What do you like or dislike about K12? What can you tell me about it? My kids are 7th and 9th grade. How do kids get their learning materials? How do they turn in their work? How often do you have to meet with a teacher? Do you get to pick your curriculum? Do you have a say in what your child learns and doesn't learn?
I haven't used it, but I've heard parents say 1) it's public school at home 2)no, you don't get to pick your curriculum 3) and you don't have a say, you use what they give you; it's public school at home.
I believe the rules vary by state as well. I've heard some parents say they are required to do K12 schooling on the same days as the local PS. I've heard others say they make their schedule. But it is PS at home. Your child is considered a PS student legally speaking and not a homeschooled student. (which can be a good thing in some cases, like having a noncustodial parent challenge your right to homeschool, etc. With K12 your student is a PS student and not a homeschooled one)
It depends on the school It is not public school at home as far as educational quality. It is much better. The curriculum is k12's national curriculum and is very rigorous college-prep. In kindergarten through 8th grade they are on the OLS system and must complete 80% of each course to pass to the next grade. In 9th-12th, it is the LMS and much different. I really like the OLS and the younger grades as it is really free curriculum and I teach the kids and help them and have teacher guides and student guides. High school is not like that at all. We only turn in work samples once a quarter. You do have to complete Study Island for test prep and you are required to take state tests like all public school students. If you are using a charter, it is public school. It is not the curriculum used in public schools though and I love most of it. The 7th grade is already doing Pre-Algebra for math though. By the time you are in 9th grade, you are in Geometry normally. The math is very advanced and the science is as well. They use Hakim's US History and Human Odyssey for history. Science is all online. There is no text. I like their math but if you jump in in 6th and higher it is definitely more than the typical public school and not on the same cycle as most schools. 6th grade is Fundamentals of Geometry and Algebra which lays the foundation for the Pre-Algebra and Algebra 1 course. They get their learning materials in print and online. It is more online in the high school My 8th grader is taking all 9th grade courses except 1 and I am not sure we like the high school as much as we liked the OLS.
It's a classroom situation at home. And they dictate the timetable. So you are doing math from 9 to 10 while all the other children in your class are doing math at the same time. Then everyone does a different subject, all at the same time. Your child can't work ahead or lag behind, he has to do exactly the work required on the correct day. You are tied to the house with no flexibility to go anywhere during the day. So you can't go to any homeschool activities or extra classes during the day. I didn't use K12, I just talked to them a lot about it. They told me there are 50 families in my city who use K12. I found that hard to believe because I don't ever see any at homeschool activities, but the reason I don't see them is that they can't join in homeschool activities as their day is marked out for them. I've since talked to other people who said it's more rigid (as I described) in the higher grades. There's a bit more flexibility in the lower grades. You can just do one or two classes with them, but it's not like an online course where you watch videos and do the work, the thing is live and you have to do the work between certain hours because that's when the teacher is available to a certain group of students. It's not my idea of homeschooling.
The examples given in this post shows how varied it can be with K12 from school to school. You should find someone in your state that uses the exact charter school to ask questions or go to an info meeting. We apparently go to a pretty lax charter as we have never been required to attend anything at anytime besides the state history course which is outside of k12's instruction. We can do school as we please as long as we log 30 hours a week. Again, high school is another beast and my high school kid has to attend things from the teachers at specific times due to them being totally teacher graded and I have no learning coach materials for her. We also have not had difficulty with my children being in higher or lower classes. I have kids that are ahead in subjects than their grade and a kid that is below in certain subjects than his grade, but that is also up to the discretion of the charter. They normally have online info meetings and come spring they have in-person info meetings. Just for the record, the people that answer the k12 number are not from the charter at all and while enrolling you are not speaking to anyone with that charter...it could be a k12 representative many states away. Once enrolled, you get to speak to the administration of your actual charter. Kind of strange for it to be that way, but that is how it is ran.
