I don't have any personal experience with a comprehensive program, but I have heard and read that these rarely work well for gifted kids.
Some states allow you to do K12 (and maybe others) for free. If that's possible in your state, you can always sign up and see how it goes.
Yes. Connections and K12 are both free as charter schools in some locations.
Honestly-- NO WAY would I
pay for either one.
Also honestly...
these are a TON of work in some ways, and almost all of it the wrong kind for HG students. You'll be very unpleasantly surprised by how much time such programs can suck out of a week.
While it was always
possible for my DD15 (who was with one of these programs for some 8+ years) to do her entire days' work in about 2-3hr at most, and an entire weeks' worth in about 8-15, that
seldom is how it went.
Here's how it ACTUALLY went:
Mom: Do you know what you need to do today?
DD: sure. It's on my {online planner}.
Mom: We talked about this-- what I mean is-- do you understand that I want you to also do {schedule tweak} today?
DD: {sulky look} I don't see why I should do ____. [Side note here-- this often was UNSTATED, which was worse-- because what followed was related]
---
A bit later:
Mom: A game? You must be all done, then.
DD: Yes. [What she ACTUALLY meant by this statement is that she had done all that she intended to do.]
Mom: {checking work completed} DD!! What are you THINKING?? You have NOT done what we talked about, and you're ________ lessons/weeks behind in {class}, too. What on earth are you doing??
------------------------
Most HG kids' asynchronous arcs mean that they'll need MORE oversight with a system like this-- not less-- because the work is not necessarily appropriate (a lot of it is busy-work or lowest levels of Bloom's upon assessments, which are mostly poorly written to mediocre multiple-choice items), and requires a profile of relatively even academic readiness a bit beyond grade level, and executive function WAY beyond it.
If that isn't your kid, just know that you'll be doing
all of the scaffolding (and, quite frankly, whipping them to do things that they aren't intrinsically motivated to do, and which YOU may also feel are rather pointless). Meaning-- redirection, making sure that your kid isn't roaming the internet, hacking your network, or visiting 4CHAN. Making sure that they
are... writing a fake "journal" or doing an "artsy" project related to a literature selection, homework problems for math that will never be graded-- or even SEEN-- by anyone, etc. etc.
On the plus side, the kids who come out in the top 1% of their graduating classes do VERY well in college, and they often wind up in science or engineering-- particularly in computer science, which they find pretty easy. DD met an amazing cohort of other HG-to-EG/PG students in her classes, and the only way that those kids would ever have met others like themselves was through this kind of program, given the state of GT ed in my state. The top 5 graduating seniors in DD's class were academically all complete rock stars. You do remain pretty involved with your kids in a program like this, so that is a plus.
Connections does have some middle school programs that are
truly GT. Their literature elective in gr3-8 is
amazing in the hands of a great teacher. But the entire system does tend to grind the good educators into dust pretty relentlessly, and student-teacher ratios frequently exceed 100 to 1.
DD had AP math coursework from a teacher whose English communication skills were... limited... and the best advice that she got from this person when she called with questions?
{with ambient noise from the cross-town commuter train}
You know Google? I am
truly not kidding. That was it. Google it. Occasionally--
"You Tube has good instructions."Teacher involvement and oversight is minimal at the secondary level... and nonexistent at the primary one. Middle school Gr7+8 were easily the best years that we spent with Connections-- and I've posted at length about it here. I'm not the only one here who tried Connections with a PG kid, by the way.
I will say that with a good local administration behind you, one that KNOWS what your child is and is interested in knowing WHO s/he is, too, it
can be done. National, on the other hand, simply doesn't really 'get' that HG+ kids exist; we faced push-back at EVERY stage of things from Baltimore. Once Pearson bought Connections, there was an immediate deterioration in response and quality from on-high, as well.
The credentialing made a lot of the pain worth it in the end, but there was pain aplenty. I'm not sure that I would do Connections
now. 
