Online charter school or regular home school?

[Janeway]

OKAY...15 yr old will NEVER return to public school, that has been decided. There is no changing that. Right now, in credits, he has 3 credits in each area of math, science, and foreign language. he has 2 credits each in language arts and history. He has additional credits on his transcript too such as art and Jr ROTC and such. He went to public school until this spring and based on how things went, he won't be returning. 

He is in ballet and his friends from ballet, almost all of them do ACE. One goes to a magnet school. One goes to public school (and tells me he is miserable). Of the ones doing ACE, one plans to do a public charter school in the fall. The rest will continue as they are and then graduate as home schoolers. Son currently does not have firm plans for the future. He always has wanted to do ballet. For a few years there, he wanted to go Air Force Academy or ROTC route. It is clear he is not an academic fit for something like AF Academy, but who knows. I am not hopeful but I would not shut it down. Now, with the quarantine, he is hearing from friends who went on to professional ballet, well, there are struggles and regrets going on there. As a result, he is back to considering military and possibly an academy or ROTC. 

 

I really just cannot decide what to have him do, which route to take. I will say the quarantine has done a good number on him. He used to make no effort in school and now I am starting to see him shine in some areas.  He found public school easy, but I also found that kids seem to do what we would have considered cheating. They have apps that give them answers. Very little is asked of them. They get credit for "homework" which means just showing up. Teachers are aware of the apps and just say they hope the kids use them wisely. Whatever.  I worry the online charter will just be a waste of time of busy work like the brick and mortar public school. Again, I had to re-teach him math. I found he did not get matrices at all, but was still given a 70 for that unit because 70 was their minimum grade. Stuff like that. So basically, if you do little to nothing, you get a C. If you work at it but don't get it, you get a B, and if you do well, you get an A. 

Turns out, he loves history. He has no trouble at all with English, literature, writing. He already has three credits in science and wants to take physics. All he needs left to graduate is one more math, one more science, US history, government, economics, and two credits English. He is interested in taking more French. 

Part of me wants to use the online charter because it will be free and I won't have to pay for anything. But, I worry that I am just copping out and will quickly regret it. 

[Lanny]

With regard to the service academies, if you look at their stats of who is admitted, you may find that their priorities include things other than a very high SAT/ACT score or G.P.A.  Not that those things are unimportant. They are very interested in people who have been active in Sports and Leadership. His being in Ballet might possibly be something they would find interesting. Good luck to him!

[Janeway]

51 minutes ago, Lanny said:

With regard to the service academies, if you look at their stats of who is admitted, you may find that their priorities include things other than a very high SAT/ACT score or G.P.A.  Not that those things are unimportant. They are very interested in people who have been active in Sports and Leadership. His being in Ballet might possibly be something they would find interesting. Good luck to him!

I was thinking that too. It might still be worth him considering and at least trying because he does put in many hours a week at the ballet. If I do regular home school, he will still have the time to commit to these outside activities (ballet and he wants to try CAP) while still maintaining good grades. But the online public virtual school might have tons of busy work and his grades end up not being so great.  He is hoping to be in the day program for ballet next year (9:30a-12:30p) and he already does it in the evenings (around 5p or so until 9 or 9:30pm) and on the weekends (all day Saturday and some times, on Sundays too). 

[City Mouse]

I have experience both as a teacher and parent in online charter schools in more than one state. There were many students in our school(s) in what I called a professional track- gymnasts, dancers, athletes, actors, etc. They seemed to be relatively happy with the program, but it is public school. Most of them came from traditional public schools and the parents did not want the responsibility of home schooling. I remember one group of girls in gymnastics where the gym provided a room and adult supervision so the kids could do school work between training sessions.

The nice thing about program was that the “busy work” was for students to learn and practice the material. It wasn’t graded and could be skipped for students who didn’t need it. It did allow strong students to move quickly through the curriculum if they choose to do so. Our school did not have required live contacts as long as students were keeping up with their work. State testing in person is required, and did sometimes conflict with schedules, but there was a little bit of flexibility depending on state requirements.

Families coming from public school were generally satisfied with the program; however, families who were homeschoolers first often did not like it any more than they would any other public school. On line public schools have most of the same limitations and requirements  of traditional public schools.

[Ellie]

I am almost always going to recommend private homeschooling instead of public home-based charter schools.

[Farrar]

To me, the reasons to go with an online charter/school in general are 1) you don't have the relationship or the time/energy to oversee homeschooling yourself and 2) the student has something else going on that is a lot more important than academics - whether it's an outside passion that takes all their time and academics just need to be quick and check the box or whether it's a mental or physical health challenge and academics need to take a backseat.

When a charter means money and there's still flexibility, I understand that as well since providing a quality high school experience isn't cheap.

But none of the above seem to apply in this case, so to me it's a no brainer to actually  homeschool.