30 hrs a week? Is that just for high school? That sounds like an awful lot of time for the lower grades. We spend maybe 15hrs a week.... 20 hrs a week TOPS. My older daughter didn't spend 30 hrs a week even during the high school years.
That is for all grades. It is the same for homeschoolers in my home state so the hour requirement isn't a big deal for me. There is a 6 hour a day school requirement. However, we do have a tab to mark supplemental activities (aka non-k12 activities). Plus PE has attendance too. So we do our work then mark PE for another 45 min. of the day then whatever doesn't equal to 6 hours gets added as supplemental. So technically we aren't doing 6 hours a day. We have always schooled at least 6 hours a day (well, my teaching day) between the four kids so it isn't a big deal to me. The hours requirement varies by school as well and this is just my state's requirements and they have hourly requirements for high school credits to count for homeschooled high school students as well so my high schooler's day would not change if we left the charter. My 1st grader definitely does not do 6 hours of k12 a day. He works on and off all day with lots of breaks as I school his 5th grade brother. If I added it all up, he probably schools 2 hours a day total. We get to put in the recommended time though that k12 suggests such as 50 min for math even if it only takes 20 minutes for him to complete it. My girls who started k12 as 6th and 7th graders have been pretty independent the whole time except when they need help on math or science. My 5th grader takes the most time and I will say that k12's 4th grade is a hard year to jump into k12. My high schooler actually loves the LMS and is doing fairly well considering she is a just turned 13 year old taking 9th grade courses. She will get to skip 9th grade b/c she will have enough credits to be 10th grade at the end of the year. So it works for us, but I do know just from reading online and experience with 2 different state k12 schools that each school and state requirements are totally different.
I do think it varies by State. I remember when I investigated it in AZ, it was much different than when I investigated in PA. Each State, I think, has it's own rules and requirements with K12. I THINK in PA you HAVE to do it under one of the K12 Charter Umbrellas. In our state it IS public school at home. I wouldn't say it's more advanced that public school in PA, when I called, they said they worked according to the school district you lived in. My oldest would have done Algebra in 9th (which is what she's doing now). We never did go with it b/c we didn't want to be connected to the PS at all. So….kinda once we realized that they had more control than we did anyway, we dropped it. I've heard both good and bad.
ARG, I had a LARGE post wrote and the pc ate it! Any way here's the deal. There's two different ways to do K12, privately, and charter through public school district. I do NOT do K12, sounds a little too rigid in my state, and way too large of a work load. However, I have heard a lot of parents like the privately bought K12 where they can pick and choose all on their own what they will and won't do. Now on to the chartered parts. That's a whole different ballgame. It all depends on the administer. He/She makes all the rules for that charter. There can be more then one charter in your state for K12. For instance, I am doing Calvert through a state charter. There is THREE charters here in Kansas that offer Calvert as a curriculum. Kansas is a open enrollment state so in theory I could enroll in any of the three of them I want. Through looking at their websites and going to open houses, and just trial and error of living it. I have learned a lot about them. At first I thought they were all the same and it probably didn't matter which one you joined. BUT, I have learned they can vary vastly. Each Admin can make it's own rules for their charter. For instance. The charter we are with, goes year around, and you get 12 full months to finish your grade level. If you are done before that they will order you the next grade level. If not then usually August the next grade level is auto sent to you unless you withdrawl from the school. The other two you must stay on the public school calendar. Ours you get one laptop per a child/student. The others you get one per a family. Ours has lots of field trips during the summer because they figure you slow down with school during the summer. And they also provide most the food on these trips. One of the other ones has a field trip every Friday, but only on the public school calendar (so none during the summer. lol). I'm not sure if either one provides food on their field trips. And the differences can go on and on and on. Ours the admin wants to keep the number of students down to around 250 so he can know every student personally. I went to a high school like that-the principal knew every one of us personally cause he kept it to 175 students or less. I like that. At least one of the others here wants a HIGH enrollment number of students. I'm not sure about the third one. But, again the differences are limitless. So....basically it depends. Do you want to do this privately, or charter through public school district. If privately, find a message board of FB page for K12 specifically where you can ask the private users specific questions. If through charter. Then you need to find out how many charters in your state are hosting K12, how many of those is your family eligible to join. Then of those, find local people through their facebook, website, etc pages and ask them specifics along with going to their open houses and information seminars on their particular ones. I will tell you, from what I have heard on the public charters, there is not much wiggle room for you to go your own direction. With mine, all we have to do is LA and Math and every thing else is up to you if you want to or not....but see even that is different, in different areas. One of my friends in MI went the public charter route with Calvert and they were told they had to do it ALL every day as written in the book. But, with my specific charter, I do do 80 to 100 percent of it every day, but the teachers constantly tell me that is NOT required and not to worry about it. I personally do it cause it doesn't take us more then a hour a day...and we have the time and my DD likes it. If we didn't I would pick and choose. Cause even in the Calvert seminars they give themselves, they say not to try to do it all every day cause you will burn out, to pick and choose the extras-science, social studies, art, etc etc....
