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

This thread is to brainstorm about the pros and cons of, and the choice between, home school and virtual school (having already decided B&M school won't work.)

Disclosure: We have been virtual schooling, but I have made my mind up that I want to switch to home schooling. What I really want from this thread are ideas to convince DW we should do this, otherwise the virtual schooling status quo will continue. I particularly need concrete suggestions of home schooling materials to replace what the virtual school feeds us.

We initially chose virtual schooling because we were unsure how to go about home schooling, it is free (public virtual charter school), they chose and supplied the materials and online courses (k12.com in our case), there was structure, a school staff/teachers, report cards, and so on. DS8's been doing it 3 years, DD5 is due to start and DD3 will later.

However compared to home schooling, the virtual school has less freedom/choice, more time wasting, more annoying school nonsense, mediocre (not great, not terrible) course materials. Acceleration is easy, but they don't have real gifted materials, you just get to go faster through the standard coursework.

I'm sure we can do better with home schooling, but we need good materials. We want structured courses (preferably some interactive computer part, together with books/materials) for Mathematics and ELA (English/Language Arts) at least. Other subjects we can improvise in elementary school, as there's not much that must be covered. Cost is definitely a factor. DS8 is PG in math, and ready for AoPS, so that decision is easy. DS8 is MG in ELA. Not sure about DD5 or DD3, but they'll be some level of gifted. So we want proper academic materials that don't waste time or money. Apart from AoPS with its class time slots, we do not want any scheduled activities. Complete time freedom is essential.

How do I convince DW that we can jump ship from a known virtual schooling to an unknown home schooling?

Any ideas for putting a home schooling plan together? (Any other suitable forums for really getting into the details?)

Is there a particular reason you want structured for English/ELA? I just ask because I think if I were planning homeschooling, that'd be one of the areas I'd be happiest to unschool.

That said, many people seem to like the Michael Clay Thompson stuff - but of course I haven't seen it myself.

You might like to visit the WTM accelerated learner forum:

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/forum/7-accelerated-learner-board/

for more ideas.

Probably the same reason that we initially chose virtual school to start with: lack of confidence that we wouldn't mess it up, not our strong subject, not being sure what we should be doing, etcetera. And English/ELA is a "core" subject. I'm very open to suggestions, though. I guess what we need is some form of quality control, so our kids don't end up with a deficient education.

If you are looking for interactive online classes, take a look at this.

http://www.athenasacademy.com/

Who will be/is the primary educator at the moment? You or DW? As that will be a major factor. Also although I have no personal experience the common veiw is that the pace of the AOPS on-line courses are too fast for younger kids even the very gifted eve ones.

For homeschool, parents will want to check their State's laws and regulations and keep careful records for composing transcripts. Records may include dates and hours of study, reading lists, field trips taken, portfolio of projects and significant essays, etc.
For virtual school (and B&M's which issue electronic devices such as ipads or laptops), parents may need to be aware that schools have the ability to turn on device microphone and camera within your home or other study location. Be aware of your local laws, school policies/practices, and permission forms which you sign.

A large advantage to homeschooling is that it can be tailored and highly responsive to each child's interests, learning style, and educational needs. There is a vast pool of resources (old an new) to draw from. Supplemental materials may be added when a child's interest may indicate a readiness to slow down and dig deeper into a topic.

There are different ways of being "free": without financial cost at point of service -vs- autonomy in decision making. These are often inversely proportional.

Here again there may be an inverse relationship: more parental time may be need to be invested to source the most efficient curriculum for each child.

By knowing you can do better with homeschooling. Look ahead to success stories of homeschoolers at college/university and beyond.

You've received some great website suggestions already, I'll just add Gifted homeschooler's forum (GHF) and HSLDA.

Lots of good advice above! We have gone back and forth between virtual school and homeschool. Homeschool definitely gives you the most flexibility and lets you do more in-depth work. We did a research project on comparative revolutions (French, Russian, and American) in 6th grade, for instance. Not something you'd normally see in an elementary curriculum! :-) Both of my dc's also have serious, multiple extracurrics, and pure homeschooling is the most flexible (although virtual school nearly so).

There are three potential downsides, I found, to "pure" homeschooling. (I consider virtual school, at least at our school, which is private, to be a form of homeschooling, since we have a lot of choice about curriculum (we're at the HS level and in a school that tailors curriculum within any given course).) One is that coming up with the curriculum, while exciting, is wearing and stressful and can be expensive. We paid for so many things that flunked out quickly. My fault, certainly. Another downside is that, depending on what your dc's ambitions are, you need to keep an eye on credentialing. WE knew that we were working well above grade level, etc., but no one will credit "Mommy grades," so I found we had to do more standardized testing, CTY courses, etc. We still do a fair amount of this, but the virtual school grades are quite real and provide credentials (as well as helping pacify relatives, neighbors, etc. who insist that homeschooling surely is shortchanging the kids). Credentialing is not just the shallow aspect (getting Grandma to be quiet about how all five of her kids did just fine in public school etc. etc.) but also the internal sense, for the child, of how he/she stacks up in the eyes of a third party.

Third is the perfectionism issue. Pure homeschool avoided the perfectionism for us, but confronting it in virtual school was better for my dc. What I mean is that DC initially felt very pressured about having real grades and a real schedule and having other people read the writing, etc. But going through that and getting past it was an important educational task that I couldn't accomplish in pure homeschooling, by definition.

