Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Debating home school vs virtual school

Thanks for the feedback, HK. I ask because we're toying with the idea of homeschooling DS for junior, and possibly senior, kindergarten (ages 4-5), which will put him between the ages of 22B's younger two children.

My DS has done bits and pieces of a few of these.

Thanks for the comments, everyone, and the specific suggestions of appropriate curriculums and other relevant forums.

We're just talking about elementary school at the moment (even if some subjects are or will be done at higher level), so some concerns such as official grades, facilities (e.g. science labs), expert higher level subject teachers (hypotheticaly, at least), can be bridges we'll cross when we come to them. We can possibly switch to other schooling options later. The expectations for elementary school are so minimal, it seems virtually impossible to fall short academically with highly able kids.

There are other concerns such as children being able to be focused, resilient, efficient, having a work ethic, and so on. But I don't see any one of home school or virtual school or various kinds of B&M schools being clearly better or worse in these regards.

Timewise, we have the freedom to go travelling during school times by getting ahead of the schedule. But unfortunately we are finding it time consuming for both parent and kid, for various reasons. Hopefully with pure homeschooling we can focus on learning rather than doing, and not worry about the progress monitoring, work samples, practice tests and so on.

By the way, where we are, to homeschool, once a year you just tell the department of education "we're homeschooling this year". That's it. Done. No monitoring, no scrutiny, no testing, nothing.

A huge concern is cost. The virtual school is free (to us). The state pays the curriculum provider (k12.com in our case) way too much for what is essentially homeschooling material that is mediocre at best. Then the virtual school itself (a separate entity to k12.com) has its own staff and teachers that provide a combination of help and hindrance for no net gain. If only the state would give us a fraction of that budget directly to us to cover our own homeschooling costs, but that won't happen. So to homeschool independently we'd have to pay $1k per kid per year? $2k? More? With 3 kids and one 5-fig income, the costs could seriously carve into our budget. It could be money very well spent, or it could go badly. The cost-benefit analysis has to beat our current "free, and almost tolerable". Or maybe it's worse than "almost tolerable" and we just have to homeschool and figure out how to pay for it (save less, work more).

I have a friend homeschooling in California who, for the imposition of an annual meeting with a teacher (who has apparently been helpful if anything to date; she has had no trouble with using her choice of materials) and doing the standard state tests, gets what sounds like a considerable contribution to the cost of homeschooling. From her experience, that sounds like a sweet spot, which does exist!

Could you please comment further on what's involved and how she negotiated that arrangement, ColinsMum? It sounds pretty desirable! I can PM you if you'd prefer.

I homeschooled 1 last year and 2 this year. With a mix of complete and new curriculum in some core areas and consignment and free or cheap online in other areas, am spending approximately $400 per child. This includes all the extra side items that I would buy anyway if I weren't homeschooling. (ie some Usborne Encyclopedias) My husband is the main teacher so wants thing laid out a certain way. If I were the main teacher (meaning I didnt work a full time job), I am certain, that I could do it fairly easily for no more than $250 per child, but it would be more work. For even more work, it can be done for much less) For us, we were already buying so much supplemental material for school, it didnt really matter that much.

Sorry my earlier post was focused on older kids. For elementary age, I think I'd definitely prefer pure homeschooling (indeed, I did!). The grade-level elementary work in the virtual schools is pretty poor, and, as you say, there's a lot of busy work and box-checking that is a hindrance to real learning. If you have a good public library, I'd think that you could probably homeschool young kids for not much more than you'd spend anyway on books, toys, etc. We already had lots of educational material lying around the house -- the kids would pick the Usborne encyclopedias as birthday gifts and treats or globes, etc.

At the elementary level, too, I think the grade perfectionism is probably worse in the virtual school. There's time enough, later on, to develop a thick skin. At young ages, I think I'd focus on reading, creativity, math, and identity development and would ditch the virtual school!

I think that it depends upon the child-- and the system. In Connections, at any rate, the CHILD cannot actually see his/her grades at will. Only the parent can.

Honestly, the amount of work-product required at the lower grades completely made virtual school worth it for grades 3 through 7-- it was not at all bothersome, and we were still able to more or less homeschool as we liked. I will say that I regret giving up Singapore Math, but other than that, I do NOT regret what virtual schooling did for my DD's writing skills during those years.