We use K12 through our state virtual academy. Here is how ours works: The state requires that we log 920 hours a year You are only required to attend class connect (online interactive class sessions with the teacher) if your student is performing below grade level. You can take the day off to do outings or activities. You just have to make sure to catch-up or work ahead in your lessons. You can work at your own speed and set your own schedule. For example we only do Math and Language Arts on Friday. We use the rest of the day for field trips. You can teach the lessons any way you want as long as you cover the lesson's objectives and your student can pass the lesson assessment. To answer your questions: How do kids get their learning materials? All of the materials are mailed either when you register or before the school year begins. Some of the course material is all online. How do they turn in their work? I'm not sure how high school works, but for grade school we don't really turn anything in. All of our courses are mastery based. My daughter does the lesson and takes the assessment (if there is one) and if she gets an 85% or above we move onto the next lesson. We keep all the work she does but they don't ask to see it. How often do you have to meet with a teacher? We meet every couple of months over the phone & computer for testing. The teacher conducts the state mandated testing during these meetings or just works with her to get an idea of where she is at. Then she will offer ways to work with her either to get her caught up or keep challenging her based on her level. They are very helpful meetings. Do you get to pick your curriculum? Not really. You can for music and art if you choose to do your own. You can also customize your lessons as long as you teach the lesson objectives. Do you have a say in what your child learns and doesn't learn? Yes! You can skip anything you don't want to cover or substitute something else. The K12 program we do is very flexible; however, we are going through our state's public school so there are some things that I'm not crazy about like having to do all the state testing. I do like having the teacher/school there for support when I need it. I also like having all of the resources like Reading Eggs and decent curriculum (for example we used Handwriting Without Tears, and our History is based on The Story of the World curriculum) for free. Plus I really like having access to organized school outings when we want to get together with other kids/parents especially since we don't have any homeschool groups around here to join.
High school is totally different for k12. You do not receive many books at all. You do get to download the texts to your computer or tablet. A lot of it is online including the science labs. Your child does not receive student guides and there are no learning guides. It is completely teacher graded. You have to turn in assignments daily by midnight or they become 0's. Some courses have assignments open all week and they are due by Sunday at midnight or they become 0's. My 8th grader is taking all 9th grade classes except history. She may have 5 books total that they sent her...the rest of it is online. The novel study books are not sent and you have to acquire them yourself. They do have student guides and mentor guides online. You have to print them all. We have went through reams of paper so far and about 4 ink cartridges. We are about 12 weeks into school. Some courses such as PE and foreign language are outsourced and the charter school can not help you if you have any troubles with those classes. Once the semester ends and the credit is given there is no way to get grades fixed should there be errors. We really love the OLS and the younger years but unless it suddenly gets a lot better...we will not be continuing through high school and I do not plan for my current 7th grader to start high school in the 8th grade which is what our charter decided to do weeks before school started.
