We started my 14 year old in online school last year, 8th grade, because our local public school, while giving a decent education, has issues with controlling fights and bullies. She'd been getting more and more miserable for the last couple years, it was time to try something different. As I'm not as impressed with our local high school, I wanted something done before 9th grade.
I'd love to be able to put her back in private, Christian school, but just can't swing the cost and scheduling. (Note on the earlier snark on Christian schools, my husband teaches at a community college...the Christian school and homeschool kids need a tiny fraction of the remedial classes required for public school students.)
We enrolled her in a public, online school. The cost is covered just the same way all public school costs are covered, so nothing weird about it...except they don't collect lunch money. The teachers are scattered all over the state, just like the students; as long as they have a good internet connection, they don't have to travel in to a school building every day. I think most are very rural.
The classes take a lot of reading, of course, and vary in difficulty. Things like science experiments, photography assignments, and other assignments sometimes require a lot of help from us as stand-ins for the teacher, or for travel or assistance with research. Some of the classes are completely "canned," and we've complained about one that was so poorly written that the test questions were often never mentioned in the reading. We've also had to contact teachers repeatedly before we received replies to e-mails, but most were both quick to reply and were always in the "office" during their "office hour," so not hard to reach. I had a big issue with the math teacher not grading homework before the week's test was due, and had to discuss that with her more than once. So there are some obvious negatives with the online concept.
On the other hand, my daughter has learned an immense amount of responsibility in taking these classes largely on her own. She's had to learn how to budget her time in order to get everything turned in. She's discovered that she learns more quickly and retains more if she does the whole week's worth of class work in one day for each subject instead of doing a little of each class every day. She's learning the kind of skills that will help her in college classes eventually...the things many of us had trouble learning our first year of college, when our time was suddenly not structured by the school system.
Her online school features one weekly "virtual class" for each class. The teacher and all students log into a virtual classroom where the teacher lectures and demonstrates just as in a regular classroom. The kids usually type replies, or the teacher can open mics to allow for oral replies. Any specific questions can be asked during that hour, or during the teacher's office hour.
A huge plus for us is that my daughter is no longer miserable, and is more able to concentrate on her school work without dealing with stress-related headaches and stomachaches. Her sick days dropped from 3 or 4 a month to about 4 all year last year. In my opinion, whatever socialization takes place in middle school and the first couple years of high school is completely negative for a large percentage of kids. There are reasons so many kids turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, cutting, etc.
