After recently moving away from Texas (after child completed 8th grade in Texas public school), we are considering enrolling our child for 9th grade in either TTU K-12 (Texas Tech) or University of Texas High School diploma program (full time online high school culminating in public high school diploma --- available to out-of-state students if you pay tuition).
Do any of you have experience with either of these schools? Or have heard about others' experiences with them?
In particular, I am interested in hearing about how content is delivered and student learning is assessed (are there videos? does teacher actually grade very many assignments and give feedback?), how responsive the teachers were to emails/messages/questions (and do teachers have drop in office hours that are live virtual interactions, such as zoom meetings?), and how much interaction there is between students and teachers (and students and their peers/other students - are there student clubs and student message boards/group chats?).
I am concerned that the courses will consist nearly entirely of a lot of reading, ungraded assignments where you check your own work against an answer key that is provided, and auto-graded quizzes and exams and that teachers will be less than helpful when messaged.
We like that you can end up with a Texas public high school diploma (feel that may give some level of credibility that can help with both college admissions/merit scholarships and in case we decide to transition into brick and mortar local public school in our new state later) and that they follow TEKS standards (our kids went to Texas public schools until recently...so we are familiar with these state curriculum standards and thus it gives us some assurance as to quality of learning outcomes).
Based on the demo classes I saw on University of Texas High School website, the lesson modules appear to have a lot of text directly in Canvas (Learning Management System) that you read, a bunch of assignments where you are supposed to write out your answers and then check your own answers against an answer key that is provided, and some check you understanding multiple choice quizzes (that you must complete satisfactorily to move on to next material, but which don't appear to count for a grade). There are also exams, but I can't see those (and I assume they will be either all or mostly multiple choice). I am guessing there would also be the occasional paper or project that would be graded by the teacher. But still, the demo classes give the impression that your daily routine would be a ton of reading (textbook type information), writing out answers to questions and comparing your answers to the answer key (until you get tired of this and just start skipping to looking at the answer key and deciding "yeah, this looks easy...I knew all this"), and taking multiple choice quizzes. That seems like quite the monotonous grind without any real interaction with teachers or any video lectures.
TTU K-12 (Texas Tech) does not have demo classes on their website, but I did find some short YouTube clips where they give a very brief overview of their classes and they appear to have more variety in their lesson modules (some brief videos, but still not true lecture videos featuring the teacher; discussion boards; etc.) and did not give the impression there was a lot of the "write your answers and then check your own answers against an answer key" kinds of "assignments."
Alternatively, do you know of accredited (not religious) online schools (that issue high school diploma) with live virtual lessons that cost no more than $5,000 per year? We are looking for an online high school with a diploma program (not interested in piecing together classes from different schools).
We considered Williamsburg Academy (because it is affordable, accredited, and does have live lessons), but their courses don't align with the local public school curriculum (requires a bunch of leadership classes, doesn't offer biology in 9th grade, doesn't offer world history until 12th grade, math classes mix algebra and geometry together so they don't line up neatly with where my kid is at in math, etc.) and they don't offer AP classes or enough electives that interest my kid.
We are hoping that public health conditions will allow a transition to local brick and mortar public school in 10th or 11th grade (high risk household). So, we need an accredited online high school that has a traditional curriculum that lines up with the local public high school curriculum (e.g., biology and world history in 9th grade). TTU K-12 (Texas Tech) and University of Texas High School look like their curriculum lines up with the local public high school curriculum in our new state, but I am just concerned that those courses are going to feel like they are on auto-pilot with nobody really teaching them (no real instructor presence) and may feel like a crushing workload of monotonous reading and multiple choice quizzes.
