in scope wasn't going into effect until the fall. I am trying to withhold judgement until that time because after doing this for so many years, right now I'm not impressed.

Anyone have any luck trying to create a parent account?

Can you log in? If so, what's in the account?

I haven't been able to, but I haven't tried for awhile.

I sent you a PM with some contact information that may help you find out.

Thanks. I'd already contacted support, but I haven't found out if it's just me having a problem, or if parent accounts don't exist yet. (Support weren't sure either.) That's why I was wondering if anyone here had managed to get a parent account up and running, and looked inside.

We have been able to log in to the new program using my son's old username and password. It seems like the lesson is moving quite a bit more slowly (perhaps we've been moved from the gifted setting) -- do we still have a group, or are we now considered individual students? It's not clear to me now who can change the setting for us.

I am quite disappointed right now, hope this will change.

Yeah really. Our subscription expired in mid-July. We hadn't really been using it but I was curious about the changes so I wrote to them at EPGY to ask what the new price would be. The lady who wrote back said she didn't know. I interpreted that to mean "a lot more" so I renewed and got the old price. I already thought it was pretty expensive for what it is.


Anybody know how to access reports for an open enrollment student? My daughter's login works fine but int he old system I could see her usage and progress.

Log in. Click on a subject name (not on "Run Course").

To get info, click:
Course Log (for calendar)
Reports then Progress Summary (for Summary, Current Grade Placement, Grade Placement Trajectory)
Reports then Concepts Summary (for list of concepts covered)

This comment above referred to student accounts.

I finally got into the parent account. There's not much in there. You can click on "Learning Center" and get access to the same information (Course Log, Progress Summary, Concepts Summary) that you can see in the student account. That's it. There's no functionality. You can't actually do anything with the parent account like adjust grade level, or set assignments, tests and so on.