Concretely, and more positively: pure homeschool is definitely doable, and it makes for a fun and flexible family project! I strongly recommend Singapore Math. We tried lots of homeschool options (and spent way too much money! :-)) on others. SM is high-level, not too repetitive, and well-structured. I'd get the optional problems books as well. Of course, all this depends on your dc's tastes.

English is a hard one. It happens to be one of my strong suits, so I always had fun choosing novels, poetry, etc. I did look around for courses and didn't love them. You might ask on the Well-Trained Mind boards. You could always do an anthology (like the Norton anthologies for high-school students; I'm not sure what level your dc needs).

Foreign language is another hard one if you don't speak the language, but that's true in virtual school too.

However compared to home schooling, the virtual school has less freedom/choice, more time wasting, more annoying school nonsense, mediocre (not great, not terrible) course materials. Acceleration is easy, but they don't have real gifted materials, you just get to go faster through the standard coursework.

Okay-- some observations from the road ahead-- that is, if you don't detour, I mean.

1. AP does offer more enriched curriculum-- look ahead into secondary and see what IS actually offered-- oh, and ask questions of your STATE provider to make sure that it is actually available, other than on pretty marketing materials, I mean. AP Art History wasn't actually a course that my DD could take. The reason why I suggest doing this is that AP will move more rapidly, and the level of thinking and analysis will be much higher. Oh-- and don't overlook the costs associated with homeschooling those classes. Textbooks alone can set you back a thousand or two a year.

2. Ask (if you can) those who have had older students (esp. very bright ones) go through the secondary program. I know one who did your program through 8th grade before jumping ship to go with Connections, btw. They were not particularly pleased with K12 in secondary, but seemed to be more or less okay with Connections. The assessmemt scheme and what it means for class ranking, GPA, etc. was a big factor for them, I know.

3. Understand that virtual school is by definition more rigid... but also carries weight with outside agencies that no homeschool transcript can compete with. (Right or wrong, I mean). In secondary, that ridigity is both an enormous pain the backside, but also good preparation for kids as they prepare to launch into post-secondary settings-- they HAVE to learn to do things that others ask of them (others meaning someone NOT mom or dad). That's another issue with adolescents, in fact-- that doing it because mom/dad have asked begins to pale significantly as an effective strategy somewhere around 10-11 yo for most kids. Even PG ones. Being flexible themselves, as students, rather than expecting OTHERS to flex to meet THEM-- that's one very important difference in virtual vs. pure homeschool, to my way of thinking.
4. Do you have to "choose" at all? That is, is the virtual schooling tolerable enough to keep doing it for the paltry few hours it takes each week? This is what most of the very brightest of DD's classmates have wound up doing in high school, in the end-- that is, adding afterschooling and extracurriculurs (that they'd NEVER have time for if they were in brick-and-mortar settings) and then just chugging along, officially-- to generate the requisite transcript.

5. When you say "time" freedom, how do you mean that? Day to day? Weekly? Monthly? Or literally-- no deadlines, ever? Because you can get pretty much all but the last with a virtual school. You may have to develop a thick skin about concerned teacher phone calls, and you may have to play don't-ask-don't-tell with the attendance ticker (What? Writing a novel IS educational time! Five hours! ) but it can definitely be done.

6. Some kids who are perfectionists are driven by grades to such an extent that virtual school would be a continuous set of hits on a drug that they are clearly addicted to... and for others, it's an opportunity to face down that particular demon early enough that it makes a difference long term. Some of this is in the handling, of course-- but some of those opportunities will NEVER be available without the capricious behavior of others (teachers who take points away because they don't share your perspective), and without the time-pressure of producing adequate work with a deadline. This is a tough one for HG+ kids, who reach secondary material quite young-- before they have the emotional maturity that they need to wrestle with it, probably.

7. How much will homeschooling allow the child to compensate for weaknesses with their strengths? This is a VERY real concern to me with HG+ kids. Their strengths tend to be seriously impressive. But-- as a mom, I felt that I was not doing DD any favors by allowing that to happen. She had to learn to write well, or she was eventually going to find that her educational opportunities were limited because of the resulting inflexibility. Because it wasn't ME asking her to write an essay about something she didn't care about... she couldn't manipulate me into letting it go. DO think about what sort of child you have.

For homeschoolers/virtual schoolers, to what extent is your answer to 22B's question dependent upon the child's age? At what age did it become (or would it have become, had resources been available) necessary to have subject experts teaching your children?

That's a great consideration, aquinas-- I'd say that for us, the answer is that in my areas of strength, I was more than able to manage through secondary level. (STEM, social science, fwiw)

But then again, I have post-secondary teaching experience in a pretty broad array of STEM topics, and come from a background of teaching at that level in the humanities.

DD was definitely ready, willing, and chomping at the bit to do secondary/post-secondary level work by the time she was 10-11yo, which is when (virtual schooling) we began SERIOUSLY supplementing her course materials with college textbooks, etc. purchased on the cheap.

In literature, this happened far, far sooner-- but we found it easier to accommodate, too, since it was a matter of reading more "adult" selections, and upping the level of discussion that our family naturally tends to do around theater, poetry, and books. So it didn't seem that odd to be discussing Langston Hughes or Walt Whitman with our DD when she was 7 or 8.