As a parent of a child entering high school, I can tell you why our sample of one (so far!) isn't attending either of these online high schools. As you mentioned, the cost of both is expensive, so if our ds had been interested, that might have been a brick wall.
So - our ds picked his high school program. He's taken a few courses online from CTY - with mixed experiences (some good, some not so good... most depending on the instructor). Those courses also helped him see he wouldn't really enjoy online school full-time. He's extroverted, likes being around other kids, and he likes working in groups on projects. He's a typical teen in that he can zone in front of a screen for hours playing a game that interests him, but he doesn't like to receive his education through a screen
My son the same experience with CTY. Some great, some definitely NOT worth even a fraction of what they were charging. This information is from another thread:
My eldest enrolled in AP US History through CTY at Hopkins last year, and he dropped it like a hot potato two weeks later. It was 95% based on memorization of factoids assessed through online multiple choice tests. The other 5% of the grade was based on "essays" that had to be written in 40 minutes or less (practice for timed AP exam essays). Instructor time was minimal and was limited to an online chat session once a week or so for an hour or less. Everything came from a canned course CTY had licensed in from some company somewhere, and on top of the $1300 course fee, you had to pay $100 to get access to the course materials. I don't know why people stay in those courses. CTY provides absolutely NOTHING. I wrote to them to complain about it, and they answered by saying that "Our instructors are so great and blah blah blah" and then told me they were looking into licensing in even MORE courses.
That said, the three homegrown CTY courses DS took were outstanding. By "homegrown," I mean courses found only at CTY (e.g. Crafting the Essay) and/or courses that seemed to be taught only there (e.g. Forensics). There was real interaction with an instructor and meaningful feedback on assignments in those courses.
My advice with any pricey online course is to find out what you get for your money, and don't believe them if they answer in marketing-speak (e.g. "You get access to such incredible teachers!!"). Ask specific questions, as in, "Oh, your teachers are so incredible. Great. How many hours per week do they ACTIVELY teach the class? What percentage of the course is based on multiple choice exams that are graded by a computer system? How many long-answer exams graded by the teacher are there? How many writing assignments are there, and how, precisely, does the teacher grade them/comment on them?"
In the case of AP History, the teacher spent an hour(-ish) a week in an online chat room. Apart from this, the sum total of teaching amounted to a weekly email saying, "Read Chapters x-y and take the quiz." All quizzes were graded by a computer, and writing assignments, well, don't ask. For $1300, I would expect a couple of hourlong lectures at a minimum.
