Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Soliciting opinions about online courses

That mirrors what we've found over seven years (not with CTY, but with Connections, which is now-- ironically-- a Pearson subsidiary ).

The teacher makes (or breaks) the course, as often as not. If they exercise a great deal of autonomy over how to use course materials, the course can be very good, and if the teacher basically just turns students loose with the canned product and shrug off questions... not so much.

I am being provocative but mean what I say. I have though a lot about my ideology . One reason America is one of the richest countries in history is that it is a huge internal free trade zone with a relatively homogeneous culture (almost everyone understands English, for example). This has permitted great economies of scale. In a much smaller country McDonalds and Walmart would not be able to sell products of their quality (such as they are) at the prices they do.

If the quality of U.S. textbooks and other educational materials is sub-standard (a view I am sympathetic to), despite the large market, this is a market failure worth examining.

McDonald's sells food all over the world, in countries large and small, and it's all substandard (but in many other countries, McDonald's is actually kind of expensive). And yet they thrive.

Re: Market failure.

Education is not like, say, the auto industry or the clothing industry. With cars or clothes, you can buy second-hand stuff. You can trade clothes with your friends or buy something expensive at Nordstrom. If you don't like that brand of car (quality too low), you can sell it and buy a new one that's better. There are lots of choices, and the market works because of real competition.

With education, the situation is very different. The vast majority of people are stuck with the school the district assigns them. Plus, they have no say in decisions about the curriculum or how it's implemented. They take what's handed to them, just like our kids take what the schools give them, even over our protestations. Students are more of a captive audience. The AP "market" is especially bad because the College Board controls course content.

Ergo, it's really not a free market and rules that work for jeans and sneakers don't work well in public education.

Thanks for bringing this up and sharing your opinions with CTY. I heartily agree. We just started using CTY this past summer. My daughter is taking an EPGY math class through them. It is disappointing to pay so much more for EPGY than we would if we just used it solo. (We are doing it pretty much just for the transcript, since we homeschool and might need it someday for high school applications.) I am not unhappy with EPGY, but CTY adds essentially nothing to the experience.

It's good to hear you have really been happy with some of the courses. I think we will homeschool through middle school if not possibly beyond, and I see on-line course providers such as CTY as being an important part of our curriculum in the future. I would be very disappointed indeed if they only or mostly offered boxed programs, especially if those were not specifically designed for gifted kids. We tried compass learning last year, and my kids thought is was deadly slow and dumbed down. That has generally been my experience with most products like that.

Here is a depressing look at textbook publishing from the Kitchen Table Math blog:

worse than you think, part I've-lost-count
http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2013/02/worse-than-you-think-part-ive-lost-count.html

At one time, a writer in this industry could write a book and receive roughly 6% royalties on sales. The salesperson who sold the product, however, earned (and still does) a commission upwards of 17% on the same product. This sort of pay structure never made sense to me; without the product, there’d be nothing to sell, after all. But this disparity serves to illustrate the thinking that has been entrenched industry-wide for decades—that sales and marketing is more valuable than product.

Now, the balance between the budgets for marketing and product development is growing farther and farther apart, and exponentially so. Today, royalties are a thing of the past for most writers and work-for-hire is the norm. Sales staffs still receive their high commissions, but with today’s outsourcing, writers and editors are consistently offered less than 20% of what they used to make. As a result, the number of qualified writers and editors is diminishing, and those being contracted by developers and publishers often don’t have the necessary skills or experience to produce a text worthy of the publisher’s marketing claims.

I'd say that connection is not only true of text development, but is probably at least triply true of online content development.

It's sweatshop labor, or nearly so. It truly shows, too-- because the editorial process is only charitably termed "minimal at best."

It's true of most parts of IT, most companies I or my husband have worked at the sales and presales teams often earn 2-3x what the senior developers earn.

Would you mind letting us know the name of the course that you are happy with? Thanks for sharing!

If you are looking for a writing course, my dd11 is taking the CTY Flexi-pace "Process of Writing" course which is expensive but well worth the $$. Her writing has improved, but, more importantly, her mood is lighter and she enjoys interacting with the teacher via email. She feels she is finally being challenged in this course which is advertised as being taught at the 11th grade level.

She usually waits until the last minute to finish her homework, but with this class, she has turned in every assignment early!

The course appears to have been designed by the teacher, who provides specific praise and recommendations.

I think the 11th grade part comes in with the instructions for each assignment being several pages long in different places, so be aware there is a LOT of reading involved. But that is what makes it an interesting course. You can view a sample assignment on the CTY website and I think you'll see what I mean.

My DD12 is in 6th grade, so I don't care about accreditation, or should I?

Anyway, I would consider an online class for gifted students taught by a qualified teacher, even if it's not part of CTY. If anyone knows of some good online classes, especially someone teaching MCT grammar or vocabulary classes, I'd like to know about them.