A WWYD re: using a VA or independent study (for those who NEED the accountability)

[BlueTaelon]

We use a charter that lets me pick our own materials and I show our monthly progress and they foot the bill for materials I pick as long as its secular. We are one of those families who NEED the accountability or we become slackers and its the only way I get dd12 to do school work, the fact she's accountable to the oversight teacher and not just me. Using the mix in my sig has worked really well for us and I've been paying out of pocket the past several months since we used our school funds up on other stuff.

 

Education is important to me and instead of buying fancy clothes or extras I put it into education for the kids. My 1st grader will stay with a K12 VA, its a great fit for her. Its my 12 yr old I'm not sure what to do about.

 

Using the stuff in my sig has been a great fit for us but were moving and the only option for charters is a K12 VA. I don't really like their math, Foreign lang (although dd12 is excited about it) or art program but we'd be required to add them. At the younger grades its really easy to swap out stuff and they are none the wiser, for example instead of the Phonics program for my 1st grader I'm using Headsprout and we skip art all together and just mark if off. I'm not sure how much I can swap out with the math in 6th for K12, I really like the combo we have right now between TT7, HoE and LoF but we will be done with the current stuff by the end of the month but will have a similar set up for either pre-algebra or Algebra 1 (waiting until were finished then have her take a placement test to see if we can skip pre-alg).

 

Cost is a factor but not the driving one. I like using K12 independently and moving at our own pace (which is pretty close to what K12 expects) but my income is going to be slashed radically when we move and our cost of living will go up for a while so we will not have much money at all the next several months. I know how to work a VA to our advantage at the lower grades but 6th is new to us.

 

For lazy/slacker HS'ers like us who NEED the accountability, would you suck it up and enroll in the VA? Were already using K12 for Lang arts, History and Science. I would still have dd doing the same math set up since it works so well for her but we'd still have to deal with their math. I don't mind paying out of pocket although I'm sure it will hurt once we move and its more a reality, but I can see school work ending up not getting done if we don't have that accountability.

 

and yes, I know about the issues of using charters, it doesn't bother me, it works for us and lets me educate my child at home using materials that work well for us.