This is partly personality, too-- my daughter is one that WILL NOT work on an area that she sees as a "weakness." She was born a perfectionist. I say that having seen her from birth. She was. So all that homeschooling her in areas of weakness/challenge was really doing was pitting me against her in an unwinnable war.

Enter virtual school-- she would work on things when "they" wanted her to. Not when I did.

I'll also state up front that this is an easy route to inclusion in age-appropriate activities outside of your home when your child is HG+. Because they WILL be accelerated in a virtual setting-- and then you can just (truthfully) state that your 8yo is a "fifth grader" and is a public school student when you sign him/her up for some math-related activity.

Our experience with virtual school from 3rd grade on is that the weaknesses are in STEM-- and that the literacy side of things is superb, at least it was with Connections. At the time-- and this was pre-CC, so who knows, I realize. There are ways around the more bothersome aspects of the system, particularly in those elementary grades.

I also liked the fact that unlike homeschooling, this prepared my DD to learn to get along and learn from (well, okay-- but hypothetically) a variety of different teachers, and to adjust her work output to meet a particular teacher's preferences. That is a skill that is difficult to teach as a homeschooling parent.

Virtual school is about credentialing. That's the bottom line, but it has some other pros/cons that are worth looking at.

The largest "pro" is that it makes acceleration possible without sacrificing so much TIME that it becomes insupportable in light of the child's asynchronous development. I would not have wanted my 10yo to have had the workload of the local high school students I see, and the work was certainly no easier in the virtual setting, but she only required half the time because she wasn't stuck sitting in classrooms all day (inappropriate for a 10yo, IMO-- especially an HG+ one). MOST of the assigned work is never turned in. So you are left to do it if it seems necessary, or skip it if it doesn't. We never did any spelling, for example, because DD didn't need to. I pretested her dutifully each fall, (which she enjoyed, by the way), and she'd blow through the year's words in a few sessions of me giving her the words in funny voices.

The biggest down-side to a virtual school is low-quality materials and a lack of actual teaching, coupled with an assessment scheme which is, speaking charitably, FUBAR. Again, though-- don't-ask-don't-tell takes care of a WORLD of sins there, and that policy is NOT one which is available in a regular school setting. I'm not actually convinced that virtual is WORSE than what goes into regular classrooms at this point. ALL of the curriculum seems to be deeply flawed or deficient at this point.

It kind of depends on what your needs are and what your other options are. Is virtual better than homeschooling? Well, no-- but it needn't be mutually exclusive, either, IMO.

I see a lot of parents who homeschool doing what we did-- wondering how on earth to pin down whether their kids are actually "on ---- grade level" in any particular subject, wondering what on earth that even MEANS... it's really hard to homeschool an HG+ kid in anything like a conventional manner. You wind up seeking outside evaluation all the time, it seems, because they move so fast.

As to cost-- yes, this was as consideration. My DD, then six, had cost us THOUSANDS to homeschool in just a year of eclectic homeschooling. She would be happy to work on some new curriculum item... for a few weeks, that is. Then she'd start refusing to cooperate. In frustration, I'd try to make her do it, persuade her to try it, etc. etc. Finally, I'd get her to take the "post-test" or whatever it was-- and she'd have made some crazy jump PAST all of it. Yup-- now useless to her as appropriate learning material. Amazon knew us by name, I'm sure.

So virtual school was a good thing those first few years-- because it FORCED her to work on areas where she could not just do that. "Oh, it looks like you've done all of the science for the month-- I guess all you have left is writing. Tell you what, we'll do an experiment when you're done with the language arts for the week, okay?" Oh, sure-- she still read all of her textbooks and novels cover to cover before the end of September each year after the big box showed up, but it did help her develop skills she'd have otherwise ignored in favor of her strengths.

We also got regular feedback about "level" and she could move through the curriculum at HER pace, and we could add enrichment from the library and other resources as needed.

I've got one of those too. Not quite as bad as yours though, I think!

I don't know much more than I said, but will pass on a question and bring back the answer if you like! It doesn't sound as though it was the result of special negotiation, but rather, how things are done. She talks about the "charter teacher" so maybe there is a charter school as umbrella organisation somehow? But there definitely isn't a school deciding what will be learned when